Why was this a GUY’S idea? I could understand a woman wanting to do this for other women, but a dude coming up with this? And why on Earth would women who are so uncomfortable with their bodies respond to a craigslist ad like this? If I was raped, I wouldn’t tell a strange man on Craigslist that he can film me talking about my vagina and examining it for him.
Just assuming, but I think perhaps women who would be pretty comfortable and open about their bodies would have seen their own vulvas at least once or twice in their life. I suspect you need a very specific hang-up or hindrance to never have once looked at your own body parts. Yeah, vulvas are a bit inconvenient to gaze at from a first-person point of view but so are butts (that said, now I wonder how many people have never once seen their own bum or butthole). Also, the novelty of such a request (“have a look at your own vulva and discuss”) could have been especially striking for women who have had such an issue with their body and sparked the desire to make a change and do something bold.
“she looks like a old bald man”
enough said, made my day.
If I was raped, I wouldn’t tell a strange man on Craigslist that he can film me talking about my vagina and examining it for him.
yeah that does not make sense.
10/10 for saying “vulva” in the headline. Wherever else I’ve seen this, they’ve used the word “vagina”, which it isn’t. The first time I saw it I wondered how on earth, short of visiting Annie Sprinkle, they’d managed to see their own vaginas. (Or, vaginae as spell-check is insisting I write instead.)
You can, and I shit you not, buy an endoscope attachment that fits on your freaking iphone, if you have a pressing desire to look inside your own unmentionables. Because this is the future, and it is fucking mental here.
But you didn’t link it for us. Now I have to google it. Life is hard!
We most certainly do live in some version of the future.
Hold on, i’ll see if I can find it.
Aaaaand, there you go: http://www.accesscameras.co.uk/iphone4-5-inspection-camera
Oops, that one’s out of stock. These folks have it, and I can attest to the fact that they’re ok (BECAUSE I HAVE BOUGHT PHONES* FROM THEM, OK? Phones)
http://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Surveillance_Security/Security_Gadgets/Wi-Fi_Endoscope_Borescope_Inspection_Camera_-_2.4_GHz_720_Pixels_2.0_Megapixel_CMOS_Lens_6_LEDs/
That could make sexting even weirder than it already is. I wonder if you can get tattoos in there?
I think it’s weird when folks dissect women’s behaviors when they have been sexually assaulted. Women don’t have to act any one way. We don’t know the situation surrounding that woman’s assault, how long it’s been, or how it effected her. I think there’s a lot of mythology around how a woman is supposed to act if she has been assaulted. We also don’t know if these women brought friends with them to the filming to feel safe.
I was really struck by the red head’s response. Her relief to find out she looks normal was so palpable. I really felt for her that she had avoided looking at herself because her first boyfriend said she was hideous. I can’t imagine the amount of emotional pain she had gone through thinking something was wrong with her, on top of all the messages women get about their vulvas.
Tina Fey at 1:00
Thank god men don’t have insecurities about their penises!
What? Oh I’m being told some men do. I had no idea.
This was not a guy’s idea; the idea’s at least as old as the 1970’s Danish women’s movement. The book Woman, know your body was famous for recommending women to self-familiarise using a hand mirror.
I guess I must be on the other end of the scale for curiosity of my own body. I insisted on being able to see the video feed when they stuck an endoscope into my bladder (and it was nice to have something else to focus on to ignore what was going on, it wasn’t a nice place to have something shoved in).
Who doesn’t look down there as a teenager?
Apparently fat people, religious people, and people with emotional trauma.
You don’t need an endoscope to look at a vulva. And it’s not “unmentionable”.
