It isn’t so much a race as a time trial. The record for the women’s 100m fin hurdle is 18.5 seconds, held by Veronica Torr from New Zealand. German Christopher Irmscher is the men’s record holder, with a time of 14.8 seconds. 

To put that time into perspective, the men’s and women’s hurdle records without fins on is 12.8 and 12.2 seconds respectively (the men’s record is for the slightly longer 110-metre hurdle). Think about that next time you struggle to walk along the beach wearing fins."

She writes a chapter called “Baker-Miller Pink” which I love and have photographed below. Basically it’s about a study in 1985 in which Dr Alexander Schauss (the Director of Life Sciences at the American Institute for Biological Research in Washington) looked at the psychological and physiological responses to the colour pink. In short, he found that the colour pink had calming affects and produced the perfect shade that had the maximal effect at reducing hostility. He experimented in prisons, painting certain rooms ‘baker-miller pink’ and seeing that it did in fact show evidence of reducing aggression and calming inmates down. Scarlet curtis writes “while there  is no conclusive evidence to show baker-miller pink genuinely changes the human brain, we are using it on the cover of this book, in combination with the books contents, to enact a little experiment of our own on a certain form of aggression that we like to call ‘the patriarchy’. The patriarchy reinforces gender stereotypes . The goal of the feminist movement is to combat this. It aims to give each person on this planet the freedom to live their life the way they want to live it, unhindered by sexism or oppression or aggression. The goal of the feminist movement to remove these hostilities is not that far from the goal of the scientist who invented Baker-miller pink. 

When I was a child I absolutely loved everything pink, but I remember going off it. I know now it had nothing to do with the colour, and everything to do with what I had learnt it was to ‘be a girl’. I didn’t want to be associated with weakness, I couldn’t climb trees and kick boys in karate if my favourite colour was so ‘girly’. My parents would have never let me think I was less capable because I was a girl, but of course I would still be affected by ideas of ‘societal norms’ enforced upon us since birth. Fortunately, the anti-pink phase didn’t last too long because I realised that fitting into a neat little box was boring and impossible. To me, pink still represents feminity, but feminity represents strength, humility, kindness, power and empathy. 

 The general consensus was that many of us:

> Thought that we had done something for our vulvas to look a certain way, whether that be through masturbating, or perhaps through sex. 

Towards the end of my animation see's the main character handed a phone displaying a picture captioned "pussy like this, give it a miss". This came from a conversation I had with a friend, who recalled an experience in which a boy asked her if she had a ham sandwich, following a tweet that went viral at the time. Jennifer Mayers, a mother from Louisiana, tweeted an image of two ham sandwiches, one with significantly more ham showing on the left. The caption read "the reason I preach #Christianity. My daughters represents the right. Taylor Swifts represents the left". Her line of reasoning being that larger labias correlate with having more sex. This of course is completely anatomically incorrect, and blatant slut shaming. Our inadequate sex educations, however, left us in a position where we could perceive that deeply problematic 'information' as true. 

> Our vaginas didn't look like the one's in porn, and therefore were deemed unattractive.

When I refer to porn here, I'm not talking about ethical porn. In a nutshell, ethical pornography is consensual, the performers are respected and paid fairly, and everybody has a complete understanding of what is happening and are comfortable with it. Furthermore, body types are more diverse, there is better representation of queer relationships and the depictions of sex are more realistic. The same cannot be said about leading mainstream porn sites, like Pornhub. Here content is almost totally centred around the male gaze, and often frames women in a degrading or dehumanising way. Equally, it's not always made in a way that is fair, respectful or even consensual. The bodies (and vulvas) we see in this kind of porn, offer little diversity and therefore often perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards.

> We wondered whether we could simply chop it (our labia) off. Or thought we should consider labiaplasty. 

I don't think anyone actually thought this was a good idea, but it certainly crossed our minds. In the book "something" there is a passage about a girl that actually did this. I know a few of us discovered labiaplasty too, and thought it was something we needed in order to be accepted or deemed normal.

