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OK, OK.
Bit more wrinkly than I'd have thought.
Do I have to?
It's not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Like maybe like a slug.
Oh. Hmm.
Narrator: I'm Laura Dodsworth and I'm an artist
working on a project about our most intimate body part.
In the past I've attracted controversy with my work
by photographing and writing about penises and breasts,
now I'm ready for the last taboo.
I'm asking 100 women to get naked
and talk about their vaginas
and I'm going to take part too.
I'm photographing their vulvas,
that's the part on the outside
and interviewing them
about how their vaginas have shaped their lives.
It's a part of ourselves that we don't talk about,
understand or even look at.
It's time to see what's really down there
and how it defines us.
Woman: Lady garden.
Woman: Fanny.
Woman: I say pussy.
Woman: Pussy. Woman: Pussy.
Woman: I like the word vagina. Woman: Vagina, vulva.
Woman: Vulva. Woman: Privates.
Woman: Front bottom and possibly fanny.
Woman: Fanny.
Woman: Foo foos, la-las, and minis and things.
Woman: Front door of happiness.
Woman: The rose cupcake.
Woman: Cunt. Woman: Cunt.
- I call it my beautiful cunt.
- The vagina is such a magnificent thing,
it does so many amazing things,
including like giving birth to like a whole new people.
- Growing up, I never looked at my vulva
because there was no need to, I just washed it.
When I did eventually look at it,
I really felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me.
- There's still a lot of shame around the vagina,
I think it starts in school,
boys are taught about wet dreams and erections
and the female equivalent is about periods.
We do bleed as well,
but we also have the equivalent of an erection and a wet dream.
- The penis is this really funny appendage at one end
and very powerful and like dominating
on the other end,
but nobody wants to think about a vulva,
no one wants to think about a vagina, it's like ugh, gross.
When you tell me you're ready, I'll take the photograph.
- Yes, ready. - Ready? OK.
- Yeah.
Narrator: As well as taking photos,
I'm interviewing women about every aspect of their vaginas
from pleasure to pain.
That's alright.
It's different seeing it like that,
but it's fine.
It's mine, it's fine.
Woman: I wear my pubic hair au naturel.
Woman: It's neat and tidy, I keep it reasonably short.
Woman: I'm sporting a full-on Afro right now.
Woman: [laughs] Like bald.
Woman: When you get the back and the sides shaved, you know,
like level three trim.
Woman: I've always liked pubic hair.
Woman: It's there for a reason,
it's there to keep bacteria out.
- Usually I'm bald and I like that.
I have a bald patch in the middle,
because of my operation.
You know, trim around it.
I'm actually thinking about making it blonde one side.
I literally have not done anything
in terms of grooming to my vagina in maybe two years.
Occasionally my boyfriend will help me
when I ask him to with his clippers.
Which involve me like screaming at him
'cause I thought he was going to cut off my clit.
But he did a really great job
and he was very calm whilst he was doing it, he's like,
"I'm just going under here now just so you know,
"just, can you just like
"spread them a little bit further apart."
I'm like, "You're such a good guy,"
but we tended to avoid that little grooming ritual
just because it's too stressful for me. [chuckles]
The clitoris, it's at the top I think,
I feel a bit awkward answering this.
Woman: It's not just the little bit that you see,
it's a huge, great big elaborate creature.
- If we knew more about the clitoris
or talked more about it,
like the fact that it's got
50 times more nerve endings than the penis,
it's a lovely, sensitive,
powerful piece of our anatomy
that is really misunderstood
'cause you don't see visual representations of it.
- It actually is pretty much the same size as a penis.
There's obviously the little bulb, the little button,
but then there are these kind of extended parts
that go into the body
so we don't see it, that's made of erectile tissue
and when aroused,
kind of engorges and grips the vaginal wall.
Woman: There's a fear around the clitoris
because most men don't know where to find it
and if they do, they don't know what to do with it.
- There is a lot of shame still around about vaginas
and the slut stuff.
"She has this messy cunt, it bleeds,
"it isn't nice,
"it must be kept under control
"because also we know somewhere,
"she can have a lot of pleasure
"and we don't want women to have that."
I love to wank
and I always have
and hopefully I always will until my dying day.
