IV. Genitals

Women’s body hatred extends to body parts that are not usually on display. Clinical psychologist Jane Ussher theorizes female genital hatred in terms of visibility. In her book The Psychology of the Female Body, she discusses male and female understandings of their own genitalia based on what people see and what they have a name for (Ussher 19). She points out that male genitalia is easily visible and therefore it is easy to apply a name to it (Ussher 19). Because boys have a name for their visible genitalia, they have a better relationship and understanding of it starting when they are children, and therefore their genitals are for them a source of pride and pleasure from a very early age (Ussher 19).

The female genitalia, however, is more complex. It is a system which functions both internally and externally, and therefore is more difficult to explain to a child (Ussher 19). Because little girls cannot see all the organs which make up their reproductive system or which give them sexual pleasure, it is more difficult to come up with a specific name for the entire female genital complex (Ussher 19). Therefore women see their genitals as mysterious and as a source of “shame, disgust, and humiliation,” because no one can quickly and easily explain their intimate workings as they can for male genitalia (Ussher 19). Because girls develop this conception of their genitals as having “merely a cloacal function” (Ussher 19) at an early age, there exists the long-standing “social stereotype” of the female genitalia “as unpleasant, odorous, and unattractive” (Ussher 19). Female children internalize this stereotype to the point that it not only affects their relationships with their own genitals but also with other people (Ussher 19).

Women are even more confused by their bodies during puberty (Ussher 38). Female teenagers learn of the double standard our culture imposes on women’s reproductive systems: the female genitals spew blood and smell bad, but they are the key to attracting a keeping a man (Ussher 38). By relating to a man and being involved in a sexual relationship with him, a woman defines herself as a part of the dominant heterosexist culture which devalues women (Ussher 38). This double standard that a woman should be chaste, clean, free from blood and bad smells, and at the same time sexual, erotic, experienced, and sexually submissive, the idea that the ideal woman is a virginal whore, dates all the way back to the cultures of ancient Greece. Such a double standard creates a division between a woman’s body and herself; if a woman’s body is vastly different from the ideal, a woman separates her self from her body psychologically (Ussher 38). Due to these conflicting messages women get from social stereotyping and the ideal of femininity, they have responded by altering the very portion of their body which is the focus of the double standard: the part of the genitalia they can see and can name, and which differentiates them from men and from other women. Slim, straight, symmetrical labia will be more enticing and clean and less mysterious than are natural labia.