100 Vaginas, review: far more than mere titillation – this was an important sex education film

Hunched over the screen of Laura Dodsworth’s digital camera, the female volunteers were examining her crisp photographs of their vulvas.

“Ewww! It looks like a slug!” "A pink cupcake.” “It’s all right.”

Following powerful projects normalising penises and breasts, the British artist had decided to destigmatise the “final taboo”. Or the “foo-foo”, as one contributor called hers.

You might be thinking this woman is just out to shock, or why would anybody want to spend their Tuesday evening peering into other women’s knickers? But I would invite you to consider the following statistics.

Fifty per cent of children aged between 11-14 have already viewed pornography online. The “industry standard” female genitalia they will have seen on those sites is likely to be highly groomed and, quite possibly, surgically altered.

As a consequence, a recent BBC report revealed that girls as young as nine years old are so distressed about the appearance of their vaginas they are seeking labiaplasty. Although sometimes undertaken for medical reasons, labiaplasty is now the fastest growing form of plastic surgery in the UK, increasing at a rate of around 45 per cent each year.

It’s done to shorten or reshape the lips of the vagina, which naturally come in a variety of colours and shapes and can measure anywhere between 6-12cm for the labia major (outer lips) and 2-11cm for the labia minor (inner lips). In 2017 professor Sarah Creighton, then Chair of the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology said: “Girls will sometimes come out with comments like, ‘I just hate it, I just want it removed,’ and for a girl to feel that way about any part of her body – especially a part that’s intimate – is very upsetting.”

So hurrah for Dodsworth – and this documentary’s director, Jenny Ash – for this reassuringly honest corrective.

Dodsworth doesn't just photograph these vulvas. She interviews her subjects about them. The programme covers: puberty, menstruation, discharge, masturbation, transexuality, pornography, rape, female genital mutilation (FGM), infertility, miscarriage, childbirth, cervical cancer and the aging process. Each topic is covered with a perfect combination of directness and compassion.

I was moved to tears by story of a woman who had experienced FGM as a child. She says the surgery, inflicted on 95 per cent of Somali women, left her with “a hole the size of a matchstick” through which to menstruate and urinate. She spent most of her childhood – from the age of 11-17 – in hospital and sobs as she tells Ash that the procedure which promised to “make a woman” of her robbed her of fertility.

She then told me something I wasn’t expecting to hear: that despite the removal of the exterior part of her clitoris, she still had “a nice sex life” and experienced orgasms. Because the nerves of clitoris are mostly on the inside, although scientists didn't define the full size of the clitoris until 1998. Ironically, the one thing that FGM was meant to remove – a woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure – was left intact.

While FGM is often undertaken in Muslim countries, we also heard how other religions have shamed women into hating themselves “down there”. A white, British woman talked of the Evangelical Christian upbringing that made her feel her vagina was “a scary portal to trouble”. She described how this message had been so deeply absorbed by her body that she was left unable to have penetrative sex.

Dodsworth admitted that she wasn't prepared for the level of trauma her subjects would bring to her studio. But there was also a lot of joy. There was rich poetry in the language women used to describe their sex lives, and laughter too.

Squeamish viewers who have yet to watch should be aware they will see blood, tampons and more. The programme included strong language. Sometimes Ash gave reality a break, and offered a euphemistic visual metaphor like a squeezed passion fruit or firework exploding.

But squeamish sex education teachers can breathe a sigh of relief. Show children this documentary and much of your work is done. I will certainly be showing it to both my son and daughter when they are old enough. As one woman said towards the end of the programme, wouldn’t it be great if people had to pass the equivalent of a driving test before being trusted near another person’s vagina? If that were the case, I’d make watching this important film a key part of it.