Extending down from the mons veneris are two long folds of skin, the labia majora, or major lips. The outer sides of the labia are covered with pubic hair, while the inner sides have no follicles but are well supplied with oil and sweat glands. Beneath the skin of the labia majora is a crisscross of connective tissue and fat. The fat of the labia, like that of the breasts and hips—but unlike that of the mons veneris—is sensitive to estrogen, the hormone of sexual maturity. Thus the labia swell when adolescence sends a surge of estrogen through the body and retreat when the hormone subsides at menopause. Under the fat is erectile tissue, which is a spongy mesh that engorges with blood during sexual arousal. Because the labia absorb blood so readily, they also become incessantly engorged during pregnancy, when the volume of circulating blood doubles (at the same time, they can turn a coppery maroon color like the punkiest vampire shade of lipstick on the market).
The erotic and mythic taxonomy of our genitals continues. Inside the labia majora are the nymphae, named for the Greek maidens of the fountain, whose libidos were reputedly so robust that they gave birth to the concept of nymphomania.* The more pedestrian name for nymphae is labia minora, or little lips, the exquisite inner origami of flesh that enfolds the vagina and nearby urethral opening. The inner labia have no hair, but the sebaceous, or oil, glands within them can be felt through the thin skin as tiny bumps, like a subcutaneous scattering of grain. The nymphae are among the most variable part of female genitals, differing considerably in size from woman to woman and even between one labium and its partner. Like the labia majora, the labia minora swell with blood during sexual excitement, and to an even more emphatic extent, doubling or trebling their dimensions at peak arousal. Some of our primate relatives have very exaggerated labia minora, which they drag along the ground to dispense pheromones that advertise their ovulatory status. In the spring of 1996, scientists discovered a new species of marmoset in Brazil, whose most outstanding trait is the female's inner labia. Each flap of skin hangs down visibly, fusing at the bottom into a sort of genital garland.
The marmoset's labia sound remarkably like the notorious Hottentot Apron, the absurdly pronounced inner labia that naturalists from Carolus Linnaeus on insisted were a defining feature (or deformity) of the women of South Africa. The best-known Hottentot woman was the so-called Hottentot Venus, who was taken to England and France in the nineteenth century and given the name Sarah Bartmann. In Europe she was paraded in front of curious spectators as a kind of circus animal—though a clothed one—and later she was made to strip naked in front of teams of zoologists and physiologists. After her death, her genitals were dissected and preserved in a jar of formalin. Georges Cuvier, the French anatomist who performed the autopsy, declared in his memoirs that his investigations "left no doubt about the nature of her apron." But as the historian Londa Schiebinger comments in Nature's Body, the prurient obsession that Western men of science had with Hottentot genitals had less to do with the reality of hypertrophied labia (never proved and rightfully doubted) than with the desire to place African women in a phylogenetic category closer to orangutan than to human.
Whatever the size of the labia, inner and outer, they sweat. The entire vulval area sweats, with the same insistence as the armpits. If you've ever worked out in a bodysuit, you've probably noticed after a good sweaty session that you have three fetching triangles staining your clothes, one under each arm and a third at the crotch. You probably have felt embarrassed and exposed, the Hottentot Venus in Lycra, or maybe you're worried that others will think you've peed in your pants. Don't be ashamed; be grateful. You need to wick away all that internal body heat if you're going to stay in the running, and frankly, a woman's armpits aren't as efficient as a man's at sweating. Be glad that the female crotch at least is more so.
The vulval area also secretes sebum, a blend of oils, waxes, fats, cholesterol, and cellular debris. The sebum serves as waterproofing, helping to repel with the efficiency of a duck's back the urine, menstrual blood, and pathogenic bacteria that might otherwise settle into the crevices of the mons veneris. The sebum gives the pelvis a sleek and slippery feel, as though everything, including the pubic hairs, had been dipped in a melted candle. Stationed at the outskirts of the genital habitat, the sebum acts as the first line of defense, the Great Wall of Vagina, to thwart disease organisms that seek to colonize the rich world within.
