Lets celebrate vaginas!

I’m not going to apologise for talking about vaginas, but I am going to apologise for talking about vaginas. What I mean by this, is that I am going to be talking about vaginas, whereas what I actually mean is vulvas. In a way, this reflects what I’m talking about about, the general ignorance about what we see as female bits, compared to what we see as male bits - and why I’m talking about them in my art.

In my latest exhibition as part of the ‘Holding Ground’ collective, I created a series of art works which celebrate female sexuality, which I chose to call ‘The Vaginas’ simply because it’s the more familiar word, but I do have to acknowledge that technically they should have been called ‘The Vulvas.’

What I wanted to do, was create something which captured and celebrated the joy and physical sensation of having and enjoying lady parts, in a world where quite often that experience is policed and edited for a straight male gaze and experience. 

There’s the pressure to shave and wax, with the attendant discomfort of rashes and razor burn, not to mention, should you choose that route, the weirdness of asking a woman with a level three in health and beauty to use hot wax on your nether regions in the back of a High-street shop - all done in an effort to meet an artificial beauty standard. Although there are plenty of men who have no issues with female body hair and even enjoy it, the instance that we should be bald as coots below the waist and the industry behind maintaining this is so large, anyone who is ok with body hair has almost been forced into the kink box, as if it was some kind of perversion to be ok with woman as they are. Is it also creepy as hell to somehow insist grown women resemble pre-pubescent girls in this area?

Apparently, John Ruskin, Victorian writer on art and architecture and general pearl clutcher, was so horrified about the reality of female genitalia and pubic hair, he never consummated his married to Pre-Raphaelite beauty Effie, the glorious redhead model for so many of their over romanticised and simpering visions of womanhood - though this has been contested. Much like Ruskin (allegedly) in world where women are not seen as real beings but as metaphors - Modesty, Justice and Chastity to the Victorian artist - or as Modesty, Justice and Chastity adult film stars today - seen only as vessels for Cis-male sexual gratification, this mindset leads to one where the reality of living, birthing, aging and simple being as a women, becomes something unacceptable. 

Indeed, in many static porn images, the labia is often airbrushed out to give a more direct view of the vagina, the hole being the goal in the mind of the observer - and there are even surgical procedures out there to prune back unacceptable labia, as some terrible, Westernised version of FGM. Lets not overlook the racialised idea behind this, the over presentation of white female genitalia as being somehow the standard, is another way to police women of colour and impose white beauty standards, because there’s not enough of that already going on, right?

When you live in a world where the most intimate parts you are so policed, it is not surprising that many young women, let alone young men, have a very mistaken idea of how they work. I’ve seen numerous posts on social media flagged up because their authors are pointing out that they find it ‘disgusting’ that women bleed and pee out of the same hole, thus displaying an astounded lack on understanding.

Is there also a sense that ignorance and shame around female bodies and sexual pleasure, means that they will be easier to control in a Patriarchy? Hell yeah there is, and it’s way more than a sense - you only have to trawl social media once again to see a mass of posts bemoaning the loss of ‘traditional’ women, who only know sex as penis in vagina sex with one man, and whose role is only to be there as a kind of mute vessel for his invasion, with no agency of her own. The implication behind this being that, should a women discover the power of her own orgasm, she will firstly realise what she’s been missing and secondly, expect more of her partner than sixty seconds of humping, and no Patriarchal alpha male wants that, right?

I realise at this point I will be under pressure to insert, hem hem, the ‘not all men’ hash-tag here - and yes, of course, normal men who actually want to both give and build pleasure with a female partner, will and do their best to understand how they work and, more importantly, what turns them on, even sometimes at the expense of their own immediate satisfaction - and all of you, I salute you for you know, getting the basics right at least. 

But anyway, I want to celebrate the reality and the joy of what it means both to have and enjoy female parts, and this is behind my Vaginas series. Each starts as an abstract swirl of ink blooming on wet watercolour paper, a blur and bleed together of colour, unpredictable and infinitely varied, spilling across the whiteness in pulsating magenta, brilliant yellow, fiery orange and enveloping, velvet purple, taking it over, claiming the space. I let it stand, shimmering on the paper, then start to explore with line work, swirling and and twisting through the shapes discovered, titillating the edges with nibbles of line work, decorating and tantalising with swirl and curls and pattern and curlicues, building and building, intricate and intense and glittering with hints of gold and brilliant contrast until - until - well, hopefully you get the picture. 

Then I reach into the internet and give each a totally stupid nickname, because I’m owning them all, all of the names!

Originals and prints will be up on my website this week, when I’ve recovered myself a bit!