Pussy Portraits

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Because if you find yourself feeling admiration, pride and inspiration for another person, it becomes easier to apply that to yourself, too. I’d be talking to someone whose story I thought was about their wonderful sex life or a health condition, and they’d open up about being raped or an experience in childhood of grooming. I release that this is a really big ask, and so am not expecting any positive responses to this, but if you don't ask, you'll never get. Shortly after, I came across a PDF health leaflet that disrespectfully referred to the vagina as ‘a front hole’.

Lots of women were looking at themselves for the first time or they hadn’t looked at themselves much. When I was 19, I had a Mirena coil fitted and that caused me to get pelvic inflammatory disease, which was excruciatingly painful. I realised that when I had been batting this project away, I had been batting away taking a really intimate look at myself.Porn made me feel like shit in all sorts of ways – I think I wasted 12 years of my life suffering because of what I thought my vagina looked like.

Across the course of a year, Laura took photos of the 100 vulvas for her book Womanhood: The Bare Reality, and spoke to each person about what their vulva means to them. 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. 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. I married in the 1970s and got a divorce on the basis of non-consummation: on our wedding night my husband said he had a headache. Consultant gynecologist Dr Pandelis Athanasias says “there’s no such thing as a normal vagina – they naturally vary in size, shape or colour.I know not everybody’s comfortable and excited to show the world their genitals, but looking at her now, she is pretty. Since then I have come full circle to a place of love and reverence for who I am – and what I am made of. It is a cancer that’s associated with sex, as in most cases you get it from the HPV virus, which is transmitted through sexual contact. I loved that, because interviewing women who have been through the menopause and still have incredible sex lives sends out a beautiful message about womanhood. However, sadly, many of the conversations she had with her participants were tied with a disturbing thread of abuse.