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medical issues, they’re healthy and don’t require any kind of medical intervention. We’re all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways.
    This is why I don’t need to see your genitals to tell you that they’re normal and healthy. You’ve got all the same parts, just organized in your own unique way.
Like many sex educators, I include photographs of a variety of vulvas in my anatomy lecture slides.
Where do I find these photographs? On the Internet, of course.
My only difficulty is getting a diverse range—mostly I find images of the vulvas of young, thin, white, completely shaved women. I have to search carefully to find great sex-positive images of the vulvas of older women, women of size, women of color, and women who’ve got all their pubic hair.
One day I was sitting around a busy comics convention talking about this challenge with Camilla, who, like me, is a nerd and a former college peer sex educator. Unlike me, she has a degree in gender studies and studio art, is African American, and makes her living as an illustrator—all of which gave her insight into my little challenge.
She said, “Seriously, Emily? You’re googling, what, like, ‘black vulva’? At work?”
I shrugged apologetically. “Sausages, laws, and sex education lectures. You don’t want to know how any of them are made.”
And Camilla said, “Let me guess: All you find is porny images, nothing artistic or empowered or body positive?”
“And graphic medical pictures,” I said. “I tried searching ‘feminist vulvas of color,’ but all I got was embroidery projects from Pinterest and Etsy.”
Camilla laughed at that, but said, “Now think if you were a young woman trying to see what a normal, healthy vulva looks like. If you’re white, you’re all set, Tumblr is full of those. But if you’re Black or Asian or Latina, what is there? Porn and medical pictures. What does that tell you?”
I said, “But I can’t say, ‘Hey, women of color, post more pictures of your vulvas on the web, so that other women will know they’re normal.’ ”
“No, but still,” Camilla said, “the images we see—or don’t see—matter. You know those Escher girls?”
“No, what’s an Escher girl?”
“They’re the female characters in comics with abdomens so flat there’s no room for their internal organs, and their spines are impossibly twisted so that you can see both boobs and both butt cheeks at the same time. Their poses are so anatomically absurd that they’re named after an artist famous for impossible illusions.”
“Sounds like some bad porn I’ve seen,” I said.
“Right,” said Camilla. “I saw those as a teenager and I felt like that said everything about what a ‘female’ was supposed to be, and because that wasn’t what being female felt like to me, I decided my first identity is ‘geek.’ Not woman, not Black: geek. Gamer. It took a long time to integrate the other parts of my identity, because I couldn’t see how they all fit together. Images matter. They tell us what’s possible, what things go together, what belongs and what doesn’t belong. And we’re all just trying to belong somewhere.”
This statement was such a gift to me. I go back to this idea over and over now, as I write my lectures. I spend hours searching the Internet for sex-positive images of a wide variety of vulvas, because my students vary—no two alike—and I want them to know that their bodies are normal and that they belong there in my classroom.
    why it matters
    Why might the seemingly simple fact that all human genitals are made of the same parts,organized in different ways be the most important thing you’ll ever learn about human sexuality?
    Two reasons:
    Because it means your genitals are normal—and not just normal, but amazing and beautiful and captivating and delicious and enticing, on down the alphabet, all the way to zesty—regardless of what they look like. They are made of all the same parts as everyone