Woman: My favourite time for masturbating
is when I'm in the bath.
Woman: I just have to feel completely relaxed
and that's often just after I've changed my bed sheets
so it smells clean...
Woman: I like feeling the water all around my body
and so my clitoris is kind of there for the taking.
Woman: I prefer to masturbate first thing in the morning
when I wake up or the evening before I go to sleep.
Woman: Outside in the woods. The breeze, smell the flowers.
Woman: I like to masturbate in my bed.
Woman: In my bed, in my own space.
Woman: Mid afternoon, sunshine, nice weather.
Woman: Candles on or lights.
Woman: Good ambience.
Woman: Plumps itself up
and is kind of like, "Come and play with me."
Woman: The perfect way to start or finish your day,
sometimes twice a day.
- I think there's a lot of shame attached to self-pleasure,
but actually,
if you don't understand what you like for yourself,
how do you communicate that to a partner?
- I want to be really frank with you
because I really feel like even though
I'm finding this really hard, I'm embarrassed by it
and I'm worried about who's going to see it,
at the same time,
I feel like those feelings are wrong
and that society's understanding
of women and masturbating is wrong.
Woman: The average orgasm for a woman
is like up to 11 to 20 seconds,
men, it's like five or six seconds.
[thunder rumbling]
Woman: When it's on its way,
it's kind of like you can hear the thunder in the distance
and you know it's getting closer so it's not a surprise,
I can feel it building.
Woman: You get this sort of, it's almost like sparking
and electricity like bouncing around.
Woman: All of these neurons and synapses
making so many different connections
and the vulva itself is the hub.
Well, look at the smile as big as my face
just talking about it.
Woman: I'm role-playing things in my head.
Woman: My cunt goes slippery and slidey and juicy.
Suddenly the cells will become on fire
and I feel the run down through the body
and then it always, for me it's the toes,
it's in the toes, it's like this...
[makes explosion sound]
You get this involuntary bucking, you know,
that right before you're going to go
and it's like oh...
Woman: Your whole body is pulsating.
Woman: Everything's clamping...
Woman: A lot of colour and...
- Often I go deaf.
[cross-talking]
Woman: It's almost like an overload.
It's beyond words.
[moaning]
It's just one.
Woman: When you're like wiping yourself
and like you can see like the colours.
Woman: It can be painful...
[cross-talking]
Woman: ..but it doesn't smell disgusting.
Woman: My whole body starts to feel heavy
and exhausted.
Woman: I feel a contracting muscle...
Woman: It feels like a big punch in the stomach.
Woman: Carnage. [laughs]
Woman: Different textures.
Woman: Sometimes it's like a light red like fresh blood
and other times, it's a darker, more congealed blood.
Woman: I was always grateful that I was getting my period,
I was always grateful that it was coming.
Woman: Hate them, absolutely dread them.
Woman: Almost like a feeling of being turned on...
Woman: I don't like the feeling of tampons.
Woman: I'm very happy with my moon cup.
which I now carry with me all the time.
- I think the worst thing about having your period
is the fact that you can smell your period.
And you're just sitting there like,
"Oh, my fucking god, I've just come on my period."
And the person next to me can clearly smell my period,
and then like a dog sniffs you in the crotch...
[dog barks]
..and you're just like...
- I think a tampon's quite painful
'cause I can remember everybody in school saying,
"Oh, oh, it feels like sex."
I'm like, "Well, if that feels like sex,
"I'm never having sex."
- Free bleeding is basically
where you just decide to not wear a tampon
or a sanitary towel or anything to stop the blood.
Having your period is totally normal,
like it's something that's really expected
so why should I have to feel so self-conscious?
- In the Asian community
there is a huge taboo around periods generally.
I remember being on a period and going into the kitchen
and I was told not to
because my period would spoil the food
and I was really confused
because my period's there, the food's there,
don't know how it would spoil it.
I got my period when I was 12 on Christmas Eve.
I got them when I was nine years old.
It was really exciting.
Ran to the top of the step, stairs and shouted,
"I've started."
I think like my knickers were still round my ankles
and I was like, "Mum, Mum, I'm bleeding."
My mother said, "Oh, oh, I'm so sorry dear."
