Original subtitles

OK. A bit more wrinkly than I thought.

Until I have to.

It's not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Like, maybe like a slug.

Ugh.

I'm Laura Doddsworth and I'm an artist, working on a project about our most intimate body part.

In the past, I've attracted controversy with my work by photographing and writing a book.

I've attracted controversy with my work by photographing and writing about penises and breasts.

Now I'm ready for the last taboo.

I'm asking a hundred women to get naked and talk about their vaginas.

And I'm going to take part two.

I'm photographing their vulvas. That's the part on the outside.

And interviewing them about how their vaginas have shaped their lives.

It's a part of ourselves that we don't talk about, understand or even look at.

It's time to see what's really down there and how it defines us.

Weird garden. Fanny. I say pissy. What's that? Pussy. I like the word.

Vagina. Vulva. Vulva.

Private. Front bottom and possibly fanny. Fanny.

Foo-foos, lalas and minis and things. Front door of happiness.

Rose cupcake. Cunt. Cunt. I call it my beautiful cunt.

The vagina is such a magnificent thing.

It does so many amazing things, including like giving birth to like whole new people.

Growing up, I never looked at my vulva because there was no need to.

I just washed it. When I did eventually look at it, I really felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me.

There's still a lot of shame around the vagina. I think it starts in school.

Boys are taught about wet dreams and erections and the female equivalent is about periods.

We do bleed as well, but we also have the equivalent of an erection and a wet dream.

The penis is this really funny appendage at one end and very powerful and like dominating on the other end.

But nobody wants to think about a vulva. No one wants to think about a vagina. Just like, ugh, gross.

When you tell me you're ready, I'll take the photograph.

Yes, ready. Ready? OK.

As well as taking photos, I'm interviewing women about every aspect of their vaginas, from pleasure to pain.

That's all right. It's different seeing it like that, but it's fine.

It's mine. It's fine.

I wear my pubic hair, oh, naturally. It's neat and tidy. I keep it reasonably short.

I'm sporting a full-on afro right now. Bold.

If we get the back in the side shave, you know, like level three trim.

I've always liked pubic hair.

Is there for a reason? Is there to keep bacteria around?

Usually I'm bold. And I like that I have a bold patch in the middle because of my operation.

You know, trim around it. I'm actually thinking about making blonde one side.

I literally have not done anything in terms of grooming to my vagina in maybe two years.

Occasionally my boyfriend will help me when I ask him to with his clippers,

which involved me like screaming at him because I thought he was going to cut off my clip.

But he did a really great job and he was very calm whilst he was doing it.

He was like, I'm just going under here now, just so you know.

Can you just like spread them a little bit further apart? I'm like, you're such a good guy.

But we tended to avoid that little grooming ritual just because it's too stressful for me.

The clitoris, it's at the top, I think, a little bit awkward. I'm seeing this.

It's not just the little bit that you see. It's a huge, great, big elaborate creature.

If we knew more about the clitoris or talked more about it, like the fact that it's got 50 times more nerve endings than the penis,

it's a lovely, sensitive, powerful piece of our anatomy that is really misunderstood because you don't see visual representations of it.

It actually is pretty much the same size as a penis. There's obviously the little bowl, the little button,

but then there are these kind of extended parts of it that go into the body so we don't see it.

It's made of erectile tissue and when aroused kind of engorges and grips the vaginal wall.

There's a fear around the clitoris because most men don't know where to find it and if they do, they don't know what to do with it.

There is a lot of shame still around about vaginas and the slut stuff. She has this messy cunt.

It bleeds. It isn't nice. It must be kept under control because also we know somewhere she can have a lot of pleasure and we don't want women to have that.

I love to wank and I always have and hopefully I always will until my dying day.

My favourite time for masturbating is when I'm in the bath. I just have to feel completely relaxed and that's like it's often just after I've changed my bed sheet so it just smells clean and I feel in the water all around my body.

So my clitoris is kind of there for the taking.

