100 VAGINAS

Probably recommended viewing for every man I ever met! Most women already will have watched it I guess and if they haven't and are at all put off by the idea well then they should watch it too! 

Totally fascinating programme from Channel 4 last night and ready for viewing on Catch Up still over the next 29 days. Probably one of the best things I have ever watched on television in my lifetime! There I have said it! Ought to be compulsory viewing IMHO!

Even Big O my favourite music blog site mentioned here in their newsletter this morning (see below)

It shocked and entertained me so that there was laughter (literally LOL funny in places) and made me weep in others [10 women in this country are raped every HOUR!] I have never understood the power wielded by men over the fear of the female sexual organs that creates FGM and infibulation. I have often wondered what planet we are on that condones such violence to our female children 
for that is mostly what they are and the programme is brutally frank about this primitive, archaic and disgraceful disgusting act of let's name it Female Genital Mutilation.  But there are other truths explored here and though maybe not for the squeamish (sic!?) it pulls no punches and nor should it and there is joy to be found here too.

Channel 4 - 100 Vaginas

Laura Dodsworth - Channel 4

A PORTRAIT OF 100 VULVAS 

First it was breasts, then penises - now photographer Laura Dodsworth has taken portraits of 100 vulvas. Nothing is sacred.

"Towards the end of last year, I published an essay about my vulva - in a book, and then in the Guardian. At 25, I'd spent years considering labiaplasty and having sex with the lights off, because of things ignorant boys had said, as well as some of my friends. I felt a deep sense of shame about my body, which over time became crippling." - Liv Little

It's this shame that photographer Laura Dodsworth is aiming to overcome with her latest project, Womanhood. In a book and accompanying film for Channel 4, she tells the stories of 100 women and gender non-conforming people through portraits of their vulvas. It's the third instalment in a series: in Bare Reality and Manhood, Dodsworth photographed and talked to people about their breasts and their penises, respectively (both stories featured in Weekend magazine). The photographer has described the series as an "unexpected triptych"; she didn't know the project would take this direction at the start (and, when it was first suggested to her, she didn't want it to). But the more she thought about photographing women's vulvas, the more necessary she felt it was.

"I'd been considering this idea, but kept pushing it away," she tells me. "And then there were three things I read in a couple of months. One was about female genital mutilation. When I read about women around the world having FGM, I felt sick." She read a news story about girls as young as nine asking UK doctors for labiaplasty. Then there was a description in a health leaflet of the vagina as a "front hole" - language she felt was inaccurate and harmful. Finally, Dodsworth wanted to move on from the penis project, which had seen her hailed as a champion for men: "How am I, a card-carrying feminist, a champion for penises, but not women and vulvas?"

Read the full story here. [please note: this link goes to an article of the Guardian newspaper that contains graphic photographs of the female sexual organs]