February 14, 2014
Draw a penis. Go on. Don’t be shy about it. Draw a penis on your calculus notebook. On your friend’s short story for workshop. Even right on this page.
Done?
It’s not hard, right? (Please, no pun intended.) Saying, “Draw a penis” is as simple a request as, “Draw a smiley face,” or “Draw an ampersand.” This week, I asked 10 people, “Hey, can you draw a penis for me?” and none of them needed any help. A cartoon penis is a cultural symbol.
Of course, like real human anatomy, penis drawings do vary by person. Most are erect, though some are flaccid. Some are hairy. Some are bare. Some have tips and others—poor things—don’t. Some are ejaculating, and how nice for them. But even with all their individualities, all cartoon penises, it seems, share the same key elements: two balls (though, curiously, often sans sack?) and a shaft. Your cartoon penis has both, right? Cool. Nice job.
Now draw a vagina.
“Oh my God!” said Hannah Cook ’16. “I don’t even know how to do that.”
Similarly, McKenzie Foster ’14 responded, “I really don’t know how to draw one.”
So arises my concern.
If we all draw penises with such ease—on that desk in the library, on our drunk friend’s face—then why, or even how do women get tripped up when asked to draw a defining part of their bodies?
It wasn’t just Hannah or McKenzie. I don’t have a default vagina drawing. Neither did the other people with whom I spoke. And, I’m guessing, neither do you. The brief, on-campus poll I conducted only served to support what I already suspected. As a society, we don’t have an iconic cartoon vagina.
So arises another concern, voiced by my brother and, most likely, at least thought of by many people I talked to: “Who cares?” Cartoon penises are “immature and silly.” Why make it worse by adding a bunch of vaginas to the group? Immature and silly—I agree. Someone drawing a penis on my kitchen cabinet during a party? Very immature. Someone drawing a giant, car-sized penis in the snow outside my window? Very silly. It’s all just fun and games—until someone adds a vagina to the mix. Then, c’mon. That’s just weird.
If you haven’t seen Superbad by now, I can’t help you, but for those who have: One of the best scenes in the film, of course, is the infamous dick drawing scene. When Seth (Jonah Hill) was little, he had a problem where he would “kind of just sit around all day drawing pictures of dicks.” For an elementary school student, he was pretty creative, too. He drew dicks emerging from banana peels, dicks warding off army tanks, a robot’s dick, George Washington’s dick.
Why wasn’t the scene about drawing vaginas? Easy: It wouldn’t have been funny. Even me—that chick writing a manifesto about our cultural void of cartoon vaginas—wouldn’t have found it funny. I mean, when was the last time you saw a cartoon vagina? An image can’t be funny or even immature or silly when it’s an anomaly. Then it’s just awkward, out-of-place, or even shocking and offensive.
The vaginas people drew from me related to each other, but only in the way that people “relate” to each other at extended family reunions—you know, when you look at that awkward third cousin you haven’t seen since you were six and try to remember his name. Most of them looked like cracked-open walnuts, others looked like almonds, a couple looked like doughnuts. One person drew me a tulip, which, I think, was meant to be flattering, but turned out to be the most confused vagina of the group. Ultimately, what most connected the drawings was the initial bewilderment and hesitation of the artists. A cartoon penis? Sure. A cartoon vagina? …Why?
I’ll let Maude Lebowski’s (Julianne Moore) famous monologue from The Big Lebowski answer that one: “Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr. Lebowski? My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal, which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina. They don’t like hearing it, they find it difficult to say, whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.”
I don’t think it’s just men, though. I think discomfort and even unfamiliarity with the vagina is instilled in everyone. Sorry to say this—but think back to middle school health class. (I first heard this point at “The Female Orgasm” talk earlier this year.) When we learn about genitalia, and we’re shown anatomical diagrams, the image we see for men is the external organ, whereas the image we see for women is purely internal: the ovaries and fallopian tubes. The biological features of the vagina are highlighted whereas the actual body part, which we come in contact with and have a relationship to, is hidden from view.
What if the vagina wasn’t hidden, though? What if we all had an idea of what a vagina looked like and we drew that on drunk friends’ faces and in the unplowed snow and on the kitchen cabinets in the suites and on the desks in the library? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it could be kind of cool—even, dare I say it, funny. So consider this a challenge, Hamilton. Go graffiti some cartoon vaginas.
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