Love Your bits

Thanks to all those who have either commented or sent me private messages of support.

I agree with the correspondent who asks me to make sure I remind women without dangly bits that they are 'perfectly normal too'.

I'm happy to do this - in fact my concerns about framing this campaign in a way which is positive for all natural sizes and shapes is the reason I took so long to start the blog.

I don't want to put anyone down, quite the opposite. My point is simply this: we're made the way we're meant to be, and the genitals in particular are very highly engineered. You tamper with them at your peril.

To allow plastic surgeons to set the agenda on how our bits should look and feel is like putting Morticia Addams in charge of your flower garden.

Another correspondent has reminded me that men - especially in circumcising countries - may feel they have to apologise before taking their boxers off, if they are intact. In the parts of the world where circumcision is not common (ie most places) men may feel a little uncomfortable if their foreskin seems too long, or even too short, or may be embarrassed that they don't have one at all. The message to these men is, don't ever be ashamed of what you've got. Love your bits!

If any individual finds themselves taking their underwear off for someone ungrateful for the present they're being given, the solution is: throw them out and get someone more sensual and less superficial instead.

When I found myself in bed with a man with the longest foreskin I'd ever seen, I was incredibly excited. I considered it the 'king of foreskins' and told him so. Later I had a man with a shortish one he'd injured so it rolled a bit asymetrically as if squinting. I thought this was adorable too. When I had a circumcised man with an incredibly harsh and botched cut, first of all I found this difficult to be positive about. Then I thought how innocent it was and how brave to overcome what had been done to it. So I named it my war hero...

Let's stop making war on genitals though. Please?

Thanks for supporting, and hope you'll keep reading. In my next two posts I'm going to cover the function of the labia, and the link between labiaplasty and phrenology.

This is a blog about lips and about life. It's about how great our bodies are and how important it is to celebrate them, love them, have fun with them.

I want to persuade you - and I hope most of you won't need much persuading - that the labia minora are as beautiful as the petals of a flower - and even more functional.

As for so called 'normality' - there is no normal flower shape or size: I may be a rhodedendron, you a rose, and your best friend a forget-me-not ... we are all beautiful.

I don't want this site to attract porn bunnies, and my guiding principle is that it should be somewhere you might encourage a young daughter to look, if she needs knowledge or reassurance about sex and sexual bits. So while I am going to encourage people to submit images, I'm asking for tasteful/abstract images. Flowers are good, line drawings might be ok, possibly I might accept an arty shot of you with a bow tied on yours ...or a wedding ring.

The theme is celebrate!

And here are 10 of the reasons why I've chosen to blog about women's bits:

1. Because I measure 5 cm (2 inches) at full stretch but I don't feel abnormal - I feel great

2. Because I rode horses and bikes lots as a child and never found it painful or uncomfortable

3. Because I had glorious sex for 20 years before realising anyone had an issue with labia

4. Because I learned that people have an issue with labia from a TV programme

5. Because after that programme I found myself apologising before taking my knickers off

6. Because no woman should ever apologise before taking her knickers off

7. Because men love looking at and playing with labia, perhaps as much as any other part of your body*

8. Because my mother is lippy and her mother was and probably her grandmother and her grandmother's grandmother too

9. Because having this part as a white family links us to our African ancestors, and current day Khoisan sisters

10. Because less isn't always more - in sex more can be more!

And so more of this tomorrow. While I want to make this blog generally positive I do also want to strike back at those who promote and profit from type IIa female circumcision - aka labiaplasty. I'll be asking you to help me by writing complaint letters to medical regulators about plastic surgeons who peddle myths about female genital cutting (and sometimes male).

Thanks for reading!

*The man I apologised to thought I was mad, said I'd answered his prayers by being so large and showed me the pictures he had on his iphone to prove it!