Wednesday 4 November 2015

Let's call a spade a spade. Unless it's a shovel. Or a diggy stick. Or a spayspay, or spoospoo...

*warning - another wordy post with little quilting and a few NSFW words*



So man and me, we're sitting on the sofa exhaling deeply after a successful end to the "bedtime" routine (otherwise known as moos mental hour).
"during her bath tonight she did something" man says, looking frankly a bit shifty.

"oh?" says I, thinking either floaty turds or some such malarkey.

"well,"  he says.  "she had the sponge, washing herself, and I said 'now wash your fanny'."
(*for any American readers, in UK fanny refers to vagina*)

"aaaaand?"  I say, not remotely surprised he's asked her to do it herself, as I know he really makes an effort to try to not be awkward about it but....  Blokes!  Anyway.  "aaaand?"

"Well.  She did it."  he says with concern.

"yeaaaaaah."  I say, with a 'so what' implied....

"She did it."  he says.  "She washed her fanny."

"okay,"  I say slowly, "what did you think she'd do?!"

"no," he says, (I'm clearly not getting the point here) "she did it, she knows she's got a fanny" he says, like all should be clear now.

"well of course she knows she's got a fanny!  what the hell are you on about?!"

"no!  She knows its a FANNY.  She knows that word."  He genuinely seems quite troubled.

I'm a bit bemused here I must admit.  "So?  What's the problem there?"

"well!  Isn't that a bit, well, a bit rude?"

Trying not to laugh, as he seems so concerned here, I said "well, I hate to break it to you but she probably knows you've got a willy too....it's just learning body parts!"

"I know, willys not rude though.  I just thought maybe we should have called it something else, that's all."

"Oh so Fanny is rude and Willy isn't?  What else would you call it?"  genuinely curious as to what he'll come up with now...

"well, I call it her funny front bum".

"...?...!....."  give me a minute...  "okay, so do you want her to grow up thinking its funny or peculiar?  Which?!"

"och no, course I dont, I dont know.  I never thought about it like that before."

"Right."  I said, thinking I should reign myself in a bit here and approach this better.  Admittedly I was enjoying myself a bit too much, and when I could see he was being so genuine too...  What a meany.
"I was told it was my 'front bottom', and in our house even 'bum' was considered a swear word.  Other girls thought I was well stuck up.  I didn't want to call it that with my girl.  Sorry, maybe we should have discussed it ages ago, I just didn't see a problem with fanny."

"ach, well, I don't know, I don't really have a problem with fanny" he says  (I'm thinking dont laugh dont laugh dont laugh)  "I just, well, for kids like, arent you meant to call it something less, well. rude?"

Letting the second 'fanny is rude' go, I say "Let's google it.  See what others say."

What followed was a good half hour or so of incredulity, laughter, disbelief...  Confusion, and in my case, ultimately a bit of a ranty strop!

All the googling and forum reading boiled down to this.  There seemed to be two camps.

On one side we have all the foo foo's, the nu nu's, the flower's, the Mary's (wtf?!), the Moo moo's (oh dear god we nicknamed our daughter a term for genitalia?  Way to traumatise her...), the lady garden's, the bits, the bitsies, the lady bits, the girl parts, the fuff, the gina, the china, the foof, the area, the minnie (what would mickey say?!) the ninnie (in Scotland a ninny is an idiot!), the twinkle (like the little star we sing of?!), the tuppence, the tuppy, the v-jay jay....  I could go on, but if my eyes roll any more they are likely to spin out of the sockets.
I don't wish to offend you if one of the above is yours.  Its a very personal thing, isn't it.  Each to their own!  But me?  I simply couldn't use any of them with a straight face.  Neither could man. (phew!).

On the other side, the straight forwards camp, we have the vagina, the vulva and the labia.
I find these a bit cold.  Correct they may be, but I'd only use them with a doctor...  I get the point though.  Sensible argument - a toe is a toe, a knee is a knee.  I'm more in agreement with a commenter who said "and do you tell her to wipe her anus?!!!"   Precisely.  Again man and I are in agreement (rare thing!), its a tummy not a stomach, its a bum not a posterior, and neither of us are inclined to want to say vagina to a two year old....

However.  This is where I got a bit ranty....  Both camps with their completely opposite names, both camps seemed to agree on one thing.  Apparently, Fanny is a bit rude.  But Willy isnt.

Why?

Why is fanny more rude than willy?

Why are we raising girls to be more self conscious and uncomfortable about their fanny than boys would be about their willy?

This inevitably brought me round to a favourite rant of mine, one which man has heard before, many times.  Why is the universally accepted most rude and offensive swear word CUNT?  I disagree with it's use as a derogatory term full stop, but the fact that its seemingly the most offensive of all cursing winds me up no end.

At the end of all our googling, man looked at me with a twinkle... "go on, join the forum, tell them you're telling our daughter it's a CUNT.  You know you want to...  Go on...."

I'm only too sorry to say that I didn't.  But I dont think thats the last of the gender equality discussions me and man will have now we have our Moo.  Not by a long shot!

Anyway.  To lighten things I'll leave you with this for fun.  Many would say it's one who dresses far too young for her age and another just doesn't dress enough!  I disagree.  I see two strong independent women who are always fighting to teach young girls (and the rest of the world!) to love their bodies and not fear their sexuality.  And ppfftt to all that, they do damn good pop too.





Miley Cyrus
“I don’t get the violence revenge thing. That’s supposed to be a good example? And I’m a bad role model because I’m running around with my titties out? I’m not sure how titties are worse than guns.”