I prefer to masturbate but I see the morning when we wake up or the evening before I go to sleep.

Inside in the woods, the breeze, smell the flowers.

I like to masturbate in my bed.

In my bed, in my space.

In the afternoon, sunshine, nice weather, candles are on.

All that.

It plumps itself up and it's kind of like come and play with me.

The perfect way to start and finish your day. Sometimes twice a day.

I think there's a lot of shame attached to self-pleasure.

But actually, if you don't understand what you like for yourself, how do you communicate that to a partner?

I want to be really frank with you because I really feel like even though I'm finding this really hard, I'm embarrassed by it and I'm worried about who's going to see it.

At the same time, I feel like those feelings are wrong and that society's understanding of women and masturbating is wrong.

The average orgasm for a woman is like up to 11 to 20 seconds.

I mean, it's like five or six seconds.

When it's on its way, it's kind of like you can hear the thunder in the distance and you know it's getting closer, so it's not a surprise.

I can feel it building.

You get this sort of, it's almost like swacking and electricity like bouncing around.

All of these neurons and synapses making so many different connections and the vulva itself is the hub.

Look at the smile that's playing to my face just talking about it.

I'm role-playing things in my head.

My cunt goes slippery and slidey and juicy.

Suddenly, the cells will become on fire and I feel the run down through the body and then it always, for me, it's the toes.

It's in the toes, it's like this.

You get this involuntary bucking, you know, that right before you're going to go and it's like, oh.

Your whole body is pulsated and everything's kind of being pumped.

A lot of poor and often I go deaf.

It's like being drugged physically.

Intense.

I feel my deafness and all this energy.

It's almost like an overload beyond words.

It's just one.

When you're wiping yourself and you can see the colours.

It can be painful, it can be really bloody painful.

It doesn't smell pleasant, but it doesn't smell disgusting.

My whole body starts to feel heavy and exhausted.

I feel the contracting muscles.

It feels like a big punch in the stomach.

Carnage.

Different textures.

Sometimes it's like a light red, like fresh blood.

I would say it's dark, it's a darker blood.

I was always grateful that I was getting my period, I was always grateful that it was coming.

Absolutely dread them.

I don't like the feeling of tampons.

I was very happy with my moon cup, which I now carry with me all the time.

I think the worst thing about having your period is the fact that you can smell your period.

And you're just sitting there like, oh my fucking God, I can smell my period.

The person next to me can clearly smell my period.

And then like a dog sniffs you in the crotch.

And you're just like...

I think a tampon's quite painful.

I can remember everybody in school saying, oh, oh, it feels like sex.

I'm like, well, if that feels like sex, I'm never having sex.

Free bleeding is basically where you just decide to not wear a tampon or a sanitary towel or anything to stop the blood.

Having your period is totally normal.

Like, it's something that's really expected.

So why should I have to feel so self-conscious?

In the Asian community, there is a huge taboo around periods generally.

I remember being on a period and going into the kitchen.

And I was told not to because my period would spoil the food.

And I was really confused because my period's there, the food's there.

I don't know how it would spoil it.

I got my period when I was 12 on Christmas Eve.

I got them when I was nine years old.

It was really exciting.

Run to the top of the stairs and shouted, I've started.

I think I had my knickers still around my ankles.

I was like, mum, mum, I'm bleeding.

My mother said, oh, oh, I'm so sorry, dear.

It was quite a special time in my house.

I was 13 when I had my first period.

I remember feeling devastated.

It was like, well, now there's no hope.

I don't get on with my vagina at that time of the month.

We're not friends.

It gets quiet, and then it gets angry, and then it does all the pain.

When I'm in the middle of my cycle, so I'm assuming when I would be ovulating,

it's quite a different story.

It's much more interested in sex, penetrative sex.

I tend to find I have kind of two times of the month when I'm sort of most interested.

One is around about ovulation, which, you know, just biologically makes complete sense

because it's when your body's gay. It's baby time.

