I am stumped.
I am trying to come up with a second good new name for a woman's "private parts", the priggish way I've always alluded to the vaginal area--until last week, that is.
Have you heard the word "vajayjay", a fond female slang word for vagina?
The word was recently used by a black woman patient on the tv show "Private Practice" or was it Grey's Anatomy? . It had been hastily invented by the show's writer after she'd been forbidden to use the word "vagina".
The New York Times reported that the word "vajayjay" has swept the country---Oprah, for one has taken it up.
Good. Really good. It sounds like fun--not derogatory or dirty, like male slang words for the vagina.
Alas, the Times featured their article in the Sunday Style Section run by Trip Gabriel--somehow managing to trivialize the surging trend of women staking claims to our own bodies. And as usual, the Times, missed the revolutionary point. Even Times women, bless their poor souls, seem to be male-identified re:important--even defining-- news about women.
A small digression: This all brings to mind a problem I had when I ran Michael Douglas's production company.
Many's the time Michael'd unbutton his shirt, rub his stomach and quote his conversations with Jack Nicholson. One ongoing conversation was a gleeful competition to come up with all the names they'd ever heard or could make up for the male sexual organ.
Michael got giddier when I asked him to shut up.
I knew of no equivalent names for female genitals---no affectionate, fun names made up by us women for ourselves. I wondered if it meant that men enjoyed sex more than women.
It didn't occur to me to try to make up names for my own sexual parts.
Naming is a kind of claiming--I see that now.
And hey, with "vajayjay" the zeitgeist lurched three steps forward.
Let's not stop.
Maybe we women can make up more names. Maybe some of us already have done so.
Playful, silly, proud and self-loving pet names.
Please ladies. Write them on this blog site if you are so inclined.
Send in brave new words. Or just think about it.
I've got very little help to offer--just a list of words that can be added to other words:
my ladies' business, my pretty pretty bits, my pretties, my sweet bits, my lady bits, sweet girl place, my sweet lady Jane.
Or, sweety sugar as in the expression coined, I think by blacks "give me some sugar" meaning kiss me.
Who knows, if we really come up with some goodies (could goodies be part of a new term?) maybe I'll stop wincing when I think of my former employer.