And it was quite a special time in my house.
- I was 13 when I had my first period.
I remember feeling devastated.
It was like well, now there's no hope.
I don't get on with my vagina
at that time of the month, we're not friends.
It gets quiet
and then it gets angry and then it does all the pain.
When I'm in the middle of my cycle,
so I'm assuming when I would be ovulating,
it's quite a different story.
It's much more interested in sex, penetrative sex.
- I tend to find I have kind of two times of the month
when I'm sort of most interested.
One is around about ovulation which, you know,
just biologically makes complete sense
'cause it's when your body's going,
"It's baby time."
But I also have a time
usually a couple of days before I bleed as well
and my hubby's always a bit surprised
'cause he's always a bit like,
"Aren't you about to have your period?"
I'm like, "Yeah, and?" [chuckles]
And even just now and again,
day three of bleeding can be quite arousing.
- Can you lie down in this space?
How do you want my legs?
Just relax them to the side,
just let them flop in a way it feels comfortable.
Looking very yoga'ey, that's all good.
There she is.
God, it is so pretty, isn't it?
My vulva looks and reminds me of a pink cupcake
because it's very pink and plump
and where the labia and clitoris are,
it looks as though someone's piped layers of pink icing.
There's a little mole to the left of my labia
which reminds me of a little chocolate chip
that's just been popped on the top of the cupcake.
The penis is this knife
that is cutting into the layers of the rose velvet.
It's kind of slicing through, cutting up the cake
which means it's sort of almost disintegrating,
it's not in its previous solid form
which I think plays on my wanting to be ruined in a way
and sort of fucked up.
And it ends up just being this messy mixture at the end
which is when I'm at my most kind of shaky, in a good way,
vulnerable state because I'm completely done
and wobbling and I'm just a mess of rose velvet.
- At 26, I met a skinhead who absolutely ruined me.
I had to go home the day after and Google what just happened.
He was the one that first discovered that I could squirt,
I didn't even think sex like that was out there,
I always thought I had really good sex.
A clitoral orgasm is different from a penetrative orgasm
is different from a squirt.
[moaning]
There was no going back from that moment,
then it was always wanting to chase
that kind of sex and the squirt.
- The privilege of being allowed
in or near someone's vagina, it's...
She needs to be vulnerable,
she needs to be accepting of the situation,
but it's so intimate
but it's more intimate than anything else
because you're going inside somebody,
Penetrative sex is... That's an enormous deal,
that's not a small thing.
But we live in a society that doesn't think that way,
we live in a society
that treats women entirely like a cock pocket.
OK, that's that done, thank you very much.
Yeah, if you could get into a really relaxed position there.
Brilliant, OK, cool.
Wow.
It's different to looking in a mirror, isn't it?
It is very different from looking in the mirror.
You can tell it picks up the scars far more easily.
How do you feel about it?
OK, it's not perfect,
doesn't need to be, you know.
I still really like it, it does me,
it does what I need it to do.
I grew up in a pretty rough town,
you know, a lot of violence going on
and a lot of macho culture going on,
so at eight years old,
I came to the realisation
that while I was a boy,
I should have been born a girl.
My penis itself felt like, very much like a foreign body,
it was an alien object that was attached to me for some reason.
My vagina is just as sensitive as the penis before it.
My clitoris is made up of essentially
a section of the head of the penis
and, um yeah, it's awesome, the sex is incredible.
- My generation are realising
that having a vagina or having a penis
doesn't necessarily define your gender
and it's much more about, you know,
how you identify and how you feel
and it's much more personal choice.
Like the label 'virgin' I don't like.
It's just you have had it or you haven't had it.
- I told my mum,
I actually sent her a text, it literally just said,
"So Mum, I've got something to tell you,
"promise not to be mad,
"but I just lost my virginity."
And she took ages to respond and she was like,
"I'm crying and I feel very emotionally overwhelmed,
"but I'm glad that you feel that you trust me enough
"and can be open enough with me to share that experience."
- I was 15, I was with my boyfriend
and it was in his single bed.
He's got like a cartoon duvet.
And it was over within about 30 seconds,
it was a few pumps and done
because it was his first time too
and he was probably super nervous
and then we had sex six more times on that sleepover
'cause I was like, "We've got to get good at this."