But I also have a time, usually a couple of days before I bleed as well,

and my hubby's always a bit surprised because he's always a bit like,

aren't you about to have your period? I'm like, yes, and.

And even just now and again, day three bleeding can be quite arousing.

Can you lie down in this space?

How do you want my legs?

Just relax them to the side, just let them flop in a way that feels comfortable.

Looking very yogary. That's all good.

There she is.

God, it is so pretty, isn't it?

My vulva looks and reminds me of a pink cupcake

because it's very pink and plump and where the labia and clitoris are,

it looks as though someone's piped layers of pink icing.

There's a little mole to the left of my labia,

which reminds me of a little chocolate chip

that's just been popped on the top of the cupcake.

The penis is this knife that is cutting in to the layers of the rose velvet.

It's kind of slicing through, cutting up the cake,

which means it's sort of almost disintegrating.

It's not in its previous solid form,

which I think plays on my wanting to be ruined in a way and sort of fucked up,

and it ends up just being this messy mixture at the end,

which is when I'm at my most kind of shaky, in a good way, vulnerable state

because I'm completely done and wobbling and I'm just a mess of rose velvet.

At 26, I met a skinhead who absolutely ruined me.

I had to go home the day after and Google what just happened.

He was the one that first discovered that I could squirt.

I didn't even think sex like that was out there.

I always thought he had really good sex.

A clitoral orgasm is different from a penetrative orgasm,

is different from a squirt.

There was no going back from that moment.

Then it was always wanting to chase that kind of sex and the squirt.

The privilege of being allowed in or near someone's vagina,

she needs to be vulnerable.

She needs to be accepting of the situation,

but it's so intimate that it's more intimate than anything else

because you're going inside somebody that's penetrative sex.

That's an enormous deal.

That's not a small thing.

But we live in a society that doesn't think that way.

We live in a society that treats women entirely like a cock pocket.

OK, that's that done. Thank you very much.

If you just get to a really relaxed position there.

Brilliant, OK, come on.

Wow.

It's difference-looking in a mirror, isn't it?

It is very different from looking in a mirror.

It's telling you to pick up the scars far more easily.

How do you feel about it?

OK, it's not perfect.

It doesn't need to be, you know?

I still really like it.

It does me. It does what I need it to do.

I grew up in a pretty rough town.

You know, a lot of violence going on and a lot of macho culture going on.

So, at eight years old, I came to the realisation that,

while I was a boy, I should have been born a girl.

My penis itself felt very much like a foreign body.

It was an alien object that was attached to me.

That was attached to me for some reason.

My vagina is just as sensitive as the penis before it.

My clitoris is made up of essentially a section of the head of the penis.

And, yeah, it's awesome.

The sex is incredible.

My generation are realising that having a vagina or having a penis

doesn't necessarily define your gender.

It's much more about, you know, how you identify

and how you feel. It's a much more personal choice.

Like, the label Virgin, I don't like.

It's just, you have had it or you haven't had it.

I told my mum. I actually sent her a text.

It literally just said,

So, Mum, I've got something to tell you.

I promise not to be mad, but I just lost my virginity.

And she took ages to respond.

And she was like, I'm crying and I feel very emotionally overwhelmed,

but I'm glad that you feel that you trust me enough

and can be open enough with me to share that experience.

I was 15. I was with my boyfriend and it was in his single bed.

It was like a cartoon duvet.

And it was over within about 30 seconds.

It was a few pumps and done because it was his first time too

and he was probably super nervous.

And then we had sex six more times on that sleepover

because I was like, we've got to get good at this.

I'm 19. I'm still the Virgin.

My friends are quite mixed. A lot of them still are Virgins.

I don't have a wish list.

I don't want to set my expectations of anything too high.

And I just think if it happens, it happens.

I think the young men I slept with or had done anything with

had basically just an idea that there was one type of vulva

and one sort of uniform look as to how women look down there.

