Birdee

Is Brazilian waxing to blame for the rise in demand among Australian young women for labiaplasty? Melbourne GP Magda Simonis told the ABC last week that the trend for young women in particular to remove all hair from their vulvas was leaving many self-conscious about the appearance of their labia, even when they looked clinically normal. Dr Simonis, who has consulted with patients as young as 17 seeking referrals for…

I was 22, had a good job and was in a long-term relationship when I had an abortion. It started like I expect it does for everyone – my period was late. I was on the Pill but sometimes got really paranoid when the crimson tide hadn’t come a couple of days after it should have, so I bought a pregnancy test. I’d done this a couple of times before,…

Last week, along with eighteen other young women from Sydney Uni, I had my vagina photographed to make a political statement on the front cover of Honi Soit, Australia’s oldest running weekly student newspaper. We believe that the way the media represents women’s vaginas is neither realistic or fair, and causes women to feel uncomfortable about how they look. It also gives men a distorted idea of what a vagina…

I’ve always found it fascinating to listen to boys talk about their penises. From a young age, it seems like they are taught to be very well-acquainted with their junk. Whether it’s bragging about how far they can pee, coming up with questionable pet names, or just letting the world know how many times they’ve wanked today, dick conversations are always on the table. Maybe it’s because our bits tend…

Making your own clothes is the best. Once you get a hang of it (and I promise you that it’s not hard, I’m an entirely self-taught sewer – thank you, YouTube tutorials!), you get total control over the design and structure of your clothes. You’ll own a completely unique piece of clothing and best yet, if someone compliments you on it, you can say that you made it yourself! Things…

Nancy Tucker devised a fiendish system of plastic bags and shorts with removable weights. All her energy was spent on putting together clever schemes to deceive her friends and family, teachers and doctors. Day after day, she didn’t eat a thing. Tucker’s memoir The Time In Between is a painful yet artful account of the throes of anorexia, and later, bulimia. Painful is the right word because when Tucker describes…