Some Grossly Indulgent Self Promotion, And A Story Called Gross

I know. I know. I'm sorry. This blogging business has just gone out the window, what with the working and the minging and then being in another show at the same time and the talking about the vulvas on national television. But in the words of a Abraham Lincoln, this too shall pass, and the week after next is going to be some kind of mecca of eating dinner at normal times, doing the washing and seeing if my girlfriend remembers me. In the mean time I'm going to post this story here, a story called Gross. Gross is from The Minge-A-Zine: A Collection of Women's Writing, and it is full of the stories written by the women in MINGE, and their friends, which we collected as part of the devising process for our play, MINGE: A Celebration and Interrogation of Womanhood in New Zealand. Gross is one of 31 anonymous stories in the A4 zine, which has edited by yours truly, designed by Kimberley Berends and illustrated by Hannah Smith and Erin Banks. (Although Jem Yoshioka did our front cover art.) Basically, I'm blathering on about the zine because you can buy it! We have a shop! That sends things overseas! Three exclamation marks must mean that it's an exciting time. If you don't live in Wellington it is a cool way to support this thing I have been doing, and if you do live in Wellington you should pop yourself onto the waiting list for our remaining three performances and buy a zine in person at BATS Theatre.

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There are some things my body does that I think are gross.

I find it gross to smell a pair of tights when I take them off after walking to work and sitting in a chair all day and then walking to Kelburn and going to a meeting and then having ten beers at the pub and then dancing to Patti Smith. Those are bad tights. Those are only-can-be-worn-once tights. Well I put them in the washing machine and then wear them again but I mean they are "can’t-be-worn-consecutively-at-all-ever-tights". I find it gross, or sometimes grossly funny, when I eat gluten and fart all night. I find it gross when I eat beetroot and haloumi from Aro Cafe and my poo turns purple and my piss turns pink. Vomiting is gross. Diarrhoea, or as my dad calls it, die-horry, is gross. Underboob sweat and the milky smell of a well worn bra is gross. Squeezing a blackhead so it emerges like a triumphant maypole between my tits is really gross. Sneezing and getting drippy snot on your collar is gross. Squeezing an infected ear piercing, morning death breath, period blood clots in the bath and greasy hair are all gross things.

There is something else that my body does that is not gross.

Female ejaculation.
Squirting.
Gushing pussy fluid.
Girl cum
Vaginal geyser.

The first time this happened to me I was eighteen. I was in town with my friend Sam and we went home with two Australian DJs. As I said, I was eighteen and I feel like now that I am twenty two and wizened and bitter and skeptical I would be less inclined to believe that anyone was a DJ, but he had an Australian accent and he was staying in a hotel on the strip in Christchurch. He bought me a martini, drained the glass and then kissed me with the alcohol in his mouth. I thought it was sexy. Their hotel room had two double beds. Sam and I had sex with our maybe-DJs metres away from each other. When the DJ was fingering me, he said ‘You like that, your legs are shaking’. Thanks, I thought. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

I liked it so much that I squirted. There was a wet patch on the thin hotel sheets and I thought I had peed everywhere. The maybe-DJ said “Fuck, maaaaaaaaaan, this bed stinks like pussy.” I was humiliated. When I was leaving I couldn’t find my new Elle MacPherson undies. If I saw the maybe-DJ now I would thank him for introducing me to something awesome. Something that he thought was gross.

The fluid is not urine. It’s not regular wetness. It smells different and it feels different. It’s more like water. For me this happens more regularly now, but not on command. Sometimes it just seems to drop out. Sometimes it’s tiny little spurts. Sometimes it gushes and I feel it warm and wet on my stomach. Sometimes it’s a couple of table spoons. Sometimes it’s cupfuls and the sheets have to be changed and the bed has to air dry. It happens with G Spot stimulation, usually just before I come. I can’t really do it by myself because my arms aren’t long enough to reach inside me. My girlfriend says that first she needs to touch my G Spot, and then she has to fuck me really hard.

I do think that usually when ladies squirt in porn they might be peeing, because like I said, I can’t just do it on a whim. It looks real in queer porn though, especially when Jiz Lee squirts all over her girlfriend’s face and she loves it. I also think, from extensive internet research, that it isn’t something that all women can do. So nobody should feel bad about not being able to do this. Anatomies are really different. Just look at people's ears. Sex is not a race. Squirting and orgasms are not prizes.

