We're really excited to announce that The Great Wall of Vagina is coming to Sh! March 16th will be Lip Appreciation Day, we hope you've already seen our survey and giveaway (and filled it in). And now we've got some great events lined up to help you love your lips, and by lips we mean vulvas!From Saturday 5th March we'll be displaying some pieces from Jamie McCartney's The Great Wall of Vagina project. Then at 12.30 on Saturday the 2nd of April we'll be hosting a talk and book signing in-store with Jamie McCartney, where we'll be talking art, body image and vaginas.We’ll also have some special products to help you express your love for your lips, everything from vulva colouring books to your own casting kit.
Jamie's work celebrates the huge natural range there can be in the appearance of the vulva. Labiaplasty was up 49% in 2015 on the previous year and 87% of women who opt for vaginal rejuvenation admitted to doing so for purely aesthetic reasons. That's not good!
We want women to love their lips and to know that whatever they've got is both beautiful and normal. Unless we have a troupe of female lovers through our bedroom, we never really get a chance to see what real women look like; the images of vulvas that are readily available are too often from porn and having been nipped, tucked, bleached and plucked to within an inch of their life, they give an unrealistic idea of how women actually look.
More about Jamie McCartney and The Great Wall of Vagina
JAMIE McCARTNEY
Jamie McCartney is an English artist, trained at Hartford Art School, USA, from where he graduated with highest honours in 1991.
Having worked on grass roots environmental campaigns as well as on a peace boat in his youth, a strong socio-political current runs through many of his works. McCartney embraces experiment as the driving force behind his creativity, when questioned, “I just make stuff” is his mantra.
The Great Wall of Vagina consists of 400 plaster casts of vulvas, all unique. The age range of the women involved stretches from 18 to 76. The work includes mothers and daughters, identical twins, transgendered men and women as well as a woman pre and post natal and another one pre and post labiaplasty. It's a far cry from pornography and an amazing exploration of human variety.
Vulvas and labia are as different as faces and many people, particularly women, don't seem to know that. McCartney hopes this sculpture will help to combat the exponential rise, seen in recent years, of cosmetic labial surgeries. This new fashion for creating 'perfect' vaginas sets a worrying trend for future generations of women which The Great Wall of Vagina aims to challenge.
We are really excited to be hosting these events and we hope you will drop in and see us!
Events
From Saturday 5th March Art exhibition featuring work from Jamie McCartney's The Great Wall of Vagina
16th March Lip Appreciation Day, we'll be announcing the winner of our giveaway so make sure you enter!
2nd April 12.30 Book Signing and talk from Jamie McCartney, this should be a really great free event so please come along.