And I think they had a slightly warped idea

of how they're meant to be treated.

Obviously, in a lot of sex that you see in porn,

it's very hard, very intense.

And especially when you're a young teenager

and you're having your first experiences with sex,

some people might not want to go hard and fast the first few times,

especially when you're like, what is this?

You don't really get to talk about the mechanics of sex.

You just get to talk about how a child is made through sex

rather than any sort of care or compassion

or respect for each other.

So I think that through watching porn like that,

I think a lot of previous partners didn't really understand

that it was very much a two-way street

and the myth of the female orgasm wasn't even a consideration.

Porn is an enormous thing.

There's really amazing, beautiful, artistic queer porn that's happening

and then there's stuff which is clearly really abusive

and driving rape culture.

The way in which you supposedly make a woman come in porn

is definitely not... well, maybe some women, but not for me anyway.

The women have been so degraded that it completely puts me off.

Black women are depicted as animals

and it's quite degrading in quite a racist way.

Porn is very distorted and it's reinforcing the idea

that your body as a woman is not enough the way that it is,

that it needs to be changed.

It made me feel like my vulva wasn't normal in a shape

and in the pubic hairs and how I grew so much.

It was abnormal for me.

I find it difficult to feel truly satisfied watching porn

because I don't know the circumstances

and I want to check everyone, particularly the women.

I want to check that she's OK.

I do get off on watching a couple having sex

and then having sex with someone myself at the same time.

There's something quite animalistic about

not making eye contact with each other

but just watching these two other essentially animals fucking.

I'm photographing 100 women's vulvas, including my own,

to help us see our bodies in a new way.

But when I started this project,

I wasn't prepared for the amount of pain and trauma I'd hear about.

I was raised in an evangelical Christian household

and I was a woman.

I was raised in an evangelical Christian household.

I just knew sex before marriage was wrong

and I was taught that if you want to be free from sin,

you don't even open the door, you don't put a toe in.

In Islam, the vagina isn't really talked about.

There is still that stigma of dirty vagina

and that women should really keep their legs closed.

Growing up, I was completely scared of my vagina

when I thought about it, which was rare.

It was a hugely scary portal to trouble.

I went to Islamic border school.

We had to wear the whole abaya, niqab, everything, hijab, 24-7.

You can't even have books from the outside world,

no phones, no TV, no music.

I was singing a song, a random song by Brionte,

a roommate casually came up to me and said,

you're going to hell for that.

My first kind of big crush was Ron Weasley from Harry Potter,

guilty as charged,

and I remember having a poster up of him when I was about 12

and I felt it was so wrong I took it down

because I felt it was sinful.

I didn't know what I was shutting myself off from,

but that door was firmly shut.

There are some thoughts and some papers suggesting that

and a religious upbringing can have an effect on vocal health,

particularly the pelvic floor and like vaginismus

and like the pelvic floor just clenching up

as kind of like a psychogenic response to that shame

that it's literally like your muscles go,

right, okay, then, no, thank you very much, not for us.

And sometimes women find that when they try

and strip those barriers down,

the muscles do not get the message

and I think that was definitely the case for me.

My longest relationship was about two years

and we never had a bunch of sex.

We tried once or twice, but it just wasn't happening.

There was no way and it was also extremely distressing as well,

so I couldn't keep trying because it was such a horrible experience,

you know, yeah, but things are better now.

Sorry.

Honestly, I think I try not to think about that time very much

because I'm feeling so much more positive now than I was

now that that avenue has opened up to me,

but I really felt like my quality of life was done for, really done for

and that I wouldn't be loved, I wouldn't be able to be in a relationship

and that I wouldn't be able to be accepted.

Yeah, it was dire.

There were moments where I didn't know what I was going to live for

and whether I wanted to.

My nickname is a vagina woman

because I talk about vagina every single day.

As a sexual health nurse, I talk about vaginas

it's like I'm talking about cup of tea.

