Anna Konkle sits spread-eagle on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by J-14 tear-out posters and flowered bedsheets, a blue makeup mirror balanced in between her legs to provide a view of her vagina. Her shoulder is raised, balancing her phone to her ear as she speaks to her best friend, Maya, wondering whether hers is “big” and asking Maya if there’s a “smell.” 

While you may not have taken to examining your crotch while on a call with a friend, this scene from the comedy series, PEN15, rings true for many viewers. In this particular episode, the girls had discovered, to their horror, that the boys on their wrestling team had taken to calling them BSBs – “Big Smelly Bushes.” 

Like many fans of the show, I saw my tween self in this display of vagina fear –  there really is no other phrase for it. At my middle school, however, the term BSB was swapped for the “roast beef list.” The boys of my school had, as they announced in our sixth grade art class, made a list of girls who they declared were “roast beefs.” Before I even knew what this was supposed to mean, it felt meant to be cruel, and dirty. In truth, I’m not sure if the boys who had curated this list even knew what they were saying. Still, it was clear that it was meant to imply that these girls were sexually promiscuous. (None of them were. They were eleven. Regardless, rotten behavior.)

And so, vagina-fear had entered my world. From anxiously tugging at the crotch of my leggings out of fear of a “camel toe,” to wondering if a labia-plasty was in my future, the cultural hatred of vaginas, labias, vulvas, and all things down-under had infected my self-perception. 

Unlike BSB, the use of the phrase “roast beef,” or “beef curtains,” isn’t an innovation in the world of vagina-shaming (more accurately, labia-shaming). It’s been used to describe women whose labias are elongated since 1988 and has been in popular use for as long as social media has been around. 

While on the surface these remarks appear crude (and duh– misogynistic), their history reveals the racist roots of vulva and labia shaming. 19th century French eugenicists, such as Georges Cuvier, used the term “tablier” or “Hottentot apron” as a way to describe the elongated labias of certain African women. These pseudo-scientific terms were used to justify the medical and social subjection of Black women, and to label them as hyper-promiscuous. If cruelty and misogyny were not enough to turn you away from critiquing a person’s genitals, add legacies of racism, imperialism, colonialism, and eugenics to the mix. 

As highlighted in Jamie McCartney’s “The Great Wall of Vulva,” in which the British artist made plaster casts of over 400 women’s genitalia, vulvas and labias come in many shapes and sizes – all of which are entirely normal. Some people’s labia minoras are outwardly visible, some are tucked inside. The outward appearance has no correlation to sexual experience or lack thereof. 

Now, we’re not here to pretend we have the end-all solution to centuries of hatred towards female genitalia, but here are our suggestions to combat the shame, stigma, and insecurity surrounding vaginas, vulvas, and labias:

• Take inspiration from Maya and Anna, and straddle a mirror. Just like children fear the monsters they can’t see, refusing to give your crotch a stare-down will only prolong your negative relationship. 
• Teach children anatomically correct terms for their genitals. No more of this “cookie” bs. Not only does it help to prevent abuse, but it also ends the mysticizing of normal, human body parts, which aren’t meant to look like a magic flower. 
• Practice the most radical form of vaginal self love – masturbation.