Thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow!

Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently posted in her own blog about the wonders of vaginal steaming. It seems she frequents a certain California spa that offers a procedure that sends heated water vapors, infused with mugwort, into the vagina. Gwyneth referred to the procedure as “relaxing” and “invigorating”.

Of course, talk show hosts and media outlets had a field day with this concept, labeling it kooky new-age quack medicine. Gwyneth’s down-under antics got a lot of people talking about the vagina.

This has been good for business! Especially if your business is selling a book called The Medieval Vagina. You see, in our book, we include a chapter on medieval douching and medieval vaginal fumigators, just a fancy word for Gwyneth-like vaginal steaming. Yep, Gwyneth’s new-age technique has actually been around a whole lot longer. In fact, it was commonly prescribed as a medical treatment during the Middle Ages to cure all sorts of things from menstrual cramps to yeast infections to urinary tract infections.

It worked by boiling water mixed with herbs in a specially-designed pot. This pot had a tight lid and a long tube protruding from it. The steam had nowhere to go but up the tube, which was inserted into the female patient’s vagina. Yowza!

Through the magic of social media, we were about to join in the conversation about Gwyneth and her steam cleaned va-jay-jay and inform a whole new group of people about The Medieval Vagina and the practice of medieval vaginal fumigation. It is funny how this networking thing works. We both enjoyed a jump in Twitter followers, saw an increase in book sales, and have been invited to write guest blogs. In short, Gwyneth’s vagina has been beneficial for us.

So we thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow, for opening up a conversation about hot, steamy vaginas that allowed us to capitalize on her momentary controversy. 

What Word Makes You Squirm?

My daughter offered me a stick of gum last week. It was 5’s Dare gum. When she handed it to me, she said, “You have to either answer the question or do the dare.” I guess this is gum marketing’s version of True or Dare that I used to play as a middle schooler. I don’t remember the “dare” the gum wrapper made me do…something about doing the Robot dance, or maybe it was the Running Man…but I certainly remember the “truth” question. It said, “What word makes you squirm?”

That word is Vagina.

Ironic, isn’t it then, that the title of our new nonfiction book is The Medieval Vagina? Truth is, we chose that title on purpose to attract attention. And it has worked. Peoples’ interest is piqued as soon as they hear that title. It seems, as we suspected, there is something deliciously naughty about the word “vagina”

The medieval vagina, however, is a bit of a misnomer. The word “vagina” is a Latin term that did not enter the English vernacular until sometime in the mid- to late-1600s, about a century after the unofficial end of the medieval era. Etymology, vagina means a sheath or scabbard and the term is a derivative of an even older word, “voziu” which translated to mean “to cover something with a hollow object,” much like a sheath would cover a sword.

So here is where the meanings become metaphorical.

The word “vagina” was then assigned to the birth canal of women…the same birth canal that men use for sexual pleasure. It is not too much of a stretch to envision the man’s penis as the sword and the woman’s vagina as the sheath, or protective covering. What is implied, then, is that the penis is fragile and needs sheltering and that the best way to do that is to safeguard it in its natural protective wrap, the vagina.

What we like about the word origin is that it is empowering to women. And yet, many people, myself included, squirm at the word. We are more comfortable with an ameliorative of the word “vagina”, like va-jay-jay or V or vag. In fact, we toyed with changing the name of our book to The Medieval V, just so we wouldn’t feel so squirmy.

But we also know that there are no inherently bad words, only words onto which society has places a negative connotation or stigma. Although “vagina” falls into this group, it is certainly not the worse word in the bunch. It’s a medical term, for goodness sake. It is time to push through the squirmy feelings and say it out loud. VAGINA.