We talk about masturbation, we talk about oral sex,

we talk about anal sex, we talk about fisting, we talk about,

you name it, every single thing that can go on in a sexual health clinic,

we talk about it.

So the morning I heard FGM, it was like Christmas for me.

Imagine being seven years old and having a massive party

and where there's a woman coming in to do your henna,

there's another woman there to do your hair.

It was amazing and that's the first time I actually got a watch.

So every time I look at the watch, I do remember those days.

I feel the needle going in.

After that, everything just went quiet.

She looked at me, I said to me, now you are a woman.

Once she left and the local anaesthetic was coming out of my system,

I was burning and I remember screaming and just crying.

We were very lucky because we had money to afford local anaesthetics.

There are girls being cut without any medical assistance at all.

My clitoris was removed and labia minora, labia majora

and they stitched it all the way down until they left me a little hole

that is no bigger than a matchstick.

And you would only always have one little hole to urinate and menstruate through?

Yeah.

I was in hospital because of FGM from the age of 11 till I was 17 years old.

My period was accumulating inside and it wasn't coming out.

FGM took away my childhood.

I was never that girl that was playing outside with her friends

or going to go to the cinema with her friends because I was always in hospital.

And it took away my chance to be a mother.

Now I would never know what is it like to carry your own child.

All of that was taken away to prove to my future husband that I'm a virgin.

We know there's a lot of excuses of why FGM happens,

but really FGM happens to control women's sexuality.

They think cutting a woman's clitoris and stitching her up will stop her sleeping around.

Growing up to hear that, we didn't even thought about pleasure.

But what was surprising for me was even though the clitoris has been cut,

the rest of the clitoris is actually inside.

Women don't realize that actually the clitoris is inside.

The nerve is all around our vagina.

So we just need to know what works for us.

As a woman who had FGM, do I have a really nice sex life?

Yes, I do.

Do I have orgasm?

Yes, I do.

I've got clients that enjoy the smell.

They will be like, make sure you've run your knickers all day.

My pants are a bit fishy.

I'm going for it.

Crushed strawberries and cream.

That's what my vagina smells like.

Apparently my vagina smells different before I'm about to get my period.

If I have a lot of sugar, a lot of dairy...

A slight smell of blood.

That changes the smell of my vagina.

There's a really big taboo around the word discharge.

People think, oh, that's disgusting.

Or, oh, I don't get any discharge.

You do. We all do.

There's nothing to be embarrassed about.

It changes throughout your life and your cycle.

And yes, I have discharge and my vulva looks moist.

I still struggle with the kind of more corporeal aspects of that kind of thing.

I just feel like it's the same with the hair and stuff.

Like, vaginas have a smell, vaginas have hair.

It's a thing. Like, that's something that I'm still working on.

I was born in Ireland in 1975.

So when I was growing up, a lot of things around people,

but particularly women, was silenced.

We were just left with this kind of feeling of shame and misunderstanding.

My parents are really liberal, open people.

They grew up in Brighton in the fifties and seventies.

They're cool people.

They always talked about how sex was a really important thing between two people.

Not that it had to be with one person forever,

but the person you were having sex with had to mean something to you

and you had to have feelings for them.

So at about seven I was very, very switched on.

I knew what I wanted to do.

I saved. I worked to make sure that my life was ordered.

And then my world was turned upside down in a very unpleasant way

because I was raped by someone I really trusted.

And that caused a huge amount of chaos and upset,

which at that age I really didn't know how to deal with.

And not being able to talk about it meant no one else could help me deal with it either.

So we were just kind of left with that.

Not knowing what it is and not really understanding what's just happened.

So when I was 19, I was on holiday

and I was raped by the manager of the hotel that I was staying in.

And then I came back on holiday and I just sort of

brushed it under the carpet as a,

okay, well, that probably wasn't a very good thing,

but just didn't think about it.

And then as the years went by,

I just started to realise that it was really affecting me in so many ways.

My confidence levels just plummeted.

