I’d licked, sucked, and entered plenty of vulvas but until my first Bodysex retreat I hadn’t ever just gazed at them. I hadn’t experienced simply taking in their shape, folds, and colors. I like vulvas. I like the texture of vulva skin. I like sliding my fingers on and around them, I like penetrating them and having mine penetrated, but other than figuring out how I or the person I was sleeping with wanted to be touched, I’d overlooked a lot of information about them. And I found that I carried some light shame about my own vulva. It wasn’t a particularly specific shame, rather it was a general and formless shame about having one. The kind of free floating shame that women and AFABs are fed by our culture to keep us infighting and distracted. Distracted into dialing down on the minutiae of our bodies – a bit of skin here, a dot of cellulite there – enough not to claim ourselves, our pleasure, or our power. 

The room crackled with a mixture of excitement and nerves. Except for the facilitator, all of us in the group were first timers. We’d already gotten naked and shared some stories about our bodies and our orgasms and now we sat close together around the mirror and lamp. We oohed and awed spontaneously as we each took a turn showing our genitalia to the group. Sitting there in our small naked circle I was struck by how each vulva, in its innate unyielding beauty, was something to behold. Carnation pink, hot pink, Barbie pink, deep red, brick red, espresso, cafe au lait, taupe, violet, midnight purple. Each vulva flaunted a unique sunset of colors within and around it. Some vulvas look the way you think they will when you look at a person’s face, and others are a magnificent surprise. I’m not alone in guessing what someone’s genitalia looks like when looking at their face, we’re all doing that, right?

I’m not particularly modest, but when having sex with someone I’d often stopped them from looking at my vulva for too long. Before genital show and tell, I hadn’t gazed at my own vulva with such lingering curiosity or awe. But why not? Gazing and allowing myself to be awestruck by the experience turned out to be deeply nourishing. Vulvas, every single one of them, are pure beauty. Beauty that doesn’t need to have action around it to be beautiful. They are beautiful because they are. They’re cute too. And sweet. And adorable. But none were cute, sweet, or adorable in a demeaning or helpless way. How had these things been conflated such that our society was set up demeaning and rendering people with vulvas unable to get credit cards in their own names or live without the support of someone without a vulva? It’s curious isn’t it? And it seems like a giant but unnecessary miracle that we with vulvas can now have our own income, bank accounts, credit cards, and businesses. 

When it was my turn I sat down under the bright warm reading light, spread my legs, and adjusted the mirror so my vulva looked back at me. I oiled up my hands and parted my labia. I discovered a diamond shape at the top and a mirror of it at the bottom, and another mirror of that just inside my vaginal opening. Like a yantra or two prisms put together my vulva reflected the shapes back at each other. And at that moment, it was both pinker and browner than I’d realized. As the group oohed and awed and complimented me, I felt a line of healing energy connect my clit to my heart to my brain. A claiming of my body exactly the way it is opened up this energetic channel. The unconscious comparison of my vulva to every other vulva I’d seen ceased. The free floating shame that had made its way into my psyche when I wasn’t paying attention melted away. My labia were more flowery than some and less flowery than others but they were uniquely mine. The raw unapologetic power of my vulva filled my body and consciousness. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t shy. I felt seen. How had I gone so long not doing this group ritual? When it was the next woman’s turn, I watched rapt, gazing at her brilliant vulva. 

The asymmetry was exquisite. The symmetry was exquisite. The color variation was exquisite. Beyond words and beyond understanding with our heads or even our hearts, vulvas know things. They carry mystery in their ruby folds and aubergine caverns.  

We can talk all day about vulnerability but allowing ourselves and others to gaze at our vulvas, slightly different from all the other vulvas, requires embodying vulnerability, and walking through that vulnerability changes who we are. And you could feel the courage and healing in it. The room was different afterwards. Our faces were different. Our bodies were different. We were different. 

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