SALON

Friday, Nov 9, 2007 2:30 PM UTC

Tyra Banks meets her vulva

Or, specifically, an anatomically correct puppet.

By

Topics: Tyra Banks, Broadsheet, Love and Sex,

I like to start out my shift with something that’ll pep up your day. So today I am happy to offer a rather unusual accompaniment to your morning coffee: the vulva puppet.

This week, Tyra Banks decided to devote an entire hourlong show to the vulva. As part of the production, she invited a woman named “Dr. Debby” to teach women a bit about their anatomy by means of a velvet and satin replica of a vulva. Please picture the resulting scene: Tyra Banks chatting with Dr. Debby, who looks totally normal, except for the fact that she is holding a giant puppet vulva. To Tyra’s left, a very uncomfortable-looking blond woman who remains silent for the duration of the clip, and who can’t move because Tyra’s got an arm around her. (I tried to figure out who she was from the show’s recap, but still was left confused. Was she Sarah, a young woman “terrified of the gynecologist until Tyra accompanied her to Dr. Francis’ office”? Or Brianna, who was so inspired by the show that she “was able to get over her tampon fear and tried one for the first time”?)

Regardless, I know what some of you are thinking: Vulva puppets aren’t new. Good Vibrations has been selling them for years! Perhaps some of you are so well acquainted with the vulva puppet that you’ve got a few lying around the house as novelty throw pillows — sort of like those giant lips one can win at carnivals.

Fair enough. But until now, no matter what role the vulva puppet has played in your home décor, it hasn’t had a celebrity/model spokesperson before. Enter Tyra Banks. It would be hard to imagine someone who is more enthusiastic about the concept. She invites Dr. Debby to give the audience a tour of the puppet, and later comments that when she was about to go to college, her mother gave her a hand mirror and encouraged her to check out her own vulva. Overall, Tyra’s message is a great one — to encourage women to get over whatever awkwardness they feel about their genitalia and learn to treat their nether bits as just another part of their body that is important to keep in good health.

However, some bits of the segment are jarring, such as when Tyra, upon first meeting the puppet, says, “I’m so happy that you have this because it really … it makes it cute and sweet and not scary. It’s like a stuffed animal.” Sure, a giant puppet vulva does sound like something that could have been an extra in “Little Shop of Horrors” — but I would have hoped that by this day and age, most women wouldn’t be so uncomfortable with the concept of their vulvae that they’d need to think of them as teddy bears. (And after all, as Dr. Debby warns, real vulvae are not actually made from satin and velvet.) Likewise, I was very surprised to hear Tyra comment, when Dr. Debby introduces the urethra, that “many women think that you pee and have a baby from the same hole.”

I don’t bring that up to criticize Tyra — I’m more just shocked. Is that true? Dr. Debby responded by saying, “You don’t pee from your clitoris; you don’t pee from your vagina. You pee from your urethra.” The exchange seemed crazy to me, until I realized that if there are still numerous women out there who believe that urine comes out of their clitorises, then there might be a genuine need for puppet vulvae that are as cuddly as teddy bears. Regardless, props to Tyra Banks for devoting her whole show to a part of the body that is usually kept under wraps. Now if someone could just explain to me what that blond woman is doing …

Catherine Price is a freelance journalist and author of "101 Places Not to See Before You Die". She also runs a legally themed clothing shop called Illegal Briefs. More Catherine Price.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 20 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations