Pornography
When it comes to misconceptions about how vulvas and vaginas should look, various forms of popular media and social culture, including porn, has a lot to answer for. It’s important to remember it’s made purely for entertainment, and anything shown should not be taken as a representation of what sex or most naked bodies are actually like.
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The majority of porn with vulvas in have hair removed and do not look like the majority of vulvas I’ve seen in real life as a gay woman.
-F, 36
Porn creates and distorts scenarios for entertainment purposes. It’s fiction. There’s no point comparing our bodies, sexual preferences or expectations to fiction, whether it’s porn, a Hollywood romcom, or a novel about sexy robots.
The actors in porn are often cast because their vulvas might look a certain way, or they will alter their vulvas to achieve the same look. Why is this look the norm in porn, you ask? There are lots of reasons, and none of them have anything to do with the real world (waxing, for example, exposes every intimate detail of the vulva to the camera).
Real vulvas and vaginas are different shapes and sizes and vulvas come in every skin tone. They can be dangly and asymmetrical, covered in hair or completely hairless. They don’t need to be preened and sheened (although some people enjoy getting creative with theirs, by getting a piercing for example, or dying their pubic hair bright pink – which is totally fine, as long as it’s done safely).
It really doesn’t matter what they look like. They’re all good.
A gallery of different vulvas
