How Healthy Our Vaginas Are?

We might joke about men needing a GPS to locate the clitoris, but how many of us really know what’s down there and how healthy our vaginas are? 

- Anupama Bijur

You would think vagina is a cuss word, given how seldom it is uttered, and even when it is, it’s mouthed silently or referred to by an umbrella term—down there. The male sexual organ, the penis, by contrast, is quite literally the cock of the walk while the vagina is the shy retiring body part that is so well hidden that many women themselves are unacquainted with it. A fashion show choreographer and model trainer once told me that one of her models didn’t know where to insert a tampon, and minutes before she had to walk the ramp, a quick lesson in ‘down there’ biology was held in the green room.

Clearly, V-ville is unchartered territory for women, too. According to Dr Kavitha Bhat (Ob-Gyn), you should, “Get a mirror and acquaint yourself with your body. If you were to look from front to back, the first hole is the urethra (from which you pee), the second hole is the vagina and the third is the anus.”V-ville is unchartered territory for women, too. According to Dr Kavitha Bhat (Ob-Gyn), you should, “Get a mirror and acquaint yourself with your body. If you were to look from front to back, the first hole is the urethra (from which you pee), the second hole is the vagina and the third is the anus.”

While your doctor may poke and prod you and declare that you have a medically fit vagina, there are many questions about the most important part of a woman’s biology that are glossed over and assumed to be common knowledge. Worse, there can be many old wives’ tales that have come to be accepted as fact in the absence of clear dialogue. There are hundreds of myths because nothing about a woman’s sexual organ is open to discussion. And talking about it makes you either a whore or a bore.