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THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD
There is a Catalan saying: 'La mar es posa bona si veu el cony d'una dona' - 'The sea calms down if it sees a woman's cunt'. This Catalan belief in the power of the vagina is, in fact, the source of the good luck custom of fishermen's wives displaying their genitals to the sea before their men put out on the water. The flipside of this faith is, logically enough, that a woman can cause storms if she urinates in the waves. Moreover, according to folklore, it's not just the oceans that are soothed by the sight of a woman's vagina. A flash of female genitalia has the power to calm other forces of nature too. For example, women in the southern Indian province of Madras were known to subdue dangerous storms by exposing themselves. And Pliny, the first-century historian of the ancient world, writes in his work Natural History of how hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning are all quieted and dispelled by a face-o with a naked woman.
Remarkably, the ability to mollify the elements is far from being the only capacity that folklore and ancient history ascribe to the act of a woman revealing her vagina. For many, female genitalia also present a potent apotropaic package. That is, the sight of a woman deliberately exposing her naked vulva is deemed to be capable of preventing evil from occurring. Driving out devils, averting vicious spirits, frightening carnivores and scaring opposing warriors and threatening deities away - all these heroic and dangerous deeds are reputed to form part of a woman's genital might. As a consequence, tales of women's vaginal derring-do are found in various cultures. Take Pliny and his fellow ancient historian and philosopher Plutarch (c. 46-c. 120 Common Era ). Both these men described how great heroes and gods will .ee in the face of female genitalia. Elsewhere, the report of a sixteenth-century traveller in North Africa records the belief that lions will turn tail and run from this sexual sight. At funerals, women were hired as mourners, with the express aim of exorcising demons via vaginal display. Delightfully, Russian folklore relates how when a bear appears out of the woods, it can be put to flight by a young woman raising her skirt at it. It seems that in the face of adversity, the best option open to a woman is to lift her skirt. For a man, it would be to make sure you're standing next to one of the sisters.
This view of the vagina may seem startling, disturbing even. Vaginas can calm the elements and drive out devils? It's certainly the case that this is a way of looking at female genitalia that is atypical in most cultures today. In the western world of the twenty first century, the idea of women showing their genitals tends to be inextricably bound up with sex, pornography or images of women in accommodating positions rather than ones of power and influence. Sadly, for many, the idea of a woman revealing her vagina is seen as offensive, and seldom positive, let alone something to be welcomed or to hide behind. For women themselves, the idea of deliberately displaying their vagina in public is more likely to provoke emotions of shame and embarrassment than feelings of respect and authority. And adding to the modern-day negative associations surrounding the naked vulva is the fact that a number of cultures put great effort into ensuring female genitalia are rarely viewed, and never publicly. At present, the most potent concept associated with the naked vagina is probably that of childbirth - the moment when a woman's vagina stretches wide and, miraculously, provides a baby with a safe gateway into the world. This parturition picture, it could be said, is also the one 'acceptable' public face of female genitalia (see colour plate section). The one vaginal image people are comfortable observing, without too much shame or embarrassment.
Yet it's apparent that women around the world have been lifting their skirts to full effect for centuries. From Italy - where folklore from the Abruzzo region tells of the power of a woman raising her skirt to display her genitals - to India, where the gesture was also understood to dispel evil in.uences, tales of deliberate female genital exposure abound in history, folklore and literature. One eighteenth-century engraving by Charles Eisen for an edition of the book Fables by Jean de La Fontaine depicts the ability of the exposed vagina to dispel evil forces beautifully (see Figure 1.1). In this striking image, a young woman stands, con.dent and unafraid, confronting the devil. Her left hand rests lightly on a wall, while her right raises her skirt high, displaying her sexual centre for Satan to see. And in the face of her naked womanhood, the devil reels back in fear. In this way, the story relates, the young woman defeats the devil and saves her village, which Old Nick had been attacking. A couple of centuries earlier, the French writer Rabelais had his old woman of Pape.guiere rout the devil in the same manner, and reproductions of this vivid confrontation between the vagina and the devil can be found on seventeenth century drinking mugs. A delicious sight to sup from, I'm sure.
The belief in the power of the exposed vagina to repel foes or expel demons is also, it seems, an enduring and widespread one. Significantly, accounts of women revealing their vaginas in order to achieve a particular effect are not rooted in any one historical period or any one culture. Instead, they span millennia, from the ancient past through to the present day (as my story in the introduction shows), and cross continents too. In his essay 'Bravery of Women' Plutarch recalls a vulva-displaying incident where a large group of women lifting their gowns together changed the outcome of a war. He describes how, in a certain battle between the Persians and the Medes, the Persian men, losing heart against the strong advancing Median forces, turned tail and attempted to flee from them. However, their way was blocked by a group of their own women, calling them cowards. These Persian women proceeded to raise their skirts, exposing their nakedness to their fellow men. Shamed by this vaginal display, the Persian men returned to face their enemies, eventually defeating them.
Fast forward nineteen hundred years or so, and the western press describes similar incidents. In the Irish Times of 23 September 1977, one Walter Mahon-Smith contributed the following item: In a townland near where I lived, a deadly feud had continued for generations between the families of two small farmers. One day, before the First World War, when the men of one of the families, armed with pitchforks and heavy blackthorn sticks, attacked the home of their enemy, the woman of the house came to the door of her cottage, and in full sight of all (including my father and myself, who happened to be passing by) lifted her skirt and underclothes high above her head, displaying her naked genitals. The enemy of her and her family .ed in terror. Outside the western world, anthropological data collected during the last century regarding the people of the Marquesas Islands reveals a similar reverential attitude to female genitalia, albeit with a slight twist. This Polynesian culture credits female genitalia with supernatural influences. And these vaginal forces, Marquesans say, are strong enough to frighten gods or to drive out evil possessing spirits. Hence exorcisms carried out in this part of the world consist of a naked woman sitting on the chest of the possessed. For this society, the belief that women have extra mysterious powers courtesy of their unique sexual anatomy extends elsewhere. For instance, Marquesans also consider that a woman can curse an object or person by naming them after her genitalia. I haven't yet tried this one myself. So according to many individuals and communities, the vagina is an extremely influential organ - and one possibly to be feared if you're on the receiving end of a vulval flash.
However, there is another aspect to the gesture of female genital display. Some genital practices highlight how the protection provided by the displayed vagina is not only about preventing harm. Just as importantly, vaginal protection can encompass a more nurturing, nourishing influence. Indeed, historical evidence suggests that female genital display can also be about promoting fertility, such as causing plants or the earth to flourish. Up to the twentieth century, in many western countries, belief in this vaginal ability can be seen in the custom of peasant women exposing their genitals to the growing flax, while saying: 'Please grow as high as my genitals are now.' And as strange as it may seem, the fairy tale of Snow White, or Biancaneve, is suggested to have arisen from an ancient Italian ritual designed to enhance the fecundity of the earth itself. A beautiful, noble girl would be sent down a mine which was running low in iron ore in order to expose Mother Earth to her vital female essence or energy. Biancaneve, so the theory goes, came from the Dolomites region of the Cordevole river north of Belluno in Italy, an area which was known for its magnesium-rich iron mines.