- I'm 19, I'm still a virgin.
My friends are quite mixed,
a lot of them still are virgins.
I don't have a wish list,
I don't want to set
my expectations of anything too high
and I just think, if it happens, it happens.
I think the young men I slept with,
or had done anything with,
had basically just an idea
that there was one type of vulva and one sort of uniform look
as to how women look down there
and I think they had a slightly warped idea
of how they're meant to be, like, treated.
Obviously in a lot of sex,
that you see in porn, it's very hard, very intense,
and especially when you're a young teenager
and you're having your first experiences with sex,
some people might not want to
go like hard and fast the first few times,
especially when you're like, "What is this?"
You don't really get taught about the mechanics of sex,
you just get taught about, you know, how a child is made
through sex rather than any sort of care or compassion
or respect for each other.
So I think that yeah, through watching porn like that,
I think a lot of previous partners
didn't really understand
that it was very much a two way street
and the myth of the female orgasm
wasn't even a consideration.
- Porn is an enormous thing,
there's amazing, beautiful,
artistic queer porn that's happening
and then there's stuff which is clearly really abusive
and driving rape culture.
[moaning]
The way in which you supposedly make a woman come in porn
is definitely not,
well maybe some women, but not for me anyway.
- The women have been so degraded
that it completely puts me off.
Black women are pictured as animals
and it's quite degrading in quite a racist way.
Porn is very distorted
and it's reinforcing the idea that your body as a woman
is not enough the way that it is,
that it needs to be changed.
It made me feel like my vulva wasn't normal
in its shape and in the pubic hairs
and how... Like I grew so much,
like it was abnormal for me.
[moaning]
- I find it difficult to feel truly satisfied watching porn
because I don't know the circumstances
and I want to check everyone, particularly the women,
I want to check that she's OK.
I do get off on watching a couple having sex
and then having sex with someone myself at the same time.
There's something quite animalistic
about not making eye contact with each other,
but just watching these two
other essentially animals fucking.
[moaning]
Narrator: I'm photographing 100 women's vulvas,
including my own,
to help us see our bodies in a new way.
When I started this project
I wasn't prepared for the amount of pain and trauma
I'd hear about.
- I was raised in an evangelical Christian household,
I just knew sex before marriage was wrong
and I was taught that
if you want to be free from sin,
you don't even like open the door,
you don't put a toe in.
- In Islam, the vagina isn't really talked about.
There is still that stigma of like dirty vagina
and that women should really keep their legs closed.
- Growing up, I was completely scared of my vagina
when I thought about it which was rare.
It was a hugely scary portal to trouble.
- I went to an Islamic boarding school,
we had to wear the whole abaya,
niqab, like everything, hijab, 24-7.
Can't even have books from the outside world,
there's no phones, no TV, no music.
I was singing a song,
a random song by Beyonce,
a roommate casually came up to me and said,
"You're going to hell for that."
My first kind of big crush
was Ron Weasley from Harry Potter,
guilty as charged.
And I remember having a poster up of him
When I was about 12 and I felt it was so wrong,
I took it down because I felt it was sinful.
I didn't know what I was shutting myself off from,
but that door was firmly shut.
There are some thoughts and some papers
suggesting that a religious upbringing
can have an effect on vulvar health,
particularly the pelvic floor,
and, and like vaginismus
and like the pelvic floor just clenching up,
as kind of like a psychogenic response to that shame.
That it's literally like your muscles go,
"Right, OK then, no thank you very much, not for us."
And sometimes women find that
when they try and strip those barriers down,
the muscles do not get the message
and I think that was definitely the case for me.
My longest relationship was about two years
and we never had penetrative sex.
We tried once or twice but it just wasn't happening.
There was no way and it was also extremely distressing as well,
so I couldn't keep trying
because it was such a horrible experience.
But things are better now.
Err...
Sorry.
Honestly I think I try
not to think about that time very much
because I'm feeling so much more positive now
than I was now that that avenue has opened up to me.
But I really felt like my quality of life was done for,
really done for
and that I wouldn't be loved,
I wouldn't be able to be in a relationship,
and that I wouldn't be able to be accepted.
