So Misguided

I’ll Show You Mine edited by Wrenna Robertson,
photography by Katie Huisman ($40 includes shipping in NA)

I’ll Show You Mine is the first publication of Vancouver-based educational publisher Show Off Books. The book is a series of photographs and personal stories from 60 women. The intention is not pornography or erotica but rather to accurately and objectively display the beautiful diversity of the female genitalia, as said to me by publisher Whelm King in a phone conversation prior to publication.

I admit to feeling weird about browsing a book of vaginas because there aren’t many interactions that women have, aside from porn, to be presented with labia. Puppetry of the Penis gave me the same feeling, but after 5 minutes with the “hamburger” and “windsurfer” I was thinking of Play-Doh rather than sex organs.

With I’ll Show You Mine, the lighting of the photographs brings humanity to the subject matter in a way that is not normally seen in women’s studies textbooks, clinical pamphlets, or adolescent sexual education materials. The women’s anecdotes and short stories are also coming from a place of emotional support for young women (or rather any woman) who is anxious about what “normal” looks like.

I’ll Show You Mine is an educational resource meant to counteract the pervasiveness in North American culture to let pornography set the standard for what female genitalia should look like.

Editor Wrenna Robertson

Read more: Vancouver Sun

Posted by Monique at 01:10 PM. Filed under: Books •

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As founder of the only charity in the world for vulval health I can only feel happy that you have produced this book. The women I support lose their vulvas through cancer and pre-cancer of the vulva.  None of them would choose to lose their vulvas and the world needs to recognise how distressing this is for them.  Far from feeling happy now that they have no clitoris and labia, they grieve in silence and shame at what has happened to them because of the taboo surrounding female genitalia.  Anything we, as women can do to make the vulva an open topic of conversation, to accept it as a healthy part of being a woman, will help the women I support to see themselves differently. Women trimming and primping parts of the vulva that other women would die for to keep is just insane. There is only one designer of the vagina and vulva, and that designer created us all to be unique, the vulva is designed in the womb, the very essence of all creation, why would anyone want to change it - its a gift just the way it is.