How To Love Your Vulva

Sex Coach Sara Tang shares how embracing and falling in love with your vulva can improve your sex life and overall well-being…

A lot of women grow up with body shame around their genitals. We are often given messages that these parts are dirty, smelly, and meant to be hidden away like the rest of our sexuality. Porn and the media often paint an unrealistic picture of all genitalia, holding them to impossible beauty standards. Cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures like labiaplasty are booming as people seek to reduce the size of their labia — to get a “designer vulva” that they believe is the “norm”. I’m here to tell you that all vulvas are beautiful and deserve love. Here’s why…

Read more: 5 Ways To Get Started On Your Sexual Wellness Journey

Why You Should Love Your Vulva And Vagina

As a certified sex coach, I often observe the impact of body shame on people’s sex lives. Sometimes people with vaginas won’t allow their partners to perform oral sex on them, or can’t enjoy sex because they’re so self-conscious of their genitals.

Loving your genitals is an important starting point for building a positive body image and sexual confidence. After all, if we ourselves feel insecure about our genitals, how can we expect others to show them love and attention during sex?

Another critical reason to love your vulva, and vagina, is to help maintain your sexual health. By identifying what our vulvas and vaginas look like, smell like and behave like on a normal day, we’re able to know when something is not right, and when it may be time to see a gynaecologist or go for an STI check-up.

Read more: Feminine Awareness: How To Feel Sensually Empowered

Vulvas Are Not Vaginas

People often use the word “vagina” when they mean “vulva”. I think it’s important to clear up the confusion around this terminology, which often stems from poor sex education. The vagina refers solely to the birth canal while the vulva actually refers to the external parts of the female genitals, including the clitoris, labia and the vaginal opening.

According to Laurie Mintz, psychology professor and author of “Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters”, one of my favourite books on the female sexual response, “Every time we use the word ‘vagina’, when we really mean ‘vulva’, we’re erasing the part that gives us the most pleasure.”

I believe that knowing the correct names for our body parts empowers us to take full ownership of them, which is why I’m personally not a fan of using vague euphemisms like “lady parts” or “down there” to refer to the female genitals.

Read more: 10 Commonly Misused & Misunderstood Sexuality Terms Explained

Your Vulva And Vagina Are Normal

Vulvas come in all shapes and sizes, and each one is unique and beautiful. A good way to begin to love your vulva is to normalise looking at it.

Find a comfortable private space and slip off your underwear. Take a hand mirror and position it between your legs, in order to take a proper look at your vulva. Identify the different parts of your vulva’s anatomy. Find the clitoris, urethra, outer labia, inner labia and the vaginal opening.

Observe your vulva closely and see what comes up for you.

• What does your vulva resemble?
• Did anything about how it looks surprise you?
• Does looking at your vulva make you uncomfortable? Or does it feel special and sacred to you?

Pay attention to what your vaginal discharge is like. I suggest repeating this exercise and looking at your vagina at different points during your menstrual cycle, to notice how the discharge changes. (You can use a period tracking mobile app like Clue, which features a handy in-app guide to your discharge and more.)

To help you accept that your vulva is normal, it may help to see a wide range of different vulvas. The Vulva Gallery is a great educational resource I like to recommend that features illustrated vulva portraits and personal stories from real people all around the world.

Send Your Vulva And Vagina Some Love

After getting comfortable with how your vulva looks, I suggest creating some vulva-positive affirmations to help to counter the shameful narratives that many of us have been brought up with around our genitals. Affirmations are personal declarations of self-love that can be used to shift negative thinking to more positive and productive thoughts. Some affirmations I recommend starting with are:

• “My vulva is perfect the way it is”
• “My vagina is worthy of love”
• “I’m so grateful for my vulva because… ”

I encourage you to design your own affirmations that fit your situation and feel the most meaningful for you. Then incorporate them into your very own vulva love ritual. For example, you could set an intention for the session, take a long bath or shower, spend some time rubbing in a scented lotion, set up some candles and then look in the mirror while repeating those affirmations.

If you want to learn more about the power of affirmations and managing your inner critic in the bedroom, this Better in Bed podcast episode will give you more practical, self-love tips.

Read more: How Can I Become More Confident In Bed?

Know What Turns Your Vulva On

It would be remiss to talk about the vulva without special mention of the clitoris. Research shows that it’s clitoral stimulation, not vaginal stimulation that is the most direct path to orgasm. The clitoris is the powerhouse of pleasure for a person with a vagina. It has twice the number of nerve endings than the most sensitive part of the penis. And because the clitoral network of nerves extends into the body, the clitoris is now thought to be responsible for G-spot and vaginal orgasms too.

One of the best ways to love your vulva is to give it pleasure, and masturbation is a powerful tool for this. If you’re new to self-pleasure, then start by sensually touching different parts of your vulva and vagina either with your fingers or a sex toy. Try to create a “map” of the various areas of your vulva and vagina which respond well to touch.

You can look up more techniques for female pleasure on OMGYes, which shows the results of the biggest scientific study of female sexuality with over 20,000 women or sign up for a sex coaching session to get more tailored support.

Read more: Pleasure Hacks – How To Experience Orgasmic Bliss

Loving Your Vulva And Vagina Is A Lifelong Practice

Body positivity and self-love are things many women struggle with and learning to embrace and love these hidden parts of ourselves, like our genitals, can take time, patience and self-compassion. It’s something that can and should be practised on a daily basis and will ultimately help boost your confidence and fuel a better sex life.

Read more: How To Claim Your Feminine Power