Reviewed: Vagina: A New Biography,
by Naomi Wolf. Publisher: Ecco, revised edition, 12/13. Paperback $12.56, 416pp.

Home // June.22.2016 // Paul Blumer

Showers of Stars from the Universal Feminine

On first glance, you can't tear your eyes away. VAGINA. Right there on top of a stack at the bookstore. Look around furtively. Is anyone watching? A New Biography, it says. Stark white with black writing. And what is that flower?

But you must never judge a book by its cover. Instead, gaze into it intently. Acknowledge its beauty, out loud and sincerely. Gently touch its spine. Whisper its name and graze its edges with a soft thumb. When it's ready, it will open of its own accord. Finger the first few pages. And don't be surprised when it pulls you in with an enchantingly irresistible warm envelopment.

Naomi Wolf is a writer with the stones to pull it off. From the start she disclaims that her book is an exhaustive look at the subject, and warns readers that she's pursuing just one focused beam (i.e. heteronormative female sexuality) of a deep and prismatic subject. She confesses the book can't simultaneously contain the profound inner worlds of gay women or post-op transsexual women, and suggests that each ray of the cosmic feminine deserves its own study. But despite her effort to undercut mislaid arguments, the book has still been criticized as narrow, noninclusive, as less-than-shrill-enough. Some readers, inevitably, will miss the point.

Wolf's main argument is about the vagina's influence as the "gateway to a woman's happiness and to her creative life." Rather than merely a flesh-and-blood organ attached to a woman, Naomi Wolf contends, the vagina is the vibrant center around which a woman spins her dancing cycles of consciousness. The vagina-heart-brain nexus: a crucial and delicate thoroughfare of a woman's autonomic nervous system. Healthy or traumatized, Wolf suggests, a woman's vagina experience dictates her life experience-whether she beds men, women, or herself:

In life after life of women writers, revolutionaries, and artists, a particularly liberating sexual relationship or affair-or hints of sexual self-discovery, even if the artist was unpartnered-would precede a luxuriant stretch of creative and intellectual expansion in their work. And, judging from their private letters . . . some of the most creative and most intellectually and psychologically "free" women of their eras-from Christina Rossetti to George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Emma Goldman, and Georgia O'Keefe-were also, evidently, remarkably sexually passionate women.

Though perhaps a shade more dry than you might hope from a book called Vagina, there are enough anecdotes, personal stories, and goddess descriptors to juicy-up the neuroscience. Plus the science gives credence to hypotheses which coincide as much with ancient spiritual practices as with what many women probably suspect deep down-whether they know it or not.

Not only does Naomi Wolf describe the female orgasm in numerous women's own words-showers of stars, a radiant part of the universal feminine, le petit mort, an out-of-body experience-but she gives her own post-orgasmic worldview of brighter colors, euphoria, the vivid beauty of the natural world. And then she explains the opioid trance that occurs with the flood of dopamine and the wash of connection that comes with an influx of oxytocin.

It's a pleasant look at feminism that lauds the female for her own glorious essence, rather than as something superior to or replacing the male. There is no man-hating. On the contrary, Wolf takes men into account in a loving, tenderhearted way, recognizing their differences in physiology and psychology. There is only the uplifting; never the down-putting. Wolf waxes optimistic about husbands and boyfriends, and augurs a new age of goddess worship and feminine creativity as a direct result of happy vaginas and partners who speak the fluid language.

Throughout the book, Wolf acknowledges the difficulty of the subject and the vicious criticism she'll endure, as she shines illumination on some of the darkest folds of the vagina's history. Between glistening goddess sections are some heavy discourses on the Victorian vagina view; a legacy we still suffer today-from uterus-prolapsing whalebone corsets, to roundups and forced pelvic exams of suspected promiscuous women. She explores why we still have terms like "slut" and "unladylike."

If we understand the vagina-brain connection, and how liberated vaginas relate to potentially liberated female minds and spirits, we can also start to see why words, when deployed in relation to the vagina, are always more than "just words." Because of the subtlety of the mind-body connection, words about the vagina are . . . often used as a means of social control . . . Words about the vagina create environments that directly affect women's bodies. The words women hear being used about their vaginas change, for better or worse, what they purport to describe. Because of their effect on the female autonomic nervous system (ANS), words about the vagina can either help or hurt actual vaginal response.

A complex social history offers us a choice. Throughout the ages, society has told women and men how to view women's genitals-essentially a "cultural Rorschach." And today we necessarily stand at the summation of history. So what is the vagina? Cunt? Hole? A pussy? An axe wound? A shameful and filthy burden? Just a more sensitive, less developed, inverted penis?

Or. a portal to the creative and spiritual center of a female universe?

Freud is dead. Vagina: A New Biography is a final nail in the phallic coffin of his tired philosophies. Tuned-in male readers may in fact find themselves in the blues of vagina envy, longing for a glimpse at the orgasmic transcendence Wolf suggests is available to nearly all women, given the right circumstances, techniques, and self-assurance. Perhaps it's time we get back to an age where the vagina is considered blessed, where we use words like the Hindi yoni (sacred spot), dewy rose, and golden lotus-instead of gross absurdities like beef curtains, pink taco, and cock sleeve. Words have power, and we're all susceptible.

Wolf presents proof in the form of scientific evidence: a growing body of lab-based knowledge that is rumbling toward truths that Tantra has offered for centuries, but that the Western outlook has trampled via abject medicalization, pornographic objectification, and fear-based suppression. But the good news is, there are gurus and other folks who are deeply interested in helping women? heal from within, who are happy to gaze into their centers, acknowledge their beings, and massage their sacred spots until the spirit itself is renewed, refreshed, and whole once again. Stand before her gates of paradise and consider: isn't it nicer to think of what's between her legs with a shivery smile than a wry grimace? Can't we bring back the magic and the mystery? the worship without subservience? the non-drooling awe? the deep-down, genuine love?

So go ahead; take your time with the book. Enjoy its slick flow, its smooth structure, its gripping complexity. And at the breathless, fluttery, whimsical end, raise a hand to cheer: Hip-hip-vagina! vagina! vagina!

Banner graphic source: Nude Girl Standing by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.85.26.54). In the public domain.