When somebody's violated you in that way

and just taken from you in that way,

your self-worth is like, and nothing.

It can make you not want to be alive.

And that's how I felt for a long time,

just like, well, if I died, it wouldn't make any difference.

I went from being a super confident, really happy young woman,

wearing low-cut tops, loved my boobs,

thought they were the best thing ever,

to suddenly hating anything that was sexual about my body.

In all of the warnings that were given as girls by our mothers and fathers,

it's almost like you could expect something like this is going to happen.

And because you've been told about it,

it is almost like, well, then it is your fault.

If I'd done something differently, if I'd not drunk,

if I'd not said something or done something or been in a certain place,

would it have turned out differently?

Those questions that get round and round in your head,

they're the questions that ruin you.

You know, what happens at such a young age

has become such a part of you

that you sort of don't know who you might have been without it.

I just wish I could be normal.

I knew what it was like to just be able to enjoy sex.

And even just silly things, like I don't really like watching films

or TV programmes because so many of them have sexual assaults in them.

Like everyone keeps saying, have you watched The Handmaid's Tale?

And I'm like, I can't, I can't, I can't watch it.

Understanding how that feeling of violation must be turned around

in something that energised me to learn, to understand.

You can't fix it, but you can kind of resolve it.

I'm currently in a relationship and the sex is great.

I feel completely differently about it, which is just such a relief.

I just think it's so, I really was worried that this was me forever.

I was just never going to enjoy sex.

And I am at the moment and I can't begin to describe how fantastic that is.

I feel like I'm normal again and that's really nice.

I promised myself that I wouldn't let the people who raped me

take my presence and my future.

Like every orgasm is different, every birth is different.

I went in at the last minute because I didn't want too much interference.

Every vulva is different, every baby emerging is different.

You have to concentrate and focus and nothing else seems to matter.

And I just did what I was told.

I was just throwing up all the time like the whole birth.

I was just pooed and threw up and pooed.

You just carry on, don't you?

The first time was really hard and I told her I had a stick to be tear.

I also had vantus and forceps, so I had quite a lot of pain.

I had an episiotomy and forceps and it was absolutely horrendous.

The tear went through the muscle tissue around my anus.

And I feel angry that that happened.

It took me probably 15 years to get over having cesarean sessions.

When I was sewn up, I was sewn up incorrectly.

I didn't feel like a proper mother.

I couldn't even manage to give birth to my children.

After he stitched me up, I did feel the same.

I've never been able to exactly pee straight down because my cunt has been made wonky.

I was really sore for a couple of weeks, but you kind of don't care

because you've got this little snuffily bundle that's just, you know, really gorgeous.

You know, birthing can be such an amazing thing

within a world that tries its best to tell us it's the hardest and worst thing in the world.

After the horror of childbirth, breastfeeding was a doddle.

You breastfeed, it makes your womb contract harder.

Sucking, you could feel the contraction in your uterus and of course in your cunt.

And then you realise that you're gushing down below and you're like,

is this okay? Is this normal?

I'd be really grateful if I'd known that was going to happen.

I think when I was first told that it was really unlikely

that I would ever be able to conceive,

that massively made me question my entire identity

as a woman, what did womanhood even mean if you couldn't have kids?

We are socialised from a very young age to believe that we are entitled to a family.

We're entitled to that biological right or capacity to conceive.

You have to find new ways to explore womanhood.

I'd wanted a child for a long time with my partner

and was told that it wasn't going to be possible.

But then it was possible.

I got to the stage of seeing the child's heartbeat

and then I was staying with a friend and realised I was having a miscarriage.

So I went into the hospital and I went to the toilet to pee

and then the whole miscarriage just came out.

And I remember looking in the loo and thinking, that's my baby in the loo.

So I put my hand down to pick her up and just held her.

And it was like a massive piece of liver, dark, warm, bloody.

There is a loss there, but it's taken me to this age of 52 to be able to say,

it's not the end of the world.