>We learnt from one another.

So much of our 'sex education' was what we learnt through talking to our peers. What schools provided offered little more than a shameful, fear mongering talk on STI's and putting a condom on a banana. For many of us our peers were the most obvious, comfortable place to go for answers, so we guided and misguided one another. The end of my film illustrates the former of those, showing a moment where two girls both realise they're not the only one with a 'longer labia' thus offering some comfort and lessening the shame they both feel. Often many of the things we felt ashamed of were because we "thought we were the only one" experiencing or doing something. I wanted to capture the comfort and liberation from shame that comes from a simple "me too".

> In the past teenage girls wouldn’t have been able to compare vulvas, but now with the internet they can.

> Girls as young as 9 now are being referred to gynaecologists with anxieties about the way their vulva appears. 

> There is a lack of access to reliable information

> Girls are seeing cosmetic surgery websites and looking at before and after pictures when people have had labiaplasty. They think “I look like that, and that woman had surgery, so there must be something wrong with me.”

> Often girls grapple with these feeling for years before plucking up the courage to speak to a parent or see a doctor, but it’s hard to undo years of damage in a 20 minute appointment and convince someone they’re perfectly normal. 

> In terms of what they are seeing that they don’t like, it’s almost always the labia minora. 

>In medical school, they were shown the genital anatomy development of men which showed loads of changes, but in woman the only change was pubic hair. There was no comparative information in development of a vulva throughout the years. There isn’t enough information on normal genital development in woman, even though the appearance can change dramatically through time. 

Notes from second interview with Dr. Naomi Crouch, chair of the British society for paediatric and adolescent gynaecology.

> The prevalence of labiaplasty and the advertisement of it as something desirable, before and after pictures, slang terms like “designer vagina”. All these things are painting an idea that surgically altered bodies are the goal. 

> The standard argument is that in porn you see lots of images that are digitally altered and the people may have been surgically altered. ‘Neat, petite, and discreet’ vulvas are what’s considered conventionally attractive, so performers with these body types naturally or through surgery are more likely to be popular thus perpetuating the idea that that type of vulva is the most attractive.

>Porn isn’t necessarily the biggest influence. By just blaming porn we are missing other problems that need attention. 

> misogynistic put downs of women’s natural anatomy and the corresponding shaming have been around for a lot longer than online porn.

> Some women have said to her that they’ve seen a greater variety of vulvas in porn and that they found some reassurance in seeing bodies that look like theirs. What needs to happen is that young women see bodies that look like theirs in education and other places.

>It’s important to acknowledge the psychological stress that comes with vulva anxiety, instead of saying “for goodness sake you’re just normal, there’s worse things.”

>Mentions finding accurate online information. There was a leaflet commissioned by the British Society named ‘so what is a vulva, anyway?” It was developed with adolescents, specially looking at the huge variety in normal at anatomy and offering reassurance. 

>Website mentioned to look at: The Labia Library. 

>A lot of young girls worries include what future partners will say. It’s so important to teach them about self esteem and that giving somebody access to that part of your body is a privilege and it should be respected. 

>An email they received from a listener at the end.

“After a childhood of vulva exploration I was told aged 19, by a boyfriend, that when I opened my legs he felt sick. As a sexual health nurse I had seen many vulvas in my job. I knew they were as different and as individual as peoples faces and more than adequate to “do the job”. Men had also told me that you “don’t look at the mantel piece when you’re poking the fire”. But that didn’t stop me from having surgery. After three vaginal births and many years on ruminating on whether my labia was too large, aged 40, I did have a labiaplasty. It was a huge relief, I was so pleased. I later caught herpes and I’m convinced that the virus entered through compromised labial tissues after the surgery. Since then, I started a sex education business in schools delivering honest, evidence based, non-biased lessons empowering young men and women to have healthy sex lives.” 

The story is my own, and by sharing it I hope to shine light on the (frankly bullshit) shame so many girls like me were made to feel about our bodies.