Original subtitles

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 + Bolivia