Yeah, it was dire.
There were moments where
I didn't know what I was going to live for
and whether I wanted to.
- My nickname is The Vagina Woman
because I talk about vagina every single day.
As a sexual health nurse, I talk about vaginas,
it's like I'm talking about cup of tea.
We talk about masturbations,
we talk about oral sex, we talk about anal sex,
we talk about fisting, we talk about...
You name it, every single thing that can go on
in a sexual health clinic, we talk about it.
So the morning I had FGM,
it was like Christmas for me,
imagine being seven years old and having a massive party
and where you know there's a woman coming in
to do your henna,
there's another woman there to do your hair.
It was amazing
and that's the first time I actually got a watch,
so every time I look at the watch,
I do remember those days.
I felt the needle going in,
after that, everything just went quiet.
And she looked at me and said to me,
"Now you are a woman."
Once she left
and the local anaesthetic was coming out of my system,
I was burning and I remember screaming and just crying.
We were very lucky
because we had money to afford local anaesthetic.
There are girls being cut
without any medical assistance at all.
My clitoris was removed and labia minora, labia majora
and they stitched it all the way down
until they left me a little hole
that is no bigger than a matchstick.
Producer: And you would only always have
one little hole to urinate and menstruate through?
Yeah.
I was in hospital because of FGM
from the age of 11 till I was 17 years old.
My period was accumulating inside
and it wasn't coming out.
FGM took away my childhood.
I was never that girl that was playing outside with her friends
or going to go to the cinema with her friends
'cause I was always in hospital.
And it took away my chance to be a mother.
Now I would never know what is it like
to carry your own child.
All of that was taken away
to prove to my future husband that I'm a virgin.
We know there's a lot of excuses of why FGM happens,
but really FGM happens to control a women's sexuality.
They think cutting a woman's clitoris and stitching her up
will stop her sleeping around.
Growing up to hear that,
we didn't even thought about pleasure.
But what was surprising for me
was even though the clitoris has been cut,
the rest of the clitoris is actually inside,
women don't realise that actually the clitoris is inside,
there's, the nerve is all around our vagina.
So we just need to know what works for us.
As a woman who had FGM,
do I have a really nice sex life?
Yes, I do.
Do I have orgasm?
Yes, I do.
I've got clients that enjoy the smell.
They will be like,
"Make sure you've worn your knickers all day."
My cunt's a bit fishy.
I'm going for it, crushed strawberries and cream.
That's what my vagina smells like.
Apparently my vagina smells different
before I'm about to get my period.
Woman: If I have a lot of sugar, a lot of dairy.
Woman: Slight smell of [inaudible].
Woman: That changes the smell of my vagina.
- There's a really big taboo
around the word discharge. People think,
"Oh, that's disgusting",
or, "Oh, I don't get any discharge."
You do, we all do.
Like it's nothing to be embarrassed about.
It changes throughout your life and your cycle
and yes, I have discharge and my vulva looks moist.
I...so I still struggle
with the kind of more corporeal aspects of,
of that kind of thing,
I just feel like it's the same
with the hair and stuff, like vaginas have a smell,
vaginas have hair, it's a thing,
like that's something that I'm still working on.
- I was born in Ireland in 1975,
so when I was growing up
a lot of things around people,
but particularly women, were silenced.
You were just left with this kind of feeling
of shame and misunderstanding.
- My parents are really liberal, open people,
they grew up in Brighton
like in the '60s and '70s, like they're cool people,
they always talked about how sex
was a really important thing between two people,
not that it had to be with one person forever,
but just that the person
you were having sex with had to...
..they had to mean something to you
and you had to have feelings for them.
- So at about like seven, I was very, very switched on,
I knew what I wanted to do, I saved,
I worked to make sure that my life was ordered
and then my world was turned upside down
in a very unpleasant way
because I was raped by someone I really trusted
and that caused a huge amount of chaos and upset
which at that age I really didn't know how to deal with.
And not being able to talk about it
meant no one else could help me deal with it either,
so you were just kind of left with that
not knowing what it is
and not really understanding what's just happened.
So when I was 19 I was on holiday,
and I was raped by the manager of the hotel
that I was staying in.
