By Tylea Simone
It?s been a long time since I read any of that ?What Men Really Want? or ?How To Get Him To Fall For You? magazine bullshit. If I accidentally glance at a headline in the grocery store checkout line about ?Fall Colors Men Love Best,? I?ll spend the subsequent week wearing nothing but black lipstick and a black bathrobe just to balance things out.
I?m the valedictorian of the ?Do Whatever The Fuck You Want And Someone Will Love You For It? school of thought. Nothing is sexier than being your authentic self, and I have the stories to prove it.
Except . . .
If I?m being totally honest, I still nurse a few insecurities and doubts about my body and what men think of me. (We all do, right?) The deepest buried and most irrational ones are about my cooter, because there are so many questions that science just can?t answer. You can talk to your gynecologist, read Our Bodies Ourselves, spend hours with a mirror in your crotch (or camera phone, btw), and you?ll still be left with so many questions . . .
Does it look okay from that angle? Does it feel okay? What?s it really like in there?
Maybe I worry about these things because I spent my childhood as a feral she-wolf on the parentless island from Where the Wild Things Are, just howling at the moon and looking to ?90s rap videos for life advice. Or maybe we?re bombarded with sexual imagery, pressured to be sexy, but not given much useful information about our actual sex organ.
Either way, Loose-Vagina-Phobia seems to be one of the few neuroses shared by cis women across all ages, races, locations. It was one of the original insults. And now it?s the great equalizer: is my vagina a cavernous black hole bending the time/space continuum??
Nobody really wants to be that girl, the nervous one in your Sex Ed class with the endless string of very specific vagina-related questions. But lucky for you, I?m here to ask all the things. And sometimes, on very rare occasions, I do think it?s helpful to seek out men?s opinions.
So I called up my friend Chris.
Chris, age 37, is a heterosexual man living in Brooklyn, New York. He is a painter of female nudes and is very, very sexually active. However, there are a few things that make him different from your average oversexed douchebag: (1) he doesn?t drink or do drugs, so his memory isn?t full of foggy one-night stands where he essentially masturbated with someone else?s body, (2) he has a pretty progressive view of women?s sexuality and doesn?t get down with any kind of slut-shaming, and (3) word on the street is he?s very good at making the sex. If you must talk to a man about vaginas, I think he?s a pretty reliable source.
(Chris is real and the interview that follows is real, it?s not satire.)
***
In order to establish your credibility as a pussy pundit, can you tell me approximately how many vaginas you?ve seen in real life?
Probably somewhere between 700 and 900 total. [About half are models for his paintings and half are sexual encounters.]
Uh, that?s a two hundred poon margin of error . . .?
Yea, I don?t really keep track. It?s such a task, I don?t really think about it.
Would you consider yourself an expert on vaginas?
No way. I think I have an above average vagina IQ, but I?m not an expert.
Okay, can you tell me about the ugliest vagina you?ve ever seen?
Uhhh. I don?t know, nothing comes to mind.
Chris, this interview isn?t going very well so far. There must have been at least one vagina that made you recoil in disgust and grab your suddenly shriveled peen?
Tylea, what is actually wrong with you?
[Interviewer mumbles incoherently.]
Vaginas all look different but I?ve never seen any ugly or disgusting ones. Some that smelled badly, but none that were ugly.
Why?
Well, I just thought some vaginas were cuter than others. Like shoes.
Not really. I mean, they all look different, but not in a bad way. It?s like hair styles. I might prefer women with long hair, but sometimes you see someone with a short cut and she looks good as hell. They?re just different. It?s more about taste, smell, wetness, and the way it feels.
Perfect transition. Let?s talk about how it feels. Have you had sex with someone whose vagina felt really tight?
Yes.
Okay, and how about vaginas that felt really loose?
Yea.
And you preferred the tight ones, right?
No, not really.
I?m so confused, can you please explain? I always thought that a tight vagina was, like, the ultimate thing for a guy?
Different women have different sized vaginas, just like women have different sized bodies. Some are short or narrow or long or wide and some are in between. Having a small vagina doesn?t mean sex will automatically be good. If she can do things with her vagina, like squeeze at the right moments ? that is great. But a woman can do that even if she has a large vagina, because it?s a muscle.
No not at all. That?s totally false. The vagina is a muscle, right? If it can push out a baby and then go back to being pretty much the same size, it?s not going to get stretched out from some penises.
Okay, actually there?s one exception to that . . . Technically you can tell, but only if it?s a regular partner of yours and she has just come from having sex with someone else. If it?s pretty much right after, you can tell. But if it?s a couple days later or something there?s no way to really know that.
What is the difference between sex with women who?ve had kids and those who haven?t?
There?s not really a difference.
Okay, I definitely don?t believe you. There?s no way that?s true.
It?s a muscle, Tylea [visibly annoyed by the interviewer?s ignorance]. Every woman?s body is different, but there are plenty of women out there you?d never be able to tell had two or three kids just by having sex with her. Of course it?s not going to be the same right after you give birth, but after a little time you can?t really tell the difference. At least from the guy?s perspective, it might feel different to a woman.
[Interviewer is still skeptical, but decides to move on.]
So why are guys always talking about hoes having loose vaginas and good girls ?keeping it tight??
Because they are uninformed and stupid. And they?re not paying attention to how their own size factors into it. If a guy is saying a woman?s vagina is so big, it might be because he has a really small dick. Or an average size vagina can feel small if you are really big.
Is your sex life like Goldilocks and the three bears? Just a lonely guy out there trying to find the vagina that fits juuuust right?
No, absolutely not. There is no such thing as the one right magical vagina. Every woman is different and it?s kind of dope. The best sex is with women who are interesting and educated and fun and confident in themselves.
***
Of course, Chris is just one guy and there are sure to be many others who disagree. Take it all with a grain of salt! However, please take this to heart:
Loose vaginas are not evidence of promiscuity and tight vaginas are not the sexual ideal. Your vagina is unique to you and perfect as-is.
The right person will worship you and your vulva, don?t let fashion magazines (or idiotic men) tell you any different.
This piece originally appeared on the Thundress blog. You can support coochie-friendly underwear by Thundress here.
