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How Well Do You Know Your Vagina

Why do we need to “know our vaginas,” anyway? I’m happy keeping mine at arms length. Yet, I’m told we should be more acquainted. I have to be honest, I think we’re good, me any my hoo-hoo, that is. I’d definitely miss her if she wasn’t around, but we’re not conversing during long walks on the beach, though we do like to take them (so we have that in common — which is nice).

Could you pick your va-jay-jay out of a va-gyne-up?

Recently, in the pediatrician’s office, I was reading a pamphlet on puberty. Please, it’s better reading than an outdated TIME, or a Highlights where all the hidden pictures are already circled (and they always are). Anyhoo, it suggested that ‘tweens (I’m assuming that’s who it was for) should and I quote, “GET TO KNOW YOUR VAGINA.”

If there are any preteens reading this just know, you shouldn’t be — now, go google One Direction and stop reading my columns.

Now that they’re gone…

I began to think about how WE were schooled on puberty. Oh, those awful videos that hadn’t been updated since the 60’s and 70’s, so the people still had combs in their back pockets, bell-bottoms, and afros. I don’t remember the exact details, but I know most were grainy, some slightly resembled School House Rock, and I’m pretty sure one of them convinced me that you could get pregnant from dry humping — if the guy came — which I’m pretty sure no cool guy ever did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly no “dry hump” virgin. Nope, I know more than a thing or two about the friction caused by two pairs of button fly jeans rubbing uncomfortably against each other, on a waterbed, the bucket seats of a Nissan 300ZX, or the ultra-suede of a basement sofa. Look, I’m a Gen X-er, that’s what we had. Also, I was a good girl (who liked to fool around), which means I was forced to be a “dry hump” slut.

For years, I was convinced that sperm, being so powerful and microscopic, could travel through a guys boxers and Z Cavaricci’s and past my Guess jeans and little Bloomies straight into my cervix. This may be a sign that I didn’t know much about sex… but at least I was on trend.

See, we weren’t told to get to know our vaginas. In fact, I’m a bit concerned that at nearly 40 I don’t know my vagina at all. Frankly, I couldn’t pick her out of a line-up. Seriously, could you? I mean, I could probably narrow it down, like they taught you to do in SAT prep, but any vagina with the same grooming, coloring, and general size — could be mine. How sad is that? I don’t even know if my vagina has any defining marks, characteristics, or other traits that make it uniquely my own.

To make matters worse, the pamphlet may have mentioned that each vagina has a distinct personality. WTF is that all about? She has a personality? Maybe we should be conversing more, I haven’t the foggiest idea what she’s all about. Is she saucy, shy, extroverted? I don’t freakin’ know. I mean, I know she’s obstinate, yet easily swayed. That counts, no? She’s highbrow, well groomed, extremely particular, and yet, I like to think she’s adventurous.

Oh, the contradictions.

My vagina is a flippin’ onion, so many layers. How could anyone claim to truly know her? They, you, I… we couldn’t, so stop trying.

Do you hear me people? I’m saying back off — give my vagina some space. (If I had a nickel for every time I used that phrase…)

And you pamphlet writers, who are either men making a ridiculously misguided attempt at feminism or clueless guidance counselors disconnected from modern ‘tween society, could you work on being a bit more creative? Telling teens to get to know their vaginas and expecting them to take it seriously, REALLY? That’s fodder for parodies. In fact, all I could think of, while perusing your literature, was the SNL skit “You and Your Uvula,” which I’m sure dates me even more than the School House Rock reference. If you must tell girls to get to know themselves, at a bare minimum, slap a picture of Justin Bieber on the cover.

http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/13/article-1342181591190-140C03F8000005DC-366763_466x310.jpg

YOU, should get to know your vagina!

Most importantly, after pondering this piece and spending some QT with my vag — you know, dinner and a movie, non fat no foam lattes at Starbucks, a raucous round of kegals, panty shopping… I’ve found vaginas, like their owners, are complex creatures, who deserve the right to be themselves, to roam free, to explore. That’s right, we not only deserve better pamphlets, but free range va-jay-jay’s as well.

Ones, who don’t need to be pigeonholed into one personality trait, but can be all things at once (just like us): Happy, sad, elated, shy, giddy, self conscious, confident, and insane.