But what I think the problem actually is here, is that people don’t talk about this shit. Scientists haven’t figured out what the fluid is, but they think it is from the Skenes Gland. Some tests have shown the fluid is like semen, but without the tadpoles. Maybe scientists should stop pissing around looking for planets and doing studies about everything that mothers do to fuck up their children, and they should hang out more with vaginas. Apparently not very much is known about women’s bodies because women are way less likely to donate their bodies to science when they die. So maybe now, when I die, I will donate mine under the specific clause that my gushing pussy should be investigated. I hope I live to a really old age and it makes my children smile when they have to negotiate that with the coroner or the funeral home or whatever.

Some people think that female ejaculation is a myth. I think they can come and change my sheets. So talk about it.. Gush about gushing. I shouldn’t have had to fuck an Australian maybe-DJ to find this out about my pussy.

Sometimes, when my G Spot feels awesome and then I get fucked really hard, I’ll squirt everywhere. This is awesome. This is not gross. If you think it is gross then you are an idiot.

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Minge-A-Zines are available for purchase on our Big Cartel site. NZ$7 for those in New Zealand, and NZ$10 for those who live on faraway shores. I was going to take a picture of me holding the Minge-A_Zine for further self promotion purposes, but I can't really be bothered putting a bra on. Sorry. I will save this for another day.

The Fury and the Furiously Busy

Despite writing a blog about being offended, and therefore living in a state of near-permanant rage, it is not that often that I get really angry. This really angry being the kind of seething anger where you feel sick and you can't see and nothing can be done about it, as opposed to my usual rage daily rage that can usually be cured by drinking wine and ranting with my friend Sarah, or by writing a furious email or buying two different types of cheese. Peter Carlisle was definitely one of those times that I felt that seething kind of anger. Another time was when my baby sister's Spanish teacher told her that she needed to watch her repuation after she kissed a boy who was not her date at the school ball, because "Christchurch is a small place" and "boys don't like easy girls". Another time was when year or so ago a friend said that Caster Semenya ought to be competing in the Special Olympics. I think if he said that now I would probably question what it was about my able-bodied privelege that meant I thought that was such a degrading insult. Still, I don't think that not quite fitting into an arbitrary gender binary is enough to classify a person as being disabled.

Another time that I felt that kind of anger was when I first saw this:

An advert for Hymen Gel. I can't remember whether I first saw it on this tumblr or this one, but either way I felt the rage. My first reaction was the this-is-completely-fucking-ridiculous rage. My vulva is not a fucking hair tie. I don't reach for a vagina to fasten my top knot, and a vagina is not my first port of call to keep hair out of my face. But then the real rage started to set in. Rage about a culture that values virginal women, and a culture where companies exist to make money out of women who are paranoid about the tightness and the aesthetic appearance of their genitalia. Rage about a culture that values a woman for the tightness of her vagina, rather than her knowledge or abilities or experience. I also felt a smidgen of the THIS-IS-SO-MEDICALLY-INACCURATE rage, because the vagina is a fucking powerful muscle, it is not a 'use it three times and then leave it in the bottom of the shower' type of situation. And speaking of medical rage, this shit can not be good for you. These kind of products work by causing SWELLING and IRRITATION. If I get thrush from even looking at an antibiotic, I hate to think what these kinds of products do to self cleaning lady ovens.

But through the searing anger, I wondered whether this advert could even be real. So I did some googling. I found the advert listed on the Ads of the World website, made for the Salem Drug Store by the Classic Partnership Advertising company, in Dubai. I also found the Hymen Gel website, with the following mission statement:

"We provide high quality services to pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, Parapharm-aceutical and cosmetic industries in the Middle East region. We cover wide range of niche products from gynecology, skin care and pediatrics."

