My left ovary was in pain.

If you’re just tuning in and haven’t browsed the archives, you should know that I really love my lady-parts. I listen to them, I take care of them, I try to give them everything they could possibly want or need. “Take care of your vagina and it will take care of you” is an oft repeated phrase of mine. 

(Although it does inaccurately use the word vagina in place of “vagina/vulva/womb conglomeration” which gives me a mental image of Shonen manga robots when they connect together to make a MEGA ROBOT. I suppose “female uro-genital system” or “female reproductive system” are accurate but they sound so clinical. I’m just going to keep calling it my lady parts or vagina and prepare myself for the onslaught of “Improper terminology!!” that sometimes follows a post. ::ducks under a pile of lacy undergarments:: )

Back to my ovary. There was a lot of pain in the area of my left ovary. It sucked. It felt like being stabbed, although I’ve never been stabbed so I can’t say for sure. The pain started during vigorous sex. Since the vigorous sex was with my boyfriend I felt it was ok to ask him to come to the gynecologist with me. If by ask you mean tearfully repeat “aaaEEEEEEwhimperwhimperOUCH” in a squeaky voice a few times until the meaning can be deciphered. I think he would have offered to come if I hadn’t asked. That kind of behavior usually inspires blow jobs later, just saying…

My hard drive had just crashed as well. I keep meticulous notes on what my vagina is exposed to, when it bleeds, anything strange that happens, when all of these things start and end, when my frequent STD tests were taken, but I’d been keeping all of these notes in my iCal, which had disappeared with the rest of the contents of my hard drive.

I was filling out paperwork in the gynecologist’s office. I couldn’t remember when my last period started because I always write it down and then forget it. I was headed into the bathroom to wipe with a sterile wipe and then pee in a cup. I started to panic because the doctor needs data in order to diagnose and my lack of computer back-up meant I couldn’t give her much data. Actually, I’d been panicking for a day or so because my vagina was in intense horrible stabby pain and I was starting to feel like shooting myself in the face would really be a more tolerable option than what I was feeling, but the lack of data added a bit more panic and put me into near-hyperventilation mode.

“I can’t remember when my last period was, she’s going to need to know this, oh man.”

“The 29th”

“You’re good….”

“I checked your twitter.”

Matt is calm. This is a good quality, a nice balance to my generally frenetic way of interacting with the world. I started to feel like I might make it through the appointment without curling up in a ball and having a spectacularly melodramatic meltdown. 

The doctor, a statuesque woman with a German accent in knee-high stiletto boots did some poking and prodding, threw out a few possibilities:

“It could be a Hernia…”

“OH GOD I’ll never be able to do a sit-up again.”

“Or an Ovarian Cyst…”

“Gah! They’re going to have to operate and take some giant thing out of my abdomen and cut it open to check for cancer!”

“Or PID…”

“But I get tested for Chlamydia all the time. Literally, all the time. Sometimes I just go get a test for peace of mind when I haven’t even been potentially exposed to something.”

“Well, we’re going to start you on antibiotics just in case and then send you for a sonogram and a this and a that and maybe this other thing.”

“Eeeeugh, antibiotics. Ok.”

Later, the sonogram technician told me she could see fluid and what very much looked like the remains of a cyst. I tweeted about it. It turns out that quite a few women who I am friends with, or who follow me on twitter have had this kind of awful experience.

I want to know why I didn’t know about this possibility. I want to know why we can all list the vague symptoms of a heart attack or choking or the flu and know what to do in those situations but we aren’t as well educated on some of the things that can go awry with our reproductive organs. I want to know why giving women this kind of knowledge before they’re in huge amounts of pain isn’t a priority. Obviously the answer is to discuss it. 

Suggestions/comments/graphic personal anecdotes?

-Stoya

…and a fairly unedited rant on some closely related subjects.

Yesterday I went in for my first laser hair removal treatment on my ladyparts.

Since laser hair removal is fairly permanent and I’ve had a couple of bad waxing experiences where the aesthetician took too much hair or shaped what they left too much