A Trip to the London Vagina Museum
There has always been something about the vagina that has intrigued me.
Perhaps the symbol of it. The warped history of womanhood that is interlinked with the orifice that lies between each of our thighs. Perhaps the sense of scandal. The ideal of ‘taboo’ that has always laced its poisonous fingers around the female sex. Perhaps I am simply drawn to the ‘morbid’ fascination of it, the type of fascination that compels people to watch elaborate murders on TV, with cartons of popcorn clenched between enraptured, greasy fingers. I can’t look away.
Nevertheless, this intrigue has meant that to complete my three years at University, I found myself planning, along with my best friend Ellie, a trip to the Vagina Museum in London. Considering myself a feminist (although, as Fleabag says, I sometimes worry that I wouldn’t be such a feminist if I had bigger t***!) and Ellie, a constant reprimander of the misogynistic club dancefloor groper (although, she doesn’t need to worry about the t***), our dissertation topics both interlinked with one another, embodying our experience of womanhood so far, as we tentatively dip our toes into the chauvinistic world of our twenties.
This trip to enrich our minds with the intricate inner workings of the clitoris and to purge a level of the feminist rage that had curled itself around our chests from the very moment our parents had told us that a bikini was an inappropriate item to wear around our uncles began with a five-hour-long coach trip – because who said reward came without sacrifice? Sacrificing our sleep was one thing, but instead of being able to wallow in the tranquillity of the National Express, we were interrupted, for the entirety of the journey, by a group of men in the row of seats behind us, discussing to what extent each of their girlfriends could be considered ‘big old heifers’. An ironic beginning to our pilgrimage of the vagina.
Five hours later, and after promptly escaping from the misogynistic words that had tainted the coach air and made us choke on our Tesco meal deals, we arrived—tired and full of condensed rage, but now even more eager to enter a world that centres itself upon unveiling what has been considered ‘taboo’ for centuries.
On entry, greeted by two smiling women surrounded by models of the spread-eagled female form, we were given a brief spoken tour and directed to the toilets, decorated aptly with every kind of vaginal bush imaginable (Ellie pulled out her own for a bathroom mirror picture in solidarity). Our first stop was to the menstruation exhibition— an exploration into the culture of periods; the shame that has polluted girls and women throughout history, was obscured for a moment by the three-foot tampons and sanitary cups that resided in the room’s entrance way.
From the world of antiquity to the Middle Ages, ending with the modernised 21st century, we were led through a maze of informative artistic displays, evoking a sort of horrified realisation that throughout history, the blood that didn’t come as a result of war-relishing men, was considered to be a ‘curse’; displaying the early categorisation of menstruation as just another ‘grotesque’ aspect of womanhood. The same categorisation that makes my mum think that period adverts shouldn’t be aired while my dad is having his tea.
Next, ‘Betsy’s Gallery’, the great wall of vaginas. The women who lay splayed and thumb tacked to the wall peered down at us between great folds of labia, ‘innies’, ‘outies’, shaved, unshaved, some muted by tampons—the telltale white string dangling down four feet above our heads. None of the hundreds of images displayed depicted what would be considered a ‘designer vagina’ we noted, with rolled eyes that embodied our disgust at the ideals of perfection that women have historically and consistently been held to.
Porn has become the polluted catalyst of the ancient fear that girls and women will never be good enough, and that hairless, tucked, pornstar reeking of an inhuman perfection becomes an instrument of control. Control for the opposite sex, control for the companies that are trained to prey on the human suffering interlinked with insecurity, and even for the women who have become brainwashed enough to look down upon those who do not conform to the societal expectations of womanhood. Who look down upon those who go to the beach with pubic hair proudly untamed, folds of labia escaping from the confinement of their swimming costumes and flapping in the breeze.
As we ended our contemplation, we found ourselves engulfed amongst Lucy’s Gallery: ‘Menopause: What’s changed?’ An interactive exhibition where the symptoms that intertwine themselves with an unravelling womb could be ticked off by placing stones in corresponding jars. Me and Ellie, although having only just passed the cusp of adolescence ourselves, mentally ticked off a surprisingly large amount of symptoms, leading to the hurried Google search: Am I going through Premature Menopause??? Our fears aside, we were thoroughly informed about a topic that has consistently been shrouded in discretion, and both surprised at the amount of information that hadn’t even crossed our minds.
To me, our mums, grandmothers, aunties and the rest of the women of the world, have been enduring a monumental change in silence. Why is there not more coverage on the great metamorphosis of the womb?? Maybe I simply haven’t reached the age where this is made clear to me. Maybe when it happens, there will be a rising whisper amongst the women in my family, and I will be pulled secretly to the side and enveloped in a veiled wisdom that has been woven throughout generations of womanhood.
As we made our way out the doors back to the National Express and hopefully not back to the girlfriend-hating heifer men, I thought of buying my dissertation lecturer a postcard to say thank you for enduring my matriarchy-focused vagina-themed poetry each week (I know he sometimes wondered if he was the right lecturer for me!!) But on second thought, looking at the women in print, proudly spreading their many orifices, I changed my mind and decided to buy one to send to my grandma instead. She told me later that the postman stiffly delivered the card face down on her kitchen table and left without saying goodbye.
I wonder if he needs to take a trip to the Vagina Museum himself.
-Lottie Horn
Volunteer Writer
Girl Museum