And then, I felt I swiftly began to feel uncomfortable about my rage, becase Hymen Gel because is a Middle Eastern product and it was a Middle Eastern advert. I felt uncomfortable for heaps of reasons. I felt uncomfortable because I don't want to sound like some white saviour, hypocritically banging on about the oppression of Middle Eastern women while my culture oppresses women in a whole pile of different ways. I might not be able to buy Hymen Gel at the Cuba Street Pharmacy, but waxers and plastic surgeons are making a mint out of Western pussy shame. I feel loathe to comment on a culture that is not my own, and a culture that I have not lived in, because I can never possibly understand the many nuances and practices and traditions and feelings. The best case scenario would be that I would inevitably end up resorting to stale stereotypes about Muslim women, and the wost case scenario would be some kind of Samantha in the market place in the second Sex and the City movie type situation. I can't deny my white privilege when I'm talking about this stuff. I can't deny that I have absorbed some of the media's fearful portrayal of Islamic culture, but I can try and unpack some of this stuff. Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things is a good place to start. One of my first thoughts upon learning the origins of Hymen Gel was about how the stakes are higher in the Middle East, because in New Zealand women are not stoned for adultery and going to the doctor to get a Certificate of Virginity before you get married isn't the done thing. And while this might be a valid point, these are simplistic thoughts. For a start, there HEAPS of different countries in the Middle East, each with different value systems. These are thoughts that other another culture, while ignoring the systemic oppression in my own. There are millions of Muslim people in the world, and I'm pretty sure that every Muslim woman doesn't feel like she has to use Hymen Gel.

I am still furious that Hymen Gel exists. I am furious at EVERY culture where women are ashamed of their genitalia, and where the abstract concept of "virginity" is prized. I am furious that companies exist to manipulate the shame that women feel through advertising, and profit from these cultural ideals. But I am a hypocrite. I have paid my own hard earned cash for a Brazilian wax. I trim my pubes. I am not immune to pussy shame. But is the hymen gel advert just an equivalent to this?

I also wanted to say, dear readers, that I apologise for the lack of posts here lately. It is not due to a want for inspiration, because I've been offended quite often recently, but for lack of time to blog about it . Forty hour working weeks (with a promotion starting soon) and rehearsing evenings and weekends for the play I am in is turning me into a psychopath. A psychopath with very little time to blog. A psychopath who only has time to eat crackers all day and who then admonishes her considerate girlfriend for making baked beans that are "too salty".

Here is the poster image for the show, MINGE:

And while I'm at it here are some links to our Facebook page and our event, because if you live in Welllington you should come and watch. Another the reason that I've been really busy is that I have been making a zine to accompany the show, subtly and amusingly titled The Minge-a-Zine. The zine features all of the stories that we wrote and collected from our friends during the rehearsal period, in our attempt to to define and investigate womanhood, and it will be available for purchase for $6 at the show. If you don't live in Wellington, but you would like to purchase a copy of the scene you should email me, and I will post some more details here within the next week when the zine hits the printers. If you don't care about my play or my zine and you just want to read my furious rants on the internet, this blog will be back to normally scheduled fury in December. I can't wait to tackle all of the great-slash-rage-inducing things that you guys are submitting, because the most frustrating thing is not having time to write about the stuff that I want to write about. Like, I couldn't even write a post about the Marie Claire thing! (Luckily though, Lesley Kinzel wrote a really great one.)

Until next time I will leave you with this picture of me, taken as part of a MINGE photo shoot.

[MINGE Photographs taken by MINGE photographer Vanessa Fowler Kendall. The hymen advert photograph was definitely 100% not taken by Vanessa Fowler Kendall.]

Va-Jesus Christ.

To be honest with you, lately I've been thinking quite a lot about vajazzling. Well, not really a lot a lot. It's not like I'm approaching my two year anniversary with my girlfriend and I have automatically developed an obsession with pussy decoration. I’ve just been thinking about it more often than usual. And like, it's normal that I've been thinking about it quite a bit, because it seems like you can't even move on the internet recently without bumping into someone talking about vajazzling, or possibly even making a joke about her lesser cousin, Clitter. Possibly it seems like I have been thinking about it more than usual because until like, May, I hadn’t thought about vajazzling at all, ever. And you know, the thought of vajazzling actually isn’t sitting that comfortably with me. Which is probably what it feels like to have tiny jewels glued all over your pubic area, but having never put on any kind of clam costume, I can't really comment. And as a don’t-knock-it-till-you’ve-tried-it kinda girl, maybe vajazzling is actually really great. (FYI, this approach to life also applies to beetroot, Vegemite and cream cheese on toast, as well as anal sex and handwriting analysis). But I still feel uncomfortable. About vajazzling, not anal sex.

