A Webster County clinic's effort to educate people on female anatomy after the Super Bowl halftime show backfires

As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

A Webster County clinic attempted to educate the public on female anatomy after Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, but that backfired when men started sending in pictures over Facebook of, well, their junk.

"We could not believe the number of men who thought, ‘Well, you’re explaining the female anatomy, so let me send you pictures of mine,’” said Kelli Bloomquist, who manages social media for the clinic.

The Webster County Family Planning Clinic posted an educational image of the area Tuesday and commented that claims of people seeing Shakira and Jennifer Lopez's vaginas were "not anatomically true."

"We would know," the post quips.

Bloomquist wrote the post that has since garnered nearly 800 reactions. She said she decided to post the image to inform people of the correct terminology since she saw so many incorrect words being used on social media to describe what people thought they saw.

However, on Tuesday night, as Bloomquist, 40, was taking care of her newborn child, she saw dozens of men had responded to the post with comments and messages containing pictures of their genitalia.

That prompted her to put up another post Wednesday using the opportunity to tell men to visit the clinic for wellness screenings.

"It takes a lot to impress us, so please make an appointment to be seen instead of sending us poor resolution photos," the post reads.

Bloomquist said she knows talking about reproduction and genitalia can be uncomfortable, so she uses humor in the clinic's messaging.

"One of the goals of the family planning clinic is education and outreach, so we want people to be educated about their own bodies and about their own anatomy and be able to use correct verbiage," she said.

The clinic started a Facebook page about a year ago and has gotten a few likes on most of its other posts. Bloomquist said the clinic is judgment-free and uses social media to inform people. She said she did not expect her post to resonate with so many people.

"We thought, we’re going to use this as an opportunity to educate people, but we’re going to do it using the same voice that we do with the rest of our social media. We’re going to be kind of funny about it," she said. "We really did not expect it was going to take off as much as it did."

The Fort Dodge clinic is part of the Webster County Health Department and serves patients in several surrounding counties.

Sarah LeBlanc covers trending news for the Register. Reach her at 515-284-8161 or sleblanc@registermedia.com. Your subscription makes work like this possible. Join today at DesMoinesRegister.com/Deal.