Unmentionables

There's an ad on another tab I have open, a Facebook tab, I've seen this ad many times. It says "surprise her with a bigger penis" and has a surprised looking young woman with wide eyes and her hands over her mouth.

I'm mentioning it because I have never seen the word "vagina" in an advertisement. Or anywhere public that wasn't a gynecologist's office or Planned Parenthood.

It's like the really great Bataille lecture that my friend Dan gave to my experiments in text class last quarter. He was talking about expulsion and genitalia, and he gave a list of all the different parts of the male genitalia and then said "and the corresponding parts of the female." It ruined it. I was so engaged, and now, months later, all I can remember is that little glaze over my "corresponding parts."

Or that part in Teeth (movie) where they're having sex ed and the students open their books to the diagram of the female genitals and they're all covered with a giant gold sticker.

Everybody, repeat out loud after me:

VULVA

LABIA

CLITORIS

VAGINA

CERVIX

UTERUS

OVARIES

FALLOPIAN TUBES

Repeat until you could say these words out loud in public.