Thinx - The Vagina Book: An Owners Manual for Taking Care of Your Down There

For anyone who wants to get to know their vagina a little bit better.

Text copyright 2020 by Thinx Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-8244-5 (hc)
ISBN 9781-4521-8290-2 (epub, mobi)

Design by Vanessa Dina.
Illustrations by Daiana Ruiz.

This book contains advice and information relating to health and well-being. It is not intended to replace medical advice and should be used to supplement rather than replace any needed care by your doctor or mental health professional. While all efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication, the publisher and authors are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

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by Margaret Cho

I dont have my period anymore. Its weirdI miss it. I never thought I would actually miss it. My monthly flow was always a hurricane, blowing through me every 28 days without any thought to what I might have preferred to be doing. I bled hard throughout my career highs and lows, falling in love and breaking up, marriages and divorces, traveling all over the world and staying home.

My monthly bleed was a constant. I counted on itlike that annoying friend who shows up, not quite unannounced, but whose visit you conveniently blocked out because you would so much rather they didnt come. But then it finally happened: My period broke up with me and decided never to darken my door (or my panties, sheets, sofas, dining room chairs, or even floors) ever again. Now, I surprise myself with my grief. The mystery of my menses leaving me was, at first, as baffling as when it originally came.

I didnt have a proper education about my period. I didnt have proper education on anything about my body. My generation was treated to fifth-grade film strips that flickered and stuttered from the classroom projector, while the boys were sent to another classroom to play Heads Up, 7 Up. These ancient strips of celluloid were meant to let us in on the magic of womanhood, but in truth they were just very long commercials for maxi pads and sanitary belts. Thats right, I said belts! I am that old. I just had to wing itin the era before maxi pads had wings! No one told me that the thick black hair that crowded the follicles of my head would now sprout between my legs and under my arms. I had to provide my own answers to why my chest felt sore most of the time, and why many days of the month I would want to cry and scream for seemingly no reason. Puberty was a crazy choose your own adventure mystery to which I was provided no clues.

My first period stunned and scared methat dark blood bubbling out of my crotch was unexpected and startling. I told my mother, who got me a giant box of maxi pads (which felt, most days, like I was riding a brick). She showed me an elaborate method for their disposal.

You have to roll this up and wrap and wrap and wrap with toilet paper. She demonstrated by winding the toilet paper around the offending used pad until it was a large mass of white paper, roughly the size of a newborn baby. Then, you cannot throw this in the bathroom garbage can! she shouted, as she cast an angry glance over at the tiny, plastic trash receptacle next to the toilet. You have to take it downstairs and put it in the kitchen garbage! We walked down together to the kitchen so I could watch her as she put the toilet paper/maxi pad baby into a brown paper shopping bag and buried it deep into the kitchen trash, safe underneath the banana peels and coffee grounds. She closed the lid hard and lowered her voice, Nobody should see it.

Of course, rebel that I am, I would leave the monstrously large and bloodied maxi pads on the back of the toilet, on the floor, or in my white canopy bed. I dont think my pads ever made it into any trash can. I dont hide anythingthis is my nature.

My mother never said anything else about it. She knew I was actively disobeying her, but she was also too mortified to stop me. Her silence continued after her hysterectomy, which she never spoke of except to say she was Finally free... feels so good!

Since most of the women in my family had had the same operation (hysterectomies being absolutely de rigueur in the 70s), I dont have a blueprint of how my people age out of the systemthat blood system that makes a girl a woman. If I had a do-over, I would ask lots of questions and force answers from my silent tribe of women who bury their pads.

Things are totally different today. Youre the luckiest bleeders in history. I really mean it. Youre living in the Golden Age of Menstruation! I envy you! We live in a time where questions can be answered in the flash of a Google search. (The quality of those answers, however, is another story.) We have products the young girl in me marvels at every day. I cant even imagine what ease a product like Thinx would have given me. Even better, now theyve put all the knowledge about the mysteries and secrets we seek in one place. We desperately need resources like this to strip away the lies, misconceptions, and shame around the bodies of over half the worlds population! It makes me wish for my period again just so that I could have my questions answered and live my very best, bloody life.

An accomplished performer in all formats, Margaret Cho could be called the Queen of All Media, having conquered the worlds of film, television, books, music, and theater. She has five Grammy Award nominations (two for music albums, Cho Dependent and American Myth) and one Emmy nod for her groundbreaking work on 30 Rock. Never one to shy away from a difficult or taboo topic, her socially aware brand of stand-up comedy has made her both a thought leader as well as a teacher to those with open minds and open hearts.

how I unlearned everything I thought I believed about vaginas

by Dr. Jenn Conti

I am an ob/gyn doctor: I deliver babies, I do pap smears and breast cancer screenings, I surgically remove uteruses and ovaries, and I perform abortions, because all of this is part of healthcare. Inclusivity and choice are guiding principles in my work. But I wasnt always this way. Anyone who knew me as a teenager might not recognize the woman I am today.

When I was sixteen years old, I considered myself to be pro-life. I thought abortion was murder. I thought anyone who considered it was selfish, coldhearted, and godless. In the community I grew up in, it was common to believe that abortion was the pinnacle of evil in the world. So pervasive was this mentality that killing babies was, not infrequently, the topic of social group discussions. If we could just get other people to see how truly black and white the topic of abortion was, theyd surely recognize the moral depravity of the issue, the injustice for the unborn. I wanted to be an ob/gyn doctor because, as the eldest of nineteen grandchildren, I had seen birth, in all its glory, eighteen times over. I wanted to help bring babies into the world, not shut them out of it. I, of all people,