I'd been bleeding for a few weeks in between periods

and a lot after sex with my boyfriend at the time

and he said, is it because my dick's too big?

So when the doctor said, you've got cervical cancer,

it felt like a tonne of paving slabs had just been thrown onto my chest

and I just thought, I'm 24, like, I haven't even had a smear test yet

and I'm being told that I've got cancer.

I had my cervix removed, the surrounding kind of tissue area

and the top third of my vagina.

There's a lot of kind of stigma around having a gynecological disease

like somebody at my old job when I was leaving to go and have the operation

said, what kind of cancer have you got?

And I said, cervical.

And she said, well, how do you get that?

And, like, you wouldn't ask the same if I'd said breast, bowel or brain.

When it's something in between your legs, there's this assumption

that you've done something wrong as a woman,

there's a lot of judgement and inaccuracy.

It's medically inaccurate that you have to, you know,

slept with a lot of people to have a gyne problem.

There is this stigma around gyne health,

which means that some women will not be as lucky as I was.

When I was really little and I didn't understand

about what bodies were, gender was,

I honestly thought I would grow up to be a boy.

I just thought that that's just how it was.

Some people changed.

And maybe I didn't even think that I was going to change,

maybe I thought I already was a boy.

I don't really see myself as male or female.

I understand that my physical body is female,

but myself, excluding the skin sac, is much more neutral.

I have elements of masculine and feminine.

I think everybody does, really, but I feel that mine are very balanced.

And I sit somewhere, sort of, very cleanly in the middle,

though it fluctuates a fair bit.

So non-binary is a shorthand way of saying that.

The moment that I understood what non-binary meant,

or gender neutral is the term I was using at the time,

it was honest to God like I was flooded with light.

I felt so alive and so connected and so calm and centred,

and it was just like, finally I make sense.

All right, fine. I've done it. Can I turn it off?

Cool.

Off.

Go away.

My vagina is what it is.

There's nothing I can do about that, and I don't think I'd want to.

It takes up a lot of head space.

I'm very aware of it at all times.

It never goes away.

Just let your legs relax to the side.

Just get comfortable. Ready?

OK.

That's great. OK, one more.

Fantastic.

Oh, wow.

Gorgeous. That's really lovely.

I can't wait for men pause.

I want my period to be over with.

I want it gone.

Let the bleeding stop.

I'm just about to have a hot flush. I'm sorry, guys.

I never had any of that stuff about,

oh, you're going to be a dried up old woman.

I kept getting wet when I was having sex.

I'm 70. I was 70 in May, and I still enjoy sex.

I'm more dry than I used to be, so I use a lubricant.

A little bit of spit, you know, solves that little problem.

I didn't stop desiring sex.

I didn't stop wanting orgasms.

Really, your life goes in different ways, up and down.

You want sex or you don't want sex.

I didn't want sex after I had my kids.

But after menopause, I then thought to myself,

honey, you're on your own. Make the most of it, my dear.

I wanted to bring the reality of our bodies

and the truth of our experiences into the open.

I've now photographed 100 vulvas up close.

It's been transformative.

I'm looking at them all together. None of us are the same.

We're not all neat, pink and perfect.

I think a lot of people have this really solid idea

of what a vagina should look like.

And if everyone just kind of dropped that

and knew that there were loads of different vaginas,

then I think vaginas would be a lot happier.

What if women did a sexual Brexit and took back control?

And then said to men, you're only allowed near it

if you know what you're doing.

And then said to men, you're only allowed near it

if you know what you're doing.

And we set up a kind of driver's licence.

I think it would be useful.

This part of ourselves which we're so conditioned to conceal

actually defines so much of our lives as women.

And our most intimate experiences, pleasurable and painful,

shouldn't be treated as taboo, but as a testament to our strength.

We're support available on Channel4.com slash support.

And the fellas get to have a say about their fellas.

Me and my penis streaming on all four anytime.

Back to tonight and it's shameless on Channel4.

Thank you.