In my career as a science writer, I've encountered all sorts of noble zealots and missionaries, biologists who perform an important if queer sort of spin control. They sing the beauties of nature's rejected and despised. They speak with Demosthenean eloquence and a mother's love of spiders, flies, scorpions, roaches, vipers, sharks, bats, worms, rats. In each case, they are determined to reform the public image of their pet leper and to make us salute what before we might happily have squashed.
None has quite the task of Sharon Hillier, a gynecologist at Magee-Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh. She is out to buff the image of the vagina. I found her while looking for somebody who could tell me why the vagina has the odor it does. I was thinking human pheromones; I was thinking oil of musk and essence of civet—small, silly, trendy things that lock us into the Darwino-sphere and glib theories of mate attraction. Then I saw in a conference program the title of a talk she was giving: "The Ecosystem of the Healthy Vagina." I knew I'd found a woman who thought about the big picture, in an area most of us would rather not think about at all.
Hillier knows that people generally think of the vagina as dirty, in every sense of the term. The word vagina sounds both dirtier and more clinical than its counterpart, penis, while a curse like cunt has a much more violent sting to it than prick or dick, either of which would sound at home on primetime television. As we've seen, American doctors jestingly compare the vagina to the anus. "In Nairobi, the word for vaginal discharges translates as dirt, "Hillier told me. "Almost all of the women there try to dry the vagina, because a moist, well-lubricated vagina is thought to be disgusting.
"But really, anywhere you go, the story is the same," she said. "Women are taught that their vaginas are dirty. In fact, a normal healthy vagina is the cleanest space in the body. It's much cleaner than the mouth, and much, much cleaner than the rectum." She sighed. "The negative training starts early. My five-year-old daughter came home from school the other day and said, 'Mommy, the vagina is full of germs.'" Part of the brainwashing involves a lot of big fish stories. The vagina is said to have a fishy odor, a source of great merriment to male comedians. "You've heard the jokes," Hillier said. "My favorite is the one about the blind man who passes by the fish store and says, 'Good morning, ladies.'" Ha-ha. I complained once to a male friend about a line in a movie when a gay male character, in the middle of a discussion about fellatio, turned to a woman and said, "Sorry, hon, I don't eat fish." Fish! I cried. It's not fishy! My friend replied, "Well, you've got to admit it's closer to tuna than to, say, roast beef." Yes, all analogies to meat must be reserved for a different sort of organ. In any event, men may well think of a vagina as smelling fishy, for as it happens, sperm is one of the ingredients that can make a good thing go bad.
The crux of the vaginal ecosystem, said Hillier, is symbiosis, a mutually advantageous and ongoing barter between macro-environment and microorganism. Yes, the vagina is full of germs, in the sense of bacteria; it swims with life forms, and you hope it stays that way. But there are germs and germs. When conditions are healthy, the germs, or rather bacteria, in the vagina do a body good. They are lactobacilli, the same bacteria found in yogurt. "A healthy vagina is as clean and pure as a carton of yogurt," said Hillier. (Why do I suspect that we're not likely to see Dannon picking up on this slogan anytime soon?) And so the smell: "A normal vagina should have a slightly sweet, slightly pungent odor. It should have the lactic acid smell of yogurt." The contract is simple. We provide lactobacilli with food and shelter—the comfort of the vaginal walls, the moisture, the proteins, the sugars of our tissue. They maintain a stable population and keep competing bacteri
a out. Merely by living and metabolizing, they generate lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are disinfectants that prevent colonization by less benign microbes. The robust vagina is an acidic vagina, with a pH of 3.8 to 4.5. That's somewhat more acidic than black coffee (with a pH of 5) but less piquant than a lemon (pH 2). In fact, the idea of pairing wine and women isn't a bad one, as the acidity of the vagina in health is just about that of a glass of red wine. This is the vagina that sings; this is the vagina with bouquet, with legs.
Nor is ordinary vaginal discharge anything to be mortified about. It is made up of the same things found in blood serum, the clear, thin, sticky liquid that remains behind when the solid components of blood, like clotting factors, are separated away. Vaginal discharge consists of water, albumin—the most abundant protein in the body—a few stray white blood cells, and mucin, the oily substance that gives the vagina and cervix their slippery sheen. Discharge is not dirt, certainly, and it is not a toxic waste product of the body in the sense of urine and feces. No, no, no. It is the same substance as what's inside the vagina, neither better nor worse, pulled down because we're bipedal and gravity exists, and because on occasion the cup runneth over. It is the lubricant beneath the illusion of carapace, reminding us that physiologically we are all aquatic organisms.