Uncomfortable, offended. They’re all the same. I think I'm going to try and use this post to unwrap exactly what it is that is about vajazzling that is making me feel uncomfortable. If you don’t like disjointed self analysis and patchy feminist theory, stop reading now. Blogging; it's like psychotherapy but cheaper and more public.

To get started, here is that video where Jennifer Love Hewitt brought vajazzling into the public consciousness: (Link, in case my HTML doesn't work.)

And here is a YouTube of a lady called Bryce getting vajazzled: (Another link)

And here is a blog post (Title: I Vajazzled And I Liked It) where a woman from Crushable wrote about her experience getting decorated. In case you were wondering, she had sex and none of the crystals fell off.

Obviously, I’m uncomfortable that women feel they have to vajazzle in the first place. To explain my discomfort I was going to try and write something about the beauty myth and femininity and feminism and the associated health risks, but then I found this article by Amanda Hess, which I think you should probably just go and read instead. Here are some highlights:

In last week’s post, I floated the following equation:

Sexual Repression + Capitalism + Sexism =Vajazzling

I think it would be appropriate to add “Pseudo-Feminism” to the list of Vajazzling’s contributing societal factors. But first, let’s tackle the good old fashioned anti-feminism at play here: Capitalism will find a way to exploit any weaknesses in our society, and sexism is one of them. Take Liz Lemon’s analysis of Valentine’s Day from 30 Rock: “Valentine’s Day is a sham created by card companies to reinforce and exploit gender stereotypes.” You could say the same thing about the cosmetics industry, plastic surgeons, and Vajazzling technicians.

When it comes to personal appearance, it’s no coincidence that femininity is marked by performance, while masculinity is just as often defined by men not performing things. Shaving your body hair is feminine; not shaving is masculine. Plucking, waxing, or bleaching stray facial hairs is feminine; growing a few days of stubble is masculine. Applying makeup is feminine; not painting your face is masculine. Dying, styling, blow-drying, and curling your hair is feminine; keeping a low-maintenance hair cut is masculine.

I suspect that this is because women are encouraged to achieve societal power through their appearance and sexuality, while men are encouraged to achieve power from . . . reaching real positions of power, like running companies and governments. Sure, women who are very successful at performing femininity can gain some real power, too. Maybe there’s a two-year window there where women can translate their success in this field into posing for Playboy, or shaking in a music video, or stripping, all of which can translate into money in the bank—until they get a little bit older and fall out of favor in those industries. Maybe some women can aspire to be trophy wives and get their social validation by being married to a successful man. The majority of women won’t be able to make a career out of performing femininity. And yet, we’re still shaving and waxing and plucking and dieting and padding and inflating and cinching and painting and dyeing and surgically trimming our labia and, now, vajazzling like it’s our jobs—even as we have been successful in claiming real power as Senators and CEOs and lawyers and doctors and journalists.

And:

This is where the “a woman’s choice!” defenders come in. How could we possibly deny women the choice to engage in these behaviors, if that’s what they love? Look: I don’t begrudge women who make the choice to perform the behaviors of femininity. I perform many of them myself, on a daily basis! Resisting engaging in these things is almost impossible. But I don’t kid myself into thinking that I just love wearing lipstick because I was born that way, or that I shave my legs because I have somehow independently decided—without any influence from my culture!—that that’s the way I personally prefer my legs to look.

She's good, right?

Of course I am offended by vajazzling. Of course I am offended by the culture of pussy shame that we live in, a culture where talking about your genitalia is gross and waxing all the hair off it is normal and where we all say vagina and not vulva, because why would we even bother getting the anatomy right for something as disgusting as what is between our legs? Of course I will defend a woman's choice to vajazzle, until I am blue in the face, but I think there is something bigger here. I am offended that getting a Brazilian is considered to be an appropriate anniversary gift, because here baby, why don’t you have a little less of me. I am offended because so many of my friends have had a boyfriend who wouldn't go down on them unless they had showered in the last five minutes. I am offended by the dudes I have slept with who expected me to blow them every time but who wouldn’t eat me out because they didn't like the taste. I am offended by a world in which I was ever an 18 year old in spotty pyjama shorts and freshly washed hair, dry humping the knee of a guy with dreadlocks but knowing I wouldn't let him get any further, not because I didn't want to but because I hadn't shaved that day. I am offended that labioplasty even exists. I am offended that when gay American author Dan Savage was asked about vajazzling, he said:

[It's] like asking a vegan for her opinion on the wallpaper in a steak house. I'm simply too revolted by what's on the menu to take much notice of the decor.

