The Longest Shortest Time

Episode #233: A Very Vaginal Voyage with Rachel Gross

When Rachel Gross was in 4th grade, she asked a question about periods in sex ed and the room erupted in laughter. She got the message loud and clear: you were supposed already know about sex stuff — and if you didn’t, you shouldn’t ask.

But Rachel’s curiosity could not be stopped. As a science writer, she’s made a career of asking questions — often about sex stuff, and specifically about the vagina. In fact, she wrote an entire book about vaginas!

Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage is a captivating tour of the vagina and its surrounding organs (which Rachel likes to call “the vagina and friends”). Along the way, Rachel shares vaginal myths and facts, and she introduces us to some of the remarkable people who study female anatomy — like a researcher named Patty Brennan who makes “vagina lollipops” with dental latex to help determine the internal structure of animal vaginas!

Tune in as Rachel takes us on a deep (and delightfully nerdy) dive into the misunderstood world of vaginas.

More writing by Rachel

• Half the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It? (NYT)

• Women in Menopause Are Getting the Short Shrift (The Atlantic)

• What Can We Learn from Menstrual Blood? (The New Yorker)

• Body Language (NYT series on the history of medical language)

More on the vagina & friends
The diagrams we were shown in sex ed of the vagina and friends were usually two-dimensional and basic. And very few of us were shown images of the full structure of the clitoris, which Rachel describes as “bird-like.” You can see what she means in the image above. Check out the links below for even more fascinating info and detail.

• The Clitoris, Uncovered (video by Rachel for Scientific American)

• Cliteracy Reel (3D depictions by Sophia Wallace)

• SEX-ED+ (company that makes silicone molds of clitorises and vulvas for educational purposes)

Got pelvic pain?

• Check out our episodes about pelvic floor physical therapy

• Reach out to Tight Lipped, a grassroots movement by and for people with chronic vulvovaginal and pelvic pain