Warning: fairly explicit language and very explicit links below

So I’m not sure it ever occurred to me to wonder what Barbie’s vagina might look like, until I was tipped onto the website Tight Vagina by an incensed Owning Pink reader who found their message of Vagina Nazism offensive (i.e., only perfect vaginas should be allowed to live). Now I know exactly what Barbie’s pussy looks like. And you know what? Barbie’s pussy is as boring as Barbie is. Hairless and small – kinda like a little naked mole-rat.

If I just pissed you off, sorry. I didn’t play Barbie as a kid. Even so, I know the cognitive and emotional tension of living in a society that holds Barbie’s inhuman perfection up against the reality of – well, the reality of us. The real us. When you have to live in a normal human body, having a bunch of people comparing you to Barbie is a recipe for self-hatred and unhappiness. I’m still working on the damage the Barbie culture did to me as a child, and sites like Tight Vagina just perpetuate the stupidity we’re subjecting ourselves and our daughters to.

Real Women And Men

Tight Vagina’s theme seems wrapped up in this statement: The essence of womanhood resides in beauty of form, function and size. I beg to differ. The essence of womanhood has nothing to do with form, function and size. I know so many women that exude the essence of womanhood through the love in their eyes and their hearts – and they come in ALL sizes, formed and “de” formed. Some of them are strong on the outside and fragile on the inside, others quite the opposite. All are women to the core. Tight Vagina’s statement is made by someone who does not know women at all.

Tight Vagina also makes a grave error by asserting that men prefer the Barbie pussy. I know for a fact that this isn’t true. Men come in all shapes and sizes too, and it’s not just the size of their dicks that differ – it’s also their attitudes and desires and interests. Just like women, men are stimulated by a wide variety of things visual, sensual and emotional. Tight Vagina does not know men at all, either.

Where Do Your Get Your Ideas Of Beauty?

Now I do “get” that if you haven’t bothered to explore sexuality (yours or anyone else’s) very much, you might not really know much about what you like and what you don’t like when it comes to sexual organs. You might not really know “how you measure up.” I mean, if you’ve never really SEEN very many pussies or penises attached to real people, how would you know how you compare or what you prefer? Well, I don’t believe it’s a competition, but it’s hard to value yourself and any partners you have in a vacuum, isn’t it? It’s for this reason I advocate that you get yourself educated.

Without some experience and exposure, how else would you know that some large labia come packaged with soft skin and pretty smiles – loving touches and gorgeous eyes? How would you know to associate sensuality with small breasts and full hips if you’ve never known a woman (or man!) who had all those qualities wrapped up in their whole selves? Without some exposure, you’ll end up like a lot of people (most of us) getting your opinion from the media.

But I don’t suggest that you get your opinions from the media because the media doesn’t have much tolerance for the reality that you and I live in – real bodies or real lives. The media self-selects from “our reality” to create an idealistic view of humans that very few of we real humans can live up to (even the gorgeous air-brushed ones). So maybe the creator of Tight Vagina just hasn’t bothered to form his or her own opinions based on real people and has taken on the Hollywood Barbie idea of beauty. If that’s the case, then he/she is really missing out on a lot of life experience and doing a lot of women a great disservice. How sad – for them and for us.

The Real Box

How can I get such experience and exposure without becoming a slut? I can just hear some of you asking this… and it’s a meaningful question. Our society doesn’t really give “nice girls” much opportunity to see very many real sexual organs, much less touch them and get intimate with them or the people they’re attached to. If you follow the “traditional” model, you only ever know two sexual organs, yours and the ones your partner has. That’s a terrifically limited data set! Not enough data to create an informed opinion at all. If you play around a bit before marriage you might get to know a few, but if you’re married before you get a chance to check many out, well, then there’s the burden of monogamy sitting on top of your curiosity.

So Tight Vagina lives in a box of very little variation or reality in its idea of beauty, but we live in our own boxes, too, don’t we?

We create our opinions about our own bodies based on typically very little experience, exposure or evidence of what true human beings look like, feel like or act like. It’s no wonder we’re so f#cked up when it comes to body image!

Warning: None of the links below are child or work-safe!

If you’re curious and want to learn more about your own sexuality by getting more exposure to real human bodies, I have a few suggestions, from the safe to the more daring. On the safe side, go ahead and look at Tight Vagina but know that some of these ladies’ labia are surgically improved and not all that natural. But counterbalance this experience with a tour through I’ll Show You Mine a book with pictures of many real women’s vaginas by Wrenna Robertson and Katie Huisman (here’s my book review.)

On the more daring side, go peruse a little amateur porn. There’s some lady-friendly stuff out there (though you will have to pay for that) and you can and should exercise your right to be selective and click out of offensive stuff. Even though most free porn is pretty formulaic some of the amateur stuff is really just real people having sex. Have you ever seen real people (other than yourself) having sex? If you haven’t then maybe you should give it a try to see what you’re missing. You might have to do some digging around to find the real (as opposed to staged) stuff… here I’ll save you the trouble. Here’s a link to real people having sex. Now, don’t get mad at me for putting this link here. You don’t have to click on it – and if you do – be warned, it’s REAL PEOPLE HAVING REAL SEX on a free porn site (which can include a lot of offensive stuff around the margins, and even this video has a pretty forumlaic porn ending, unfortunately).  

You can also read Shameless by Pamela Madsen and follow her blog as she explores what it’s like to explore your sexuality while in a monogamous relationship. Read blogs of people exploring their sexuality (like this one by Kendra Holliday). Sure, you might learn that some people engage in non-monogamous sex (sometimes with their partners, sometimes not), you might find out that gay, bisexual and transsexual people are whole people with real feelings and lives and loves. You’re also likely to find out that a whole lot of those people doing things society thinks are deviant are actually human beings that – other than their sex lives – you would call “normal.”

All in all, the box society puts you in becomes your box, and the good news is that thanks to the Internet, if you want to explore what’s outside it, you can – anonymously and safely – or not. You can choose to stay in the Barbie’s pussy box or venture anywhere you like. Enjoy the choice.