Currently Reading: Vagina

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(and yes, I am aware of the unintentional hilarity about a book called Vagina and Amazon's "Click to look inside!")

I finished JK Rowling's book yesterday and was ready to start my new book today.  But I was worried.  I'm reading a book called Vagina, am I going to get harassed on the bus?  Hmm, maybe I'll take the book jacket off.  Nope, giant picture of a naked lady.  Looks like I'm just going for it.  So I casually hid the front and side of the book, basically all areas showing the title, to avoid my morning commute getting weird (weirder than usual at least).

Anyway, I only started it this morning and am about forty pages in.  The author, Naomi Wolf, wanted to look at the different cultural constructs of the vagina, thinking that she would learn that many of them were just wrong.  What she discovered instead is that they all have small truths to them.  The more interesting thing she found was the brain-vagina connection, and how that correlates to female confidence and creativity.  As in many great artists, writers, poets, etc achieved their best work after some sort of sexual awakening.  What's that all about?

The book is dense, with lots of scientific, medical, and psychological language, but its a very interesting look at something that we tend not to think about.  Or like me on the bus this morning, are embarrassed of.  It seems that the book will look at the vagina not as just being about pleasure, or just about patriarchy, or just about pornography, but about all of those things and many more.

Yes, I've been on a feminist literature kick lately.  Bear with me.

PS.  Looking forward to reading this in the airport/on the plane tomorrow.  Partly hoping I get some dirty looks and/or absurd comments from strangers.