Read My Lips Read Free Page A

than the images here in this book. This is to be expected. After all, there is no one “standard” vulva 5 – 8 —a message that is worth repeating. Let’s try that: There is no one “standard” vulva. This is a powerful message. It means that there is no need to compare the appearance of your genitals to the genitals of any other woman on the planet. Like a thumbprint, they are all a little different. Some women have a small glans clitoris (the part of the clitoris that can be seen from the outside), while other women have a glans clitoris that stretches out for an inch or two or more. Most of us are somewhere in between. The size, color, and shape of the clitoral hood can vary, too. 5 – 8
    Only a handful of researchers have measured women’s genital parts, but those that have done so have found that vulva parts come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (see sidebar). The labia minora (inner vaginal lips) are particularly variable in size. 8 Author, sex educator, and activist Betty Dodson used the name of famous architectural designs (e.g., baroque, classical) to emphasize the different, yet beautiful, variations in women’s inner labia. 9 She, along with other sex educators and artists, has also likened the shape of women’s labia to the appearance of hearts, angel wings, sea shells, or flowers (particularly orchids). Before we get too excited about the labia, though (and believe us, we definitely get going talking about labia in chapter 4), let’s back up and go part by part through the vulva. Even if you think you know all your vulva parts, read on, as you may learn something new. Research scientists are learning new things about vulvas and vaginas all the time. Has there ever been a better time in the history of the world to have, or be curious about, a vulva?
VULVA DIMENSIONS
Several years ago, researchers measured the vulvas of fifty premenopausal women in order to better understand how similar and different we all are from one another. 8 Here are some examples of what they found in terms of female genital diversity.
Let’s start with the clitoris:
     
The length of the glans clitoris ranged from 3 to 35 mm.
The width of the glans clitoris ranged from 3 to 10 mm.
The distance from the clitoris to the urethra was as little as 14 mm and as much as 45 mm.
Women’s labia also varied considerably:
     
The outer labia (labia majora) length ranged from 7 to 12 mm.
Women’s inner labia (labia minora) length ranged from 20 to 100 mm.
The width of the inner labia was as little as 7 and as much as 50 mm.
The size of the perineum ranged in length from 15 to 55 mm. The researchers also noted the color of the genital area and how dark or light it was compared with the color of women’s surrounding skin. Of the fifty women they examined, they found that nine women (18 percent) had genital skin that was the same color of the rest of their surrounding skin and forty-one had genital skin that was darker than the skin around it.
    VULVA INTRODUCTIONS
    The mons pubis (a.k.a. “the mons”) is a term that refers to the triangular area between a woman’s legs and is the genital part that women have most frequently seen on other women, such as while changing in the locker room. Other terms for this area include the mound of Venus and the pubic mound . Most women, if they let nature take its course, will have pubic hair growing on their mons and down the outer edges of their labia majora , which are women’s outer vaginal lips, as well as a little or a lot of pubic hair on the inner thighs. 10 For women who choose to keep some or all of their pubic hair, it can feel sensuous to gently tug on one’s pubic hair during masturbation or sex with a partner.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Debby used to prefer the term “labia minora” to describe a woman’s inner vaginal lips. After all, labia minora was the correct clinical term so it must be better, right? That’s what Debby thought, anyway. Then she met Vanessa and the world as she knew