now what?
I had sent out the word, albeit clumsily, and after the first few, women were not lining up to participate. While some were initially startled by the subject, pretty much everyone agreed that there should be a book. But that didn’t mean that they were posing. After the Call for Models fiasco, I stood still, and thought about it before doing anything.
What I came up with was: that there’s no good way to ask a woman if you can make a portrait of her vagina. I should stop doing that.
This was a sensitive subject and different for each woman. Asking a woman to pose for a v-portrait came out like a dare. The opposite of my intention with this work, which was to create a comfortable space where we could see ourselves for ourselves. Where we could see, and talk, and think for ourselves. This space didn’t exist yet.
I’d have to create a forum for the conversation first. If this was something women wanted to see, then the v-portraits would follow. I thought back to the conversation with my friend, to the questions it raised for me.
How did we get here?
How could it be that we have so distant a relationship with our vaginas?
I mailed out an essay about the project and why I was doing it, and a vagina first-times questionnaire. I titled it yOur5 first-time stories.
yOur first-time stories
- the first time you met your vagina…
- what your mother first told you about it…
- the first conversations you had with your friends about your vaginas…
- your first period, what your mother told you about it before, and what you experienced once you got it…
- the first time you shared your vagina with someone else…
- also, if you have (or did have) a daughter, what would you tell her about her vagina?
- this conversation makes me think…
My premise here is that how things begin plays a major role in what you believe and expect going forward—until you reconsider it. Telling our stories, getting to hear other women’s stories—taking a look at our personal beginnings would (I hoped), give us the opportunity to reconsider what we hold to be true about our vaginas, our bodies, ourselves and each other. And then, we could start talking about the place of our vaginas in our lives today. And then, if we wanted to make v-portraits, we would.
Responses to the questionnaire came in bit by bit. I was on the right track now. Women wanted to talk. We needed to tell our stories and to hear each other’s.
We needed a website.
It needed to be anonymous and open to everyone, not just mailed out by me to women in my life.
I established vaginaverite.com in September 2000, posted the women’s first-times questionnaire and also, revised the questionnaire to include men and their first-time vagina experiences and posted that as well.
We are, after all, in this together. While this project is for and about women, men are warmly welcomed.
You can read the responses submitted at the website6.
You’ll find that your experiences will be just like, similar to, somewhat different from, or nothing like, part or all of what is included on the website. There are no right answers to the questionnaires.
Our stories matter. They become part of us, and they inform how we view the world, what we expect of others and of ourselves. They don’t define the all of who we are. Other people’s stories don’t define the all of who they are either. And, what you make of your history and preferences, or someone else’s, may change. Understanding happens over time.
As of December 2010, there are 240+ women’s responses and 170+ men’s responses to the first-times questionnaires posted on the site. You can add your responses, too, if you like. The website is an ongoing companion project to the v-portrait book.