Have you never seen a woman simultaneously laugh and cry during an orgasm?

I rest my case.

PS – Take a good hard look at your va-jay today, it would be really embarrassing if she ever got arrested!

Do You Believe in Psychics or Just Plain Irony?

So, I was at a party about 8 months ago where there was a psychic.  She was one of those weird holistic ones.  As opposed to the normal “businessy” type you so often see.  Anyway, she had me pick from a tray of stones and then she asked me for family birthdays.  I was determined not to make any kind of give-away face or gesture and sat there staunch and stiff, talking robotic and trying to appear blank.  Which I’m sure just made it seem like I had to poop.

If I go to a party and get drunk with a bunch of girls, and the host in good fun hires a fortune teller to give her guests a 2 minute reading, I am going to make her work for it.  My stupid gaze is luckily unnoticed because she quickly goes into a weird semi-seizure like trance as she stares at the stars, hoping for one to blink her some kind of Morse code and reveal my true self to her.  She pauses and pauses, shimmies and shakes,  and flutters her eyeballs back into her skull.  Finally, ahhhh the epiphany, “I see… networking.”  “Really?  Networking?   You see networking?  No fame?  No travel?  No windfall? None of that, you see networking?”  “Well I’m sorry that’s what I see, and lots of it.”

Now of course I am racking my brain to think of the networking I do on a daily basis, okay a weekly basis, okay monthly?  I did recommend my cleaning lady to a neighbor recently, but I never called her back with the number.  Does that count?
I don’t even network with my friends.  I check my machine and there are messages from college that I haven’t gotten yet.  They say things like: “There’s gonna be a frat party after we go to the RATT, so come, okay, What-everrr.”

Seriously, anyone who has had the pleasure of awaiting my return call can attest to it.  My machine actually says leave your message and someone in the family will call you back…probably Buddy (the dog) and the truth is he used to call people back in a timely manner, before he went deaf.  Now he has a lot of trouble working the TTY system…cause he’s also arthritic.

Anyway, I continued to prod.
“Will I have a writing career?”
“I don’t know, but if you do it comes from networking.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, networking, and please send the next person, cause you’re taking all my time and thus inhibiting my ability to NETWORK! Oh and here’s my card.”

So, I waited like a vulture for each reading to end, making the person on the block highly uncomfortable.  I know you’re thinking, “I want to party with Jenny.”  I asked around, and people got stuff like, “You’re bored with your day to day routine.” and “I see you were close with your mother growing up.”  She even told one girl she was pregnant. But to me she said those 3 quizzical syllables, net-work-ing. I came home and woke Mark to tell him how dead on she was with her reading for him and the kids, and that she knew Ally was pregnant.  “What do you think networking means?”

He said, “It means you’re an idiot.  Ally is showing.  These “mind readers” take one look at you and than say the most generic things possible… everyone networks.  She probably told 10 people that.”  “Nope, you’re wrong.  I know because I made it my duty to stop enjoying the party, and hamper  others from doing the same by grilling them about their personal readings.”  “All I m saying is, I am so surprised a smart person like you falls for this.  You really think some random woman, from the big city of Pembroke Pines, Florida, who works the party circuit, has the gift of seeing into the future?”

About a month later I and I started my blog and started getting feedback from companies and groups.  I  have found that literally all I do, outside of my mothering and housewife gig, is network.  I’ve joined 107 groups on facebook, 3 women entrepreneur networks, and 237 bloglog communities. I write personal messages to editors, bloggers, mothers, and reviewers.  Then I annoy the crap out of all of them by mass emailing on a daily basis.

About a week ago I looked at Mark and said “Remember that fortune teller?  She said all she saw was networking and look at me.   She was right.  How crazy is that?”  “Jenny, you are not seriously thinking that because you now network she was right?  She could have said that to anyone… maybe it’s simply ironic.  Or maybe it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that you started networking?”  “Are you suggesting that because this woman said that I would network, that I dropped my enjoyable shopping and sleeping habits to spend all my free time getting fat in front of a computer?

Wow that shlub from Pembroke Pines Florida sure has some serious power of persuasion.  Lucky she didn’t say we would get a divorce.  I’d be looking for a good lawyer right about now.  Oh, the irony in Mark calling me naive for believing in such foolishness.  The psychic told me I would come across a disbeliever… see, she was clairvoyant.