Perhaps I should confess.  Sitting across from each woman – I am in silent prayer.

Please God, let it be that she is totally, utterly, completely consumed.  By something.  Anything.  Okay, maybe not sugar or shopping.  But let it be that this woman in front of me – this intelligent, put together, gorgeous woman finds herself on her knees tonight, crawling, reaching, yearning, aching and tormented by something she cannot outrun.

If you’ve read my book What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend, you know that I don’t stick to clinical words for our girly parts. In fact, you’ll pretty much see it all -- fuzzy lap flounder, fabulous furburger, cooch, twat, pussy -- it’s all in there.

I’ve been criticized for being a gynecologist who doesn’t always use clinical terms.  I’ve been labeled juvenile, anti-feminist, and anatomically incorrect.

Here Kitty, Kitty

“Don't be a pussy” is a sexist statement to my ears, and it’s my generation’s version of today’s school kids calling things that aren’t cool “gay.” I come from a city where calling someone gay is not an automatic insult, plus I’m a writer who thinks common slang is the poetry of human anthropology, so it took this aware smarty pants a painfully long time to hear what these kids were truly saying.

Tell me it isn’t true. Rumor on the street has it that TV networks have banned a tampon company for making an ad that uses the word “vagina.” Um, how exactly are we supposed to talk about tampons without using the word vagina? And what’s wrong with that? Vagina vagina vagina! (Okay, did I just sound like a defiant little kid? Good.)

Apparently, after this infamous tampon ad was banned from three networks, they reshot the ad and replaced “vagina” with “down there.” Even with this change, two networks still wouldn’t run the ad. Which means they made a tampon ad without ever once referencing the female genitalia. I mean…duh, people. That’s like making a beer ad without ever referencing the mouth, lips, or tongue. Vaginas are where tampons GO.