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Salient Vol. 74
constance cravings
Got a sex question? Want to ask anonymously and see it in Salient? Go to askconstance.com for your hard-earned 15 minutes of faceless, pantsless fame. So my friend told me that girls have either ‘innie’ or ‘outy’ vaginas. Like bellybuttons. Is this true? If so what is the difference? Much love, hungrysexbox Totally! But it’s worth noting that technically ‘innie’ or ‘outie’ vagina isn’t correct. Because that would mean her innards were outside her body. Which wouldn’t be good. Firstly, let’s try and get labels right— not in an unsexy “I want to touch your outer labia/Oooh yeah that’s a nice vaginal opening” kinda way, but let’s at least just attempt to not call everything by the name of one part. It would be like deciding to categorise all human body parts from the waist down as “knees”. Woman (and some men, let’s not forget not everybody identifies with the genitals were born with) have a vulva—the entirety of the outer genital area. The outside “lips” are the labia majora, and once you open them you have the inside “lips” (smaller, not hairy) known as the labia minora. Big and little labia Okay. Now the inside labia is different for everyone. For some it’s hardly there
Position of the week: Scissor me timbers
at all; for others they’re big and wavy like flower petals. They come in all colours, shapes and sizes, and this includes sometimes being visible outside the labia majora. Here is your ‘outie’. What’s weird about ‘innies’ and ‘outies’ is that someone somewhere in history seems to have made a totally arbitrary decision that ‘innies’ were better. Which is blatantly weird, wrong, and I still can’t figure out what on earth kind of difference it makes. If anything, those with bigger inner labias apparently sometimes find their lips ‘latch on’ to incoming objects—like cocks—giving the owner of said cock a most pleasurable sensation. Amazing. Although I know that most people are supposed to know that ‘perfect’ little pussies in porn are often cosmetically sculpted and not reflective of the vast range of pussies everywhere, I think with the saturation level it’s easy to forget. No matter how conscious we are that not all women have bronzed, rock hard bodies with equally rock hard boobs, no pubic hair, pink buttholes and inner labias which are tightly packed into neatly symmetrical, dainty little pussies, most people who’ve used the internet for more than 3 seconds find it hard to shake that standard. Even if we are politically opposed to that standard (not people who fit it, just the expectation everyone should). Like how I know Young Richard Gere in Pretty Woman would probably make a terrible partner, but actually if Young Richard Gere in Pretty Woman wanted to put me up in an apartment and buy me a golden vibrator and a domesticated fox I would have to struggle to debate a life of messages which told me that I’d hit the jackpot. No body hair, bronze abs and ‘innie’ pussies are really sexy. As are muffs, soft bellies, and ‘outie’ pussies. These are not opposites or mutually exclusive moulds, but I just want to reiterate that there should be no ‘better’ look for genitals, or indeed bodies in general. Bodies are fun and pussies are real fun and who gives a flying rat’s ass what shape it comes in.
Cheesed Off: The Kapai Edition Ally Garrett I have always maintained that media institutions have an imperative role in ensuring that marginalised groups have a public voice. Thus, every three weeks, here I am once-more-unto-the-breaching for the tired, the poor, the huddling masses yearning to breathe free. Feta is a marginalised group, right? It must be. I can’t think of any other explanation for the critical under-representation of this cheese. Every time I buy a feta salad I’m sorely disappointed by what can only be described as false advertising. It really gets my goat(‘S CHEESE). Feta is to salads what non-white actors are to blockbuster films: you have to look hard to spot some and even then it’s usually just a token appearance. Thus, the Comparative Feta Salad Study continues and I’m on the QUESO, eating disappointing salads so you don’t have to. This week my journey took me to the BNZ Food Court which is possibly the MASCARPONE-ly place in Wellington that is more depressing than New World Metro. The BNZ Food Court is on Willis Street. I can’t tell if it’s the below-ground-level thing but it really feels like being in hell. Be-suited corporates sit at benches eating watery curries with plastic cutlery. That JB Hi-Fi smell lingers in the air. In a case much like that of the Tasmanian Tiger, one of Wellington’s last juice bars remains; dreaming of “The Noughties” when pulverised fruit was sold on every