And then I came back from the holiday
and I just sort of brushed it under the carpet
as a, "OK, well that probably wasn't a very good thing,
"but just didn't think about it."
And then as the years went by
it just...it... I just started to realise
that it was really affecting me in so many ways,
my confidence levels just plummeted.
When somebody's violated you in that way
and just taken from you in that way,
your self-worth is like I'm nothing.
It can make you not want to be alive
and that's how I felt for a long time, just like well,
"If I died it wouldn't make any difference."
I went from being a super confident,
really happy young woman wearing low cut tops,
loved my boobs,
I thought they were the best thing ever
to suddenly hating
anything that was sexual about my body.
In all of the warnings that were given as girls
by our mothers and fathers,
it's almost like you could expect something like this
is going to happen
and because you've been told about it,
it is almost like well, then it is your fault.
If I'd done something differently,
if I'd not drunk,
if I'd not said something or done something
or been in a certain place
would it have turned out differently?
Those questions that go round and round in your head
are the...they're the questions that ruin you.
- You know, what happens at such a young age
becomes such a part of you
that you sort of don't know who you might have been without it.
I just wish I could be normal,
I just wish I knew what it was like
to just be able to enjoy sex
and even just silly things,
like I don't really like watching films or TV programmes
'cause so many of them have sexual assaults in them,
like everyone keeps saying,
"Oh, have you watched 'The Handmaid's Tale'?"
and I'm like I can't, I can't, I can't watch it.
Understanding how that feeling of violation
must be turned around
became something that energised me to learn,
to understand you can't fix it, but you can kind of resolve it.
I'm currently in a relationship and the sex is great,
I feel completely differently about it,
which is...oh, just such a relief,
I just think it's so...
I really was worried that this was me forever,
I was just never going to enjoy sex
and I am at the moment
and I can't begin to describe how fantastic that is,
I feel like I'm normal again and that's really nice.
I promised myself
that I wouldn't let the people who raped me
take my present and my future.
- Like every orgasm is different,
every birth is different.
- I went in at the last minute
'cause I didn't want, you know, too much interference.
Every vulva's is different,
every baby that emerges is different.
- You have to sort of concentrate and focus
and nothing else seems to matter.
- And I just did what I was told.
- And I was just throwing up all the time,
like, the whole birth I was just pooed and threw up
and pooed and threw up.
- You just carry on, don't you?
- The first time was really hard,
and I tore and I had stitches.
- I had a third-degree tear,
I also had ventouse and forceps, so I had quite a lot done.
- I had an episiotomy and forceps
and it was absolutely horrendous.
- The tear went through the muscle tissue around my anus.
- And I feel angry that, that happened.
- It took me probably 15 years
to get over having Caesarean sections.
- When I was sewn up I was sewn up incorrectly,
- I didn't feel like a proper mother.
I couldn't even manage to give birth to my children.
- After he stitched me up
I didn't feel the same as before.
And I've never been able to exactly pee straight down
because my cunt has been made wonky.
I was really sore for a couple of weeks,
but you kind of don't care
because you've got this little snuffly bundle
that's just, you know, really gorgeous.
You know, birthing can be such an amazing thing
within a world that tries its best
to tell us it's the hardest and the worst thing in the world.
- After the horror of childbirth,
breastfeeding was a doddle.
- You breastfeed, it makes your womb contract harder.
- Sucking, you could feel the contraction in your uterus
and of course in your cunt.
- And then you realise that you're gushing down below
and you're like, "Is this OK, is this normal?"
I'd have been really grateful
if I'd known that was going to happen.
- I think when I was first told
that it was really unlikely
that I would ever be able to conceive,
that massively made me question
my entire identity as a woman,
what did womanhood even mean if you couldn't have kids?
We are socialised from a very young age
to believe that we are entitled to a family,
we're entitled to that...
that biological right or capacity to conceive.
You have to find new ways to explore womanhood.
- I'd wanted a child for a long time with my partner
and was told that it wasn't going to be possible
but then it was possible
and got to the stage of seeing the child's heartbeat.
And then I was staying with a friend
and realised I was having a miscarriage,
so I went into the hospital and I went to the toilet to pee
and then the whole miscarriage just came out.