But, gals, there's no denying it: sometimes we stink, and we know it. Not like strawberry yogurt or a good Cabernet but like, alas, albacore. Or even skunk. How does this happen? If you haven't bathed for a week, I'll let you figure it out for yourself. But sometimes it's not a question of hygiene; it's a medical issue, a condition called bacterial vaginosis. For a number of reasons, the balance of flora within the vagina is upset, and the lactobacilli start to founder. In their stead, other organisms proliferate, particularly anaerobic bacteria, which thrive in the absence of oxygen. These microbes secrete a host of compounds, each fouler than the last. Here is where the unflattering comparison to seafood comes in. Distressingly, the microbes make trimethylamine, which is the same substance that gives day-old fish its fishy odor. They make putrescine, a compound found in putrifying meat. They make cadaverine, and I need not tell you from whence that chemical was named. The amount and combination of these rank byproducts depends on the severity of the vaginosis.
In other words, if you're having a problem with unspeakable "feminine odor," that syndrome so coyly referred to in all the ads for douches and feminine deodorants, you could have an infection, often a low-grade, chronic one, with no symptoms beyond the odiferous. Some of the causes of such infections are known. Among the biggest is ... douching. In an effort to get fresh 'n' clean and to look like the dewy, virginal women pictured on the packages of Massengill, women can make themselves dirtier than ever. Douching kills off the beneficial lactobacilli and paves the way for infestation by anaerobes and their trails of cadaverine. So while I rarely dispense medical advice, this one is easy: don't douche, ever, period, end of squirt bottle.
Vaginosis can also arise in the wake of other infections, such as pelvic inflammatory disease. Moreover, some women are born with an unfortunate predisposition toward imbalances of vaginal flora, just as some women are susceptible to acne. Even the generally desirable lactobacilli differ in their potency, with certain strains more able than others to generate hydrogen peroxide and thus more efficiently fend off contending microorganisms. Some women have "lucky lactos," said Hillier, and some have so-so lactobacilli. The so-sos are more susceptible to vaginosis, as well as to infection with yeast, another type of microbe that thrives in highly anaerobic conditions.
To rectify any imbalance, you can try eating a lot of yogurt to derive the benefit of lactobacilli in yogurt culture, but very few ingested bacteria are likely to find their way to your genitalia, and any postprandial improvements in the pelvic ecosystem will probably be transitory. Chronic cases of vaginosis can be treated with antibiotics, the course of action usually suggested for pregnant women, in whom the infection raises the risk of a premature delivery. Better than antibiotics, which are indiscriminate when taken systemically, will be a type of suppository now under development, which can provide the lucky lactos exactly where they are needed.
Another cause of vaginosis is sleeping around with men who don't use condoms. Even a single shot of semen will temporarily disturb the ecosystem of the vagina. Sperm can't swim in the biting climate of a healthy vagina, so they're buffered in a solution of acid's biochemical yang, alkaline. Semen is highly alkaline, with a pH of 8. It is more alkaline than any other body fluid, including blood, sweat, spit, and tears. For several hours after intercourse, the overall pH of the vagina rises, momentarily giving unsavory bacteria the edge. Usually the change is fleeting and the woman's body has no trouble readjusting the pH thermostat back to status quo. The restoration is particularly easy when the sperm looks familiar—that is, when it belongs to the woman's regular partner. But in a woman who is exposed to the semen of multiple partners, the homeostatic mechanism sometimes falters, for reasons that remain unclear and probably have to do with an immunological reaction to all that strange sperm.
Thus, even though a woman with catholic tastes in sex may be exposed to no more semen overall than a woman who sleeps regularly with a husband, her vagina is at greater risk of becoming chronically alkaline. She loses her wine-and-yogurt tartness. So maybe it was not mere misogyny that prompted the authors of the Kama Sutra to describe licentious women as smelling like fish.
