I went to the doctor and, although I was too young [24] for a smear test, she did one anyway. I was sent to the hospital for a colposcopy, which involves a camera going into the vagina. A consultant said, ‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t cancer’. Two weeks later it was confirmed. I felt hot, sweaty, shaky. ‘Cancer’ means dying, that’s what we all think it means. I was just 24, I couldn’t understand how this could be happening. While the big, punchy swears are the same all over the English-speaking world, some of our milder, more idiosyncratic slights will leave the uninitiated scratching their heads. I didn’t grow up with my father but I thought he was incredible. When I was a teenager, I’d go and spend the weekend with him. One night he got into bed with me and started touching me. The next day I confronted him. His reasoning was that he wanted me to realise that I had a beautiful body and that sex was a wonderful thing. I was like, ‘You’re not the right person to be teaching me any of this because you’re my father.’ American Roald Dahl fans might be familiar with this one from reading The Twits – a wonderfully vile tale of a dysfunctional married couple who keep pet monkeys and systematically abuse each other. Curiously, however, the book doesn’t shed much light on what it actually means to be a twit. It’s one of those semi-affectionate insults we might throw at a family member or friend who’s behaving in a less than cerebral manner. Synonyms include: wally, berk, prat, numpty, knob-head, nincompoop and tit. Although Laura admits to being nervous at the beginning. “I hadn’t knelt before a woman with her legs spread before.”

When a British Goldman Sacs employee resigned last year in an open letterand said that some colleagues in London had called their clients “muppets”, Americans at the firm were left wondering what he meant. Brits have borrowed Jim Henson’s name for furry, be-stringed critters and tweaked it to mean someone who’s stupid, gullible and incapable of independent thought. Let’s not mention this to Miss Piggy. Did you know that a scant two percent of the world’s population is redheaded? If you consider the fact that half of that tiny population is male, that means that just one percent of people around the world are true gingers, and that makes a redhead OnlyFans account a rare find indeed. Photographing this intimate area led to some unique and deeply personal stories. “Each one has stayed with me,” she says. “The 46-year-old virgin. The woman who endured FGM. The woman who had her vagina removed because of cancer.” I continued having pain, but I kept being told it was normal. It turned out I have endometriosis, uterine polyps and fibroids, which was a blow on top of a missing ovary. The really big deal was finding out that if I waited too long, I would be unlikely to conceive naturally, if at all.I was afraid of penises my whole life. First I wanted to have one. Then I entered puberty and my breasts grew, and I knew there was no way I was going to be a boy. Then I was hurt by penises. I was molested by my father and I had teenage interactions with boys who put pressure on me. I first met Laura, a photographer from Surrey, in 2015 following her exploration of 100 women’s relationships with their breasts. One summer when I was 13, I went to scout camp, and with that came the routine of communal showering. The camp had a shower building with 2 separate showering rooms, each with 10 shower heads along the walls. For some reason, it was "swimsuits" in one room, naked on the other room. As I mentioned, I showered naked in PE class when I was in 5th grade, so I went to the "naked" room. It was less crowded, with about 4 other guys showering in their birthday suits. His other buddies in his troop started chanting out "FIRE CROTCH" in the shower room, causing some of the kids in the swimsuit showers to come peak over to see what the commotion was. Even though she refers to it as the hardest part of the project, Laura believes including so many of these harrowing experiences adds to the impact of her message – because there is no singular female experience.

When I was starting puberty, I was curious if your pubes matched your hair color. In particular, I was curious if red heads had red pubes, because I had never seen a red head naked at that point. We didn't have a red headed kid in our troop, and the internet was pretty much non-existent at that point. I was left to wonder. Now, her latest work puts vulvas and vaginas in the spotlight thanks to her new book Womanhood: The Bare Reality and forthcoming Channel 4 documentary: 100 Vaginas.This is one of the harsher terms on the list, perhaps because of its literal meaning: lady parts. Still, it’s a less offensive version of the other single syllable word that means the same thing. Brits are want to precede either word with “you daft…” or “you utter…” I’ve used “twat” around Americans and who think it’s got a satisfying ring to it. Could be one to watch over here. To American ears, this might sound like some kind of unadventurous English fish. Alas, it’s merely one of many hundred words we’ve evolved to refer to a somewhat idiotic, oafish individual. My vulva is happy and majestic. It’s heart-shaped and it isn’t one colour, there are different shades of brown. It’s kind of tidy, but it’s also an organised mess. I think there’s something really powerful about having the opportunity to look at yourself in more detail. It gives you a different appreciation for your body. I never wanted to have children until I developed reproductive health problems. When I was 19, I had a Mirena coil fitted and that caused me to get pelvic inflammatory disease, which was excruciatingly painful. I grew a cyst on my right ovary very rapidly. I was in and out of A&E and I had to suspend my studies at uni. In the end I had emergency surgery that resulted in the loss of my right ovary and fallopian tube and they drained five litres of fluid from the cyst.

Popularized by the late, great and hilariously foul-mouthed Big Brother contestant Jade Goody over a decade ago, the term meaning unattractive female is still fair game in Britain. If you’re looking for a way to insult an American woman without her realizing, this is ideal. It is for that reason that discouraged me from buying more of her photos, because of various photosets that will have more or less photos if you tip for a very high amount. She did say she’s open for custom photos, but if she’s comfortable doing them, so maybe cosplays with a little bit of flashing is okay, and so is basic nudity, but for any sexual stuff, I’m not yet sure if she'll do it in the future. Dr Naomi Crouch, chair of the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology, has also noticed a “marked increase in girls and young women seeking labiaplasty” over the last few years.” I have seen, touched, indeed worshipped many vulvas. And yet I have never had the courage to look at my own. I have identified as a lesbian most of my life. I desperately wanted to be a boy as a child. I hated my body, my gender, for many years. Since then I have come full circle to a place of love and reverence for who I am – and what I am made of.The labia minora are usually first, and sometimes more prominent during the early stages. But it can be hard to find accurate information about this.”