And I remember looking in the loo
and thinking, "That's my baby in the loo,"
so I put my hand down
to pick her up and just held her.
And it was like a massive piece of liver, dark, warm, bloody.
There is a loss there,
but it's taken me to this age of 52
to be able to say it's not the end of the world.
- I'd been bleeding for a few weeks in between periods
and a lot after sex with my boyfriend at the time
and he said, "Is it because my dick's too big?"
So when the doctor said, "You've got cervical cancer,"
it felt like a ton of paving slabs
had just been thrown onto my chest
and I just thought, "I'm 24, like I'm not..."
I haven't even had a smear test yet
and I'm being told that I've got cancer.
I had my cervix removed,
the surrounding kind of tissue area
and the top third of my vagina.
There's a lot of kind of stigma
around having a gynaecological disease,
like somebody at my old job when I was leaving to go
and have the operation said,
"What kind of cancer have you got?"
and I said, "Cervical."
And she said, "Well, how do you get that?"
And like you wouldn't ask the same
if I'd said breast, bowel or brain.
When it's something in between your legs,
there's this assumption
that you've done something wrong as a woman,
there's a lot of judgement and inaccuracy.
It's medically inaccurate that you have to have, you know,
slept with a lot of people to have a gynae problem.
There is this stigma around gynae health,
which means that some women will not be as lucky as I was.
- When I was really little
and I didn't understand about what bodies were
and gender was,
I honestly thought I would grow up to be a boy.
I just thought that's just how it was,
some people changed and I didn't...
maybe I didn't even think that I was going to change,
maybe I thought I already was a boy.
I don't really see myself as male or female,
I understand that my physical body is female,
but myself, excluding the skin sack,
is much more neutral.
I have elements of masculine and feminine,
I think everybody does really,
but I feel that mine are very balanced,
and I sit somewhere sort of very cleanly in the middle
though it fluctuates a fair bit
so, non-binary is a shorthand way of saying that.
The moment that I understood what non-binary meant,
or gender-neutral is the term I was using at the time,
it was honest to God, like, I was flooded with light,
I felt so alive and so connected
and so calm and centred
and it was just like finally, I make sense.
Alright, fine, I've done it, can I turn it off?
Cool.
Off.
Go away.
My vagina is what it is
and there's nothing I can do about that
and I don't think I'd want to,
it takes up a lot of head space.
I'm very aware of it at all times,
never goes away.
- Bring your knees a bit.
Just let your legs relax to the sides,
just get comfortable. Ready?
- Mm-hm. - OK.
That's great. OK, one more. Fantastic.
Oh wow, gorgeous.
That's really lovely.
- I can't wait for menopause,
I want my period to be over with,
I want it gone.
Let the bleeding stop.
I'm just about to have a hot flush,
I'm sorry, guys.
- I never had any of that stuff about,
"Oh, you're going to be a dried up old woman."
I kept getting wet when I was having sex.
I'm 70, I was 70 in May
and I still enjoy sex.
I'm more dry than I used to be, so I use a lubricant.
A little bit of spit, you know, solves that little problem.
- I didn't stop desiring sex,
I didn't stop wanting orgasms,
really your life goes in different waves,
up and down,
you want sex or you don't want sex,
I didn't want sex after I had my kids
but after menopause I then thought to myself,
"Honey, you're on your own, make the most of it," and I did.
Narrator: I wanted to bring the reality of our bodies
and the truth of our experiences into the open.
I've now photographed 100 vulvas up close,
it's been transformative and looking at them altogether,
none of us are the same,
we're not all neat, pink and perfect.
I think a lot of people have this really solid idea
of what a vagina should look like
and if everyone just kind of dropped that
and knew that there were loads of different vaginas
then I think vaginas would be a lot happier.
What if women did a sexual Brexit and took back control
and then said to men,
"You're only allowed near it if you know what you're doing,"
and we set up a kind of driver's licence?
I think it would be useful.
Narrator: This part of ourselves
which we're so conditioned to conceal
actually defines so much of our lives as women
and our most intimate experiences,
pleasurable and painful, shouldn't be treated as taboo,
but as a testament to our strength.
Captioned by Ai-Media ai-media.tv