Because this isn’t just about vaginas. This is about womanhood in general.

To say that you are disgusted by the vagina is to say that you are disgusted by the woman. The vagina, in all its fleshy, messy, sensual glory, becomes a proxy for female power and independence, and there are those who are frightened by this. I view the pressuring of women into labiaplasty (the monetised, Western equivalent of FGM) because their vulvas don’t fit into a particular aesthetic as analogous to the silencing of women who speak up when their reproductive rights are threatened. In both cases, women are being told that they do not fit the mould set for them by the patriarchy, and they must change, or face the consequences.

Worst of all, the myth that the vagina is ugly and gross is easy to buy into and internalise. You cannot shame someone who refuses to be shamed, but women are primed for guilt on a biblical scale, and so selling the “your sex organs are icky” package to us is piss-easy. You only have to hear that you have something gross in your knickers a few times before you start to believe it, and from there it’s a slippery slope from believing it, to feeling it, to wholly internalising it and full-on hating yourself. Boom. Job done. The patriarchy don’t have to force us into our little moulds anymore – we’re entirely self-policing! It’s genius!

So what do we do about this?