Saw this on NT thought some Perberts would invest in a copy for their enlightenment.
It is an article from the Vancouver Sun.
The first half is drivel but the second part is interesting.
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Book of vulvas aims to empower, enlighten
Unlike pornography, I’ll Show You Mine portrays real women and their real body parts
From page D5 What you need to know, before we get to the crux of today’s treatise, is that to be a daily newspaper columnist means to be on the mailing list of every publicist, fundraiser, author, entrepreneur and lunatic on the continent who has the next great thing that could set the world on fire, if only he or she could get a little publicity, please.
This week, for instance, among the hundreds of unsolicited emails coming across the transom, were such diverse and wacky subject line teasers as:
Las Vegans Speak Their Mind, NPR CEO Resigns Over Hidden Video, Mars Hidden History, Lola’s New Blog Post, Keyshia Cole Is Calling All Hearts, Chugulu Brings Hit Music, Canning is Cool, Asia Girls Explosion Fashion Show, and Does God Still Speak To People?
I have no idea what they are about either, because I deleted them without reading them, along with dozens more like them, a ritual that I ( and everyone else in the newsroom) undertake several times a day, having long since learned to recognize the emails that matter to the business at hand.
Not to be forgotten is snail mail, of course. Even though there isn’t much of it any more, it too delivers strangeness, like the unsigned hand-written letter that arrived this week from a self-described psychic who says she had a dream after reading my recent column about the psychology of car colours, and that her dream was about someone who owned a white car being murdered in an underground parkade, in a corner against a wall. Didn’t my column mention that I just bought a white car? She thought I might want to be careful in underground parkades. In a corner. Against a wall.
And on it goes, and while much of it is sweet and some of it amuses and a lot of it disturbs, most of it goes directly to the round file.
But sometimes, there are odd little gems to be found among the many lumps of coal.
I’ll Show You Mine arrived wrapped in a plain brown cardboard box, which might have been the first clue.
Inside, all pretty in a pink hardcover, was a book — a photograph album really — featuring nothing but photographs of vulvas.
That’s right, vulvas. Vulvas being external female genitalia. All kinds of vulvas. Young, old, hirsute, shaved, pierced, dyed, freckled, wrinkled, smooth. So many vulvas that the ghost of Georgia O’Keeffe just bought new paints. So many vulvas that penis envy is taking notes. I know what you’re thinking. Who would publish a book of vulvas? Forget that, who would pose for a book of vulvas? Forget that, who would take the photos for a book of vulvas? Forget that, why am I flipping through a book of vulvas?
Wrenna Robertson, a 35-year-old exotic dancer/ university student and founder of Vancouver’s Show Off Books and editor of I’ll Show You Mine, its first publication, says the idea for the book was hatched a year ago when she began hearing more and more women talking about their dissatisfaction with their “ look,” going so far as to consider labiaplasty.
That’s because, she says, “ The tool that most women use to judge themselves is ( Photoshopped) pornography, which is an altered reality.”
So she thought a picture book, of real women and their real body parts, might get a conversation going, and might help women better understand that “ the social messages about female genitalia sent to us by society” have nothing to do with reality.
The 60 photographs — none of which you will find accompanying this column, so you’ll have to take my word for it — and the candid copy the 60 local women have written to accompany their portraits are at once discomfiting and fascinating in their diversity, and they’re lovely, too, in a kind of so-this-is-what-all-the-fuss-isaboutup-close kind of way.
You can’t help but be curious ( you should have heard the buzz in the office) and when you get over the shock ( that’s the social stigma thing), you think, hey, Hugh Hefner’s been snapping prettied-up vulvas for the past 58 years for the singular purpose of getting a rise out of men, and just because he packages them with a Stephen Hawking interview doesn’t legitimize his intent, or help women accept their own physicality.
Robertson wants to make it clear that hers is not a book of erotica, or even art, that it’s not another publication whose purpose is to sexualize women or titillate men. It’s about empowerment and enlightenment, and accepting and celebrating our body parts for what they are, something women aren’t especially good at.
And why not bring vulvas out of hiding, treat them with reverence and respect and awe, and maybe even adore them and name them like men do with their dangling bits?
In a week of discussions around International Women’s Day, we have been bombarded with messages of both hope and despair, reminded that while there have been impressive social gains for women, we still live in a world where young girls are routinely circumcised, where pornography is a multibilliondollar business that skews the universal view of sexuality, where more and more women are undergoing dangerous labiaplasty to achieve physical genital perfection, where boys are encouraged to be open about their “ boys,” but girls are still raised to be ashamed of their private parts.
The title, says Robertson, isn’t just a play on a cute schoolyard dare.
“ I realized that the title is speaking to much more than a photograph. It’s like, look, we’re women, have a look, have a read. I’m proud to show you mine.”
