There I was at my keyboard, writing about something sensible and semi-important, when this news popped up on my screen: “Nearly Half of Young Women in the U.K. Don’t Know Where Their Vagina Is.” And because a headline like that can’t be ignored, you’ll just have to wait for a sensible, semi-important column another time.
My first reaction to this news, naturally, was shock. I hadn’t realized that so many British women share a vagina. And not a one of them could track the thing down? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for one woman to lose such a thing may be regarded as misfortune; for hundreds to lose it looks like carelessness.
I kept reading and learned that a survey of 1,000 British women revealed that only half of those aged 26-35 were able to correctly identify the vagina on a simple diagram of a woman’s reproductive system. And I mean simple. Like if there’d been a “You are here” icon, the survey participants could have spun 180 degrees and seen their vaginas is how simple it was.
The survey also showed that while young gals generally did not know which way was up, older women could tell an ovary from a uterus just fine and a cervix from a fallopian tube, thank you very much.