A View of Where I Came From

"Did you hear about how Liberace tried to kill his mother?  He wanted to go back to where he came from and take his piano with him."

This is one of my Mom's favorite jokes, and truth be told, one of mine.  Not just because it's a good old fashioned corny line, but also because I think it's an excellent example of how we think about where we all have come from.

A vagina.

Why does that word illicit giggles?  Make people uncomfortable?  Generate controversy?


It shouldn't.  Vagina is an anatomical description.  Half of the entire population on earth has a vagina.  It's the portal to life for practically every living being on the planet. Yet that one word, that combination of three consonants and two vowels has the power to bring everyone in a room to either an uneasy silence or a fit of juvenile giggles.

That is when you're allowed to say vagina, which hopefully is more often than in the past.  According to a story that recently ran in the Detroit Free Press, talking openly about the vagina is now in vogue.  Sort of.  Thanks to stage productions like Eve Ensler's, "The Vagina Monologues," and shows that have had an influence on pop culture like "Sex and the City," women and men are becoming more comfortable talking about their anatomy without feeling the need to fall back on cutesy or vulgar euphemisms.  And when we do, sometimes those euphemisms, like "vajayjay," first coined on "Grey's Anatomy," and made popular when Oprah embraced the term, become part of everyday pop culture.

Still, there are limits.  Summer's Eve, the company that sells feminine hygiene products (Look, Mom!  Another euphemism!), recently introduced an ad campaign that says civilization's roots can be traced to the vagina...so use our products to care for it.  Remarkably, it cannot use the word vagina in the ad campaign, because network television stations will not run the ads with the word.  Moreover, the ad campaign ignited a storm of controversy when the ads attempted - clumsily - to be inclusive.  The Richards Group came up with ads that featured (and I'm not making this up) talking vaginas - hand puppets, featuring Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic vaginas.  (Interestingly enough, some bloggers noted, there were no Asian or Native American vaginas depicted.)  The African American puppet was described by one critic, according to a story on the Ad News Now website as "Pam Grier and Lil' Kim all wrapped in to one."  The ad with the Hispanic puppet began with the cry, "Ay-yi-yi!"

Nowhere near as funny as Liberace going back to where he came from with his baby grand, and twice as offensive according to critics and protesters.  The ad campaign, which representatives of the Richards Group said was designed to break down taboos and educate women about their anatomy - was parodied, called racist, and created a backlash before being pulled.  A new ad, one without talking vaginas, and once again without the word vagina appearing or being spoken in the spot but featuring historical figures like Cleopatra, jousting knights, and warriors battling to the death, soon replaced it.

I can't say whether or not the talking vagina ads truly were insensitive, in bad taste, or even racist because I didn't see them.  But I can say there are ads everyday that run on TV - network TV to boot - that do skirt the line of bad taste.  Like this one for a women's shaver that compares shaving pubic hair to topiary designs. I mean, it's even called the "TrimStyle" (euphemism as selling tool, what a concept):

A quick recap: Saying "vagina" in a network TV commercial is bad.  Comparing a vagina to an overgrown bush needing landscaping in a network TV commercial is cool.

The problem doesn't just exist with one female body part or function.  Earlier this summer, a metro Detroit woman was harassed while trying to breastfeed her baby during a bus ride, despite the fact that laws on Michigan books permit a woman to do so.  (Isn't it telling about our discomfort with natural and nurturing bodily functions that legislation has to be passed guaranteeing mothers the right to use their breasts the way nature intended?)  Afrykan Moon, a 32-year-old mother from Taylor, Michigan, was cursed at, threatened with arrest, and humiliated by a SMART bus driver while traveling to Southfield.  After a protest in front of the SMART depot in Troy, a letter writing campaign, and news reports about the incident, the driver was suspended for five days, and the bus service issued an apology (along with two 31-day bus passes) to Ms. Moon. 

The saddest part of this story?

The bus driver was a woman.  What does it say about our society when a woman is uncomfortable with a woman's body? Threatened by its natural functions?

The controversy didn't end there - it sparked a debate over whether breastfeeding in public was "appropriate." Some argued that it's a natural bodily function, and that feeding a baby when done discreetly is healthy - something that should not only be tolerated, but encouraged.  Others said that it was inappropriate, offensive, and that people should not be exposed to such a display.

(The cartoon is from the strip, "Clear Blue Water," by Karen Montague Reyes.)

No one ever asked the obvious question: If a mother is breastfeeding her baby, why are you watching?

Why is this the case?  Why are we so uncomfortable with our bodies?  With the way our bodies function? I know the silliness, squirm factor around anatomically correct terms isn't just limited to women's bodies (just look at any commercial for erectile dysfunction medications - which can be seen on TV during practically any sporting event at any time on both network and cable outlets), but I think it bothers me because I have one - a vagina.  Because I have it - the capability to breastfeed.   Maybe it's because the use of the word vagina by a lawyer can be viewed as a turning point in the rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  Kenneth Thompson, the lawyer for Nafissatou Diallo, is being criticized and his motives examined by outlets like the New Yorker because he dared to use the word vagina in a statement to the press when describing Mr. Strauss-Kahn's alleged attack on Ms. Diallo.  The website Jezebel, an outlet owned by Gawker Media and geared toward a female audience, cannily called Mr. Thompson's statement, his "vagina monologue."

Everybody's saying it.  Everybody's looking at it.  And all that talk and examination of the use of the word vagina is making everyone squirm like the punchline of that Liberace joke my mom and I love.  Here's hoping that everyone now takes a deep breath, gets past the squeamishness, and really starts to look at where we all came from with a bit of maturity and poise.

More later, after we all look at the vagina with adult eyes, and pay some respect to the starting point of all life.