Are you a masochist? Do you like to look for patterns in life, morals to the story? You can think of this as another case of divine justice. If you sleep around a lot, your vagina becomes more alkaline. It becomes fishy, yes, but worse than that, an alkaline vagina is less able to defend itself against pathogens, including agents of venereal disease. Women with bacterial vaginosis are more susceptible to gonorrhea, syphilis, and AIDS. At the same time, if you sleep around a lot, you'll be exposed to a greater load of such venereal microbes. In sum, just when you need an acidic vagina the most, yours is turning alkaline. Is this not an argument for monogamy, or abstinence? Doesn't this suggest that Somebody is watching, keeping track of the notches on your lipstick case?
To me, the association is not fraught with moral or ironic underpinnings, but rather merely confirms what is ancient, prehominid news. Sex is dangerous. It always has been, for every species that engages in it. Courting and copulating animals are exposed animals, subject to greater risk of predation than animals who are chastely asleep in their burrow; not only do mating animals usually perform their rituals out in the open, but their attention is so focused on the particulars of fornication that they fail to notice the glint of a gaping jaw or the flap of a raptor's wings. Pregnancy, disease, threat of death by stoning—yes, sex has always been chancy. Momentum is chancy, and sex is nothing if not momentous. Let us not forget that. Let us not be so intimidated by overwork or familiarity or trimethylamines that we forget the exquisite momentum of sexual hunger.
The vagina is both path and journey, tunnel and traveler. Seeing beyond it requires invasion, which is why most women have only the vaguest sense of what their interior design is like, the appearance of the long-exalted, often-overrated womb and its tributaries. Again O'Keeffe has given us a visual translation of the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries, evoking them through the cattle's skull and horns stripped bare on the desert floor, again a reverie of life-in-death. I think instead of water and coral reefs, where the rosy fingers of sea pens and feather anemones brush hungrily from side to side, enlivened as though with wills of their own.
4. THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE CLITORIS
AT SOME POINT when I was an infant, a friend of my mother's asked her to babysit for her little girl, whom I'll call Susan. My mother already had an older daughter as well as my newborn self, so she thought she was pretty well versed in the appearance of a female baby's genitals. Thus she was taken aback, while changing Susan's diaper, to see the girl's clitoris protruding from between the rounded mounds
of her labia. It didn't quite look like a penis—my mother had a son and knew what to expect on that score—but it wasn't strictly girlish either. It looked like the tip of a nose or a pinkie, and when my mother wiped it with a cloth, it stiffened slightly, to my mother's embarrassed amusement. My mother didn't care for the look of Susan's prominent, inflatable clitoris. She thought of her own daughters and how much she preferred their genitals, neatly packed and contained as they were, the clitoris subsumed by the chubby vulva and any tactile sensitivity it may have obscured from view.
It is an assumption universally held that men know more or less where they stand relative to other men when it comes to the dimensions of their genitals. As teenagers, they may compare organs directly. As mature adults, they may resort to a variation of their breast-appraisal mechanism, a southward flickering of the eyes while standing at a public urinal or sauntering through the men's locker room, where the rule of thumb seems to be that towels should be draped over the shoulder, not around the waist. (For the record, the average penis is about 4 inches long when flaccid, 5.7 inches when erect. That's a bit bigger than the gorilla's 3-inch erection, but then there's the blue whale, the world's largest mammal, who has, yes, a 10-foot pole.)
Women may think they know the clitoris pretty well. They count it as an old friend. They may even believe there is a goddess out there somewhere named Klitoris, Our Lady of Perpetual Ecstasy. They never bought Freud's idea of penis envy: who would want a shotgun when you can have a semiautomatic? But ask most women how big their clitoris is, or how big the average clitoris is, or whether there are any differences at all from one woman to the next, and they probably won't know where to begin or what units to talk about. Inches, centimeters, millimeters, parking meters? Men worry that penis size matters to women, and women vigorously assure them that it doesn't. But does clitoral size matter to a woman? The girl I called Sue is now about my age. Assuming that she kept her enlarged clitoris—and she may not have, as I'll discuss—is she a superorgasmic adult, stimulated by the slightest rub, mistress of her pleasure no matter how inept her partner? Or does mass again not matter, and is there something else about the clitoris that gives it its kick?
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