Get naked, one, two, deep breath, three, done?
Katherine Gottli
Issue date: 11/17/09 Section: Features
Being invited to colour in a photocopied picture of the anatomically correct inside of a vagina from a colouring book is a rather unusual experience.
Before you begin, you have to decide what direction you would like to take your masterpiece. Are you going to take the safe route and create a realistic representation of a particular vagina, thus immediately reaching for the red and pink crayons on the table? Or perhaps you are feeling a little more experimental and would like to develop a work with a little more edge? If so, you would most likely reach for numerous crayons of varying colours to create an abstract rainbow vagina.
Maybe you even feel incredibly uncomfortable about the initial invitation - which can be attributed to the fact that the only inside of a vagina that you have ever seen was in grade six, and you flipped by it so quickly in class you're still not entirely sure where the pee pee comes out - but force yourself to participate in an attempt to step out of your vagina comfort zone.
In this particular case, you just reach for whatever crayon is closest to you and hesitantly begin to shade in the 8 1/2 by 11' vagina glaring at you from the table as if to say, "Your grandmother is watching, I hope you're proud of yourself", while casually glancing at the vaginas around you to make sure that yours is somewhat on par.
Regardless of the direction you choose to take, the exercise is more telling about how comfortable and educated you feel being confronted with one of the most taboo subjects in society - sexuality - even when it is being displayed in its unadulterated form.
The sexual education that university-aged women received in elementary and secondary school was, one can assume, not entirely thorough and a subject that created a lot more giggles than thoughtful and honest questions.
Sex makes people blush, so to talk about it with an educated authority figure, especially at an age where a young girl is not sure what is going on with anything in her body, is out of the question. Thus, students learned about sex and sexuality from their peers - who have no more knowledge than they do on the subject - and the Internet - where the most accessible sex is frequently displayed as an unrealistic act, and women, more often than not, are objectified.
Before you begin, you have to decide what direction you would like to take your masterpiece. Are you going to take the safe route and create a realistic representation of a particular vagina, thus immediately reaching for the red and pink crayons on the table? Or perhaps you are feeling a little more experimental and would like to develop a work with a little more edge? If so, you would most likely reach for numerous crayons of varying colours to create an abstract rainbow vagina.
Maybe you even feel incredibly uncomfortable about the initial invitation - which can be attributed to the fact that the only inside of a vagina that you have ever seen was in grade six, and you flipped by it so quickly in class you're still not entirely sure where the pee pee comes out - but force yourself to participate in an attempt to step out of your vagina comfort zone.
In this particular case, you just reach for whatever crayon is closest to you and hesitantly begin to shade in the 8 1/2 by 11' vagina glaring at you from the table as if to say, "Your grandmother is watching, I hope you're proud of yourself", while casually glancing at the vaginas around you to make sure that yours is somewhat on par.
Regardless of the direction you choose to take, the exercise is more telling about how comfortable and educated you feel being confronted with one of the most taboo subjects in society - sexuality - even when it is being displayed in its unadulterated form.
The sexual education that university-aged women received in elementary and secondary school was, one can assume, not entirely thorough and a subject that created a lot more giggles than thoughtful and honest questions.
Sex makes people blush, so to talk about it with an educated authority figure, especially at an age where a young girl is not sure what is going on with anything in her body, is out of the question. Thus, students learned about sex and sexuality from their peers - who have no more knowledge than they do on the subject - and the Internet - where the most accessible sex is frequently displayed as an unrealistic act, and women, more often than not, are objectified.
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