The New 'V' Word?

Good Morning,

I hope you are all well, and again, thanks for reading!

I was rifling through my paper (the Toronto Star, Canada's most read newspaper) this morning to find the Sudoku puzzle, which happened to be in the Living section, when I saw the headline above on the front page of that section. The picture accompanying the story took up most of the space on the page and even went below the fold. The V was red and huge. I don't think it could have been any more conspicuous.

So, for those of you who might not know what the new v word is, it's 'va-jay-jay'. No, I'm not kidding. (It can also be spelled vajayjay apparently.) The orignial V word, VAGINA, the one that people don't like to use in 'polite' conversation, the one that Eve Ensler has worked so hard to make a household word, is apparently being replaced with a comical word.

This, apparently is not news to many people who watch TV. It is to me. I don't watch Oprah and I don't watch Grey's Anatomy. The first time I heard the word was early this spring when I was cottaging and I thought it was a kind of funny word that someone not comfortable with VAGINA had invented for her kids. You know, like pee-pee or tushie or yoo-hoo.

I'm pretty sure that those of you who know me, will know how I feel about this. If you're afraid of saying something, then you're clearly not comfortable with it, and if you're not comfortable with your own body and can't teach your kids to be comfortable with their bodies, then it will be difficult for them to ever be truly comfortable with another person, and people of the opposite sex will always be 'other'. This may seem like a small thing, but this is exactly how we socialize our children into believing that anything having to do with 'their private parts' aka their genitalia is not something that we should discuss. It's not something that we should talk about openly and we certainly shouldn't talk about it with the people we are supposed to be able to go to for anything; the people we should be able to trust most to be honest and helpful. You know; our parents. And if we can't discuss something with our parents, then it must be bad; or wrong, or dirty or whatever.

Having re-iterated stuff that most of my peers should already know, I'm going back to Oprah and Grey's Anatomy. It doesn't really matter where the word originated. Oprah, apparently, uses it quite frequently. So does Grey's Anatomy. A spokesperson for Grey's Anatomy said (when interviewed) that they had been told that they had used the word vagina too many times in one episode and were asked to try to find another word. That same person also pointed out that the word penis had been used several more times in that same episode, but no one had commented on that.

My main complaint with the new V word is that it's comical and childish. It really sounded to me like something a child had said because she or he couldn't pronounce vagina correctly the first time she tried. Kids mess up words all the time when they're learning.

If it's a three year old and you laugh a little but gently correct her the next time, she will eventually start to pronounce the word correctly. However, if it's Oprah Winfrey and she's shouting it out to millions of viewers in North America every day, are we ever going to get our daughters to be comfortable with themselves if they can't even talk about their bodies unless they make it comical or laughable? Oprah clearly has much power over North American women; young and old. She wields a mighty hammer, and if she says something is good, it is. She is a powerful, intelligent woman in a position to sway public opinion. I wonder if she's aware of the effect she's having on decades of effort put forth by women to be treated as equals as opposed to indentured servants responsible for housekeeping, childrearing and sex.

Call me Chicken Little if you like. I don't mind.

The other side to this (for people slightly less reactive than I), is that perhaps the comical word will be a little easier for some women to say. Perhaps asking some women to say vagina is just a little too extreme for their sensibilities, but they may be able to manage va-jay-jay. In this case, at least they are using some form of the word that other women would understand, and those of us who are not extremists, may understand that this is as far as those women can go. It would be a step in the right direction I suppose. A small step, but at least a step.

That's my rant for today folks, thanks for coming out!!

Drive safe peeps,