It is an article from the Vancouver Sun.
The first half is drivel but the second part is interesting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Book of vulvas aims to empower, enlighten
Unlike pornography, I’ll Show You Mine portrays real women and their real body parts
From page D5 What you need to know, before we get to the crux of today’s treatise, is that to be a daily newspaper columnist means to be on the mailing list of every publicist, fundraiser, author, entrepreneur and lunatic on the continent who has the next great thing that could set the world on fire, if only he or she could get a little publicity, please.
This week, for instance, among the hundreds of unsolicited emails coming across the transom, were such diverse and wacky subject line teasers as:
Las Vegans Speak Their Mind, NPR CEO Resigns Over Hidden Video, Mars Hidden History, Lola’s New Blog Post, Keyshia Cole Is Calling All Hearts, Chugulu Brings Hit Music, Canning is Cool, Asia Girls Explosion Fashion Show, and Does God Still Speak To People?
I have no idea what they are about either, because I deleted them without reading them, along with dozens more like them, a ritual that I ( and everyone else in the newsroom) undertake several times a day, having long since learned to recognize the emails that matter to the business at hand.
Not to be forgotten is snail mail, of course. Even though there isn’t much of it any more, it too delivers strangeness, like the unsigned hand-written letter that arrived this week from a self-described psychic who says she had a dream after reading my recent column about the psychology of car colours, and that her dream was about someone who owned a white car being murdered in an underground parkade, in a corner against a wall. Didn’t my column mention that I just bought a white car? She thought I might want to be careful in underground parkades. In a corner. Against a wall.
And on it goes, and while much of it is sweet and some of it amuses and a lot of it disturbs, most of it goes directly to the round file.
But sometimes, there are odd little gems to be found among the many lumps of coal.
I’ll Show You Mine arrived wrapped in a plain brown cardboard box, which might have been the first clue.
Inside, all pretty in a pink hardcover, was a book — a photograph album really — featuring nothing but photographs of vulvas.
That’s right, vulvas. Vulvas being external female genitalia. All kinds of vulvas. Young, old, hirsute, shaved, pierced, dyed, freckled, wrinkled, smooth. So many vulvas that the ghost of Georgia O’Keeffe just bought new paints. So many vulvas that penis envy is taking notes. I know what you’re thinking. Who would publish a book of vulvas? Forget that, who would pose for a book of vulvas? Forget that, who would take the photos for a book of vulvas? Forget that, why am I flipping through a book of vulvas?
Wrenna Robertson, a 35-year-old exotic dancer/ university student and founder of Vancouver’s Show Off Books and editor of I’ll Show You Mine, its first publication, says the idea for the book was hatched a year ago when she began hearing more and more women talking about their dissatisfaction with their “ look,” going so far as to consider labiaplasty.
That’s because, she says, “ The tool that most women use to judge themselves is ( Photoshopped) pornography, which is an altered reality.”
So she thought a picture book, of real women and their real body parts, might get a conversation going, and might help women better understand that “ the social messages about female genitalia sent to us by society” have nothing to do with reality.
The 60 photographs — none of which you will find accompanying this column, so you’ll have to take my word for it — and the candid copy the 60 local women have written to accompany their portraits are at once discomfiting and fascinating in their diversity, and they’re lovely, too, in a kind of so-this-is-what-all-the-fuss-isaboutup-close kind of way.
You can’t help but be curious ( you should have heard the buzz in the office) and when you get over the shock ( that’s the social stigma thing), you think, hey, Hugh Hefner’s been snapping prettied-up vulvas for the past 58 years for the singular purpose of getting a rise out of men, and just because he packages them with a Stephen Hawking interview doesn’t legitimize his intent, or help women accept their own physicality.
Robertson wants to make it clear that hers is not a book of erotica, or even art, that it’s not another publication whose purpose is to sexualize women or titillate men. It’s about empowerment and enlightenment, and accepting and celebrating our body parts for what they are, something women aren’t especially good at.
And why not bring vulvas out of hiding, treat them with reverence and respect and awe, and maybe even adore them and name them like men do with their dangling bits?
In a week of discussions around International Women’s Day, we have been bombarded with messages of both hope and despair, reminded that while there have been impressive social gains for women, we still live in a world where young girls are routinely circumcised, where pornography is a multibilliondollar business that skews the universal view of sexuality, where more and more women are undergoing dangerous labiaplasty to achieve physical genital perfection, where boys are encouraged to be open about their “ boys,” but girls are still raised to be ashamed of their private parts.
The title, says Robertson, isn’t just a play on a cute schoolyard dare.
“ I realized that the title is speaking to much more than a photograph. It’s like, look, we’re women, have a look, have a read. I’m proud to show you mine.”
