The New Sexism: Little Girls Don't Have a Cutesy Alternative Word for Vagina

Have you ever had so much spare time on your hands that, when pondering various names for genitalia, you believe that little boys have sanitized slang terms for their genitals, but little girls don’t, and that’s just unfair? And, upon having that realization, you decide to make it your work to create a new term for female genitalia and have it adopted throughout the country?

Nah, me neither. But Anna Kosztovics did. When she was pregnant, nearly 20 years ago, she “became obsessed with the topic.”

“It came from a gender equality perspective. Boys have a word for it, and girls don’t, and that made me mad. A friend told me she knew someone who used the word snippa, so I started practising it in front of the mirror.” In 2000 she began promoting it, visiting 50 of Malmö’s then 200 nursery schools, and after that it simply took off.

Now she wants the 360 million people who speak English to come up with their own alternative word for vagina.

Little girls grow up with the thought that there’s something wrong between their legs because it’s not mentionable.

She explains more in this BBC News video:

Here’s a thought: What is wrong with using the word “vagina”? Little girls only think there’s something wrong with the word if you project that there’s something shameful about it. In fact, many professionals advise using anatomically correct language with children when teaching them about body parts, especially genitalia, because it leads to healthy attitudes about their bodies and avoids confusion in the horrible event that they need to report that someone tried to touch them inappropriately.

If you are on board with Kosztovics’ mission, though, here are a number of alternative terms our own Amelia Hamilton used in a recent article (which dealt with all of the things Gwyneth Paltrow suggests women put in their…ladyflower).