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to stimulation—or libido, or “femmeismo,” for that matter. After all, have you ever overheard women in a gym locker room bragging about their big clits?
     
One woman I was with had these big inner labia. I loved the way they felt on my lips—it was all this extra area to play with!

     
    To see a beautifully presented, wonderfully diverse collection of vulvas, leaf through a copy of the color photography book Femalia , by Joani Blank, or seek out nonmainstream erotic photo collections. Erotic videos and “gentlemen’s magazines” can sometimes be vaguely instructional, but viewers should be cautioned that a great deal goes into making the actresses’ and models’ genitals look uniform—including labiaplasty (plastic surgery on the labia), and liposuction of the outer lips. They routinely get a dusting of makeup and occasionally “pussy glue,” a tacky gel that holds the inner labia open to the unflinching eye of the camera. Porn is a lousy place to learn how to perform oral sex on a woman: most onscreen cunnilingus looks like an exaggerated version of Fido with a mouthful of peanut butter. However, adult instructional videos can be very helpful—for recommendations, see chapter 10, “Independent Study.”
     
    If you’re a woman reading this, feel free to invite yourself along as an intrepid tourist: pick up a hand mirror and follow along with the anatomy tour. Looking directly at a standing naked woman, an imaginary artist’s model, we can see the pubic mound (or mons veneris, or mound of Venus). This is the area over the pubic bone, and this aptly named shrine to the love goddess is usually covered with hair. Women wear their pubic hair in a variety of styles: all-natural and furry, trimmed, waxed into bikini-line obedience, or even shaved off completely. The mound of Venus tapers eloquently down and between the thighs, designating the area where the inner thighs meet the torso and splitting like the cleft of a peach around the vaginal opening.
     

    Illustration 3. External Anatomy
     
    Coax your imaginary model into a comfy seated position with her thighs parted, on an imaginary La-Z-Boy, if you will, and you’ll see the outer lips, or labia, of the vagina. Since they reside on the outside of the body, they are generally the same color and texture as the acreage of skin found everywhere else, but they are usually covered with a continuation of the mound’s hair. The outer lips are analogous to the male scrotum, and both are formed from the same tissue in utero. Their appearance ranges from fleshy (puffy, covering the clitoris and vaginal opening) to thin (flat, revealing the clitoral hood).
     
    Part your model’s legs even farther and you’ll see a hairless second set of lips that surround the vaginal opening. The inner labia are certainly more lip-like in color, texture, and shape than the outer set, and like every other body part, they rejoice in variation. The inner labia come in more shades than Clinique’s spring lipstick line; pale peach, mauve, shades of pink, burgundy, or dark chocolate. The color may deepen after childbirth. They can be trim and narrow, curled inward, fluted, or flared, or they may protrude past the pubic hair. Textures range from smooth to glassy, translucent to deeply crinkled. And though they come in pairs, no two are exactly alike; it is quite common for the lips on one woman to look different from each other. The inner lips are richly endowed with nerve endings, and the clitoral hood is analogous to the foreskin of the penis. Some women report enjoying stimulation of the inner lips more than clitoral stimulation.
     
I have one inner lip that’s much bigger than the other, and I used to be really upset and embarrassed about it. But none of my lovers seem to notice or care, and since they don’t, neither do I anymore.

     
    These kissable inner lips meet in two corners, just like the ones we usually think about kissing. The outer edges of each inner lip meet toward