How hilarious Mr. Savage. I know that you’re gay, but being revolted isn't the same as being disinterested. Also, not all vegans are female, you asshat. I am offended that the censorship of mainstream soft pornography has warped our perception of what a normal vagina looks like. I am offended that labioplasty even exists in the first place. I am offended that some girls are too grossed out by their pussies to masturbate and I am offended that some of my female friends don't want to hear about my lesbian sex life because they think it's gross, even though THEY HAVE THEIR OWN VAGINA THAT I ASSUME THEY MAY HAVE TOUCHED AT SOME POINT. Of course it is this stuff I am offended by. Look, I had to use caps lock. But I also think that when it comes to my vajazzling discomfort, there is a little more than this.

I think that something else I’m uncomfortable about is how people seem to think that vajazzling is HILARIOUS. I am uncomfortable because the mainstream media coverage on vajazzling doesn't talk about the beauty myth or the performance of femininity or the increasing popularity of labioplasty. Not in the Stuff article or the Courier Mail blog or the Guardian piece or Fox News (but actually the Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece was pretty good.) They didn't mention it because it’s a joke, right? I am offended by how Ann Aitken Worth wrote on her Stuff news site blog Are We There Yet? that it must be uncomfortable to ride a bike vajazzled, and that that is funny, but nobody is amused about how it would be uncomfortable to ride a bike with waxing burn or Spanx or in heels and a pencil skirt because that shit is normal. In the quest for beauty it's normal to be uncomfortable and to have trouble taking a piss. I am offended that it's funny that a lady is just trying to please someone, probably a dude, and it's funny to laugh at either her low self esteem, or her wealth of pussy confidence. Or maybe she is an adult entertainer, and that's not a joke, it's job. Or is it funny because vajazzling is something that only sluts would do, and they wouldn't buy the cow if they could get the milk for free? I am offended because of course it makes me think of that Margaret Atwood poem. I am offended because I think there might be some kind of subtext here that pussies are obviously so gross and disgusting and ugly that why would you even bother putting crystals on them. I am offended because vajazzling is hilarious but waxing off all of your pubes at sixty bucks and three ingrown hairs a pop is normal and barely funny at all and it is expected. I am offended because nobody found that Gucci advert funny, and getting a ‘T’ waxed into your pubic hair for your boyfriend Tim’s birthday is a romantic gesture. I am offended because women are supposed to look effortlessly beautiful, and maybe vajazzling is funny because obviously women are trying a little bit too hard. I am offended because reading all of this stuff somehow cheapens my love of lipstick and MAC cosmetics and low cut tops, but I'll still be putting them all on again tomorrow and I don't whether it's because I love it or I think I love it. I am uncomfortable because everyone is just having a laugh and in that Crushable blog, the woman said that getting vajazzled actually hurts.

I’m sure there are some jokes about vajazzling that are really good. A joke about scissoring with disco ball comes to mind. I can’t be bothered developing it but you get the idea. Or when Amanda Hess and her equally great feminist blogger counterpart Sady Doyle said that the male counterpart for vajazzling could be dickerating. Or when my friend Felicity found a sequin from Scarlett’s mini skirt on her inner thigh, and Di made a joke about vajazzling and it was funny because it was topical because there were already sparkles near a vagina. Or maybe a joke about the glowing vagina poster for the Real L Word. Merkins, also possibly topical. I feel like these are acceptable jokes about vajazzling. But when you make a joke about vajazzling and you have no punch line, I don’t think it’s that great. Because you are either making fun of the rare woman who thinks her pussy is so wonderful that it deserves to be decorated, or you are laughing at a girl who is so embarrassed by her own anatomy that she feels compelled to rip her hair out and cover herself in crystals. Neither of which are all that funny really.

(But, to be honest, if you had sex with the dude up there while he was in that costume I’d probably laugh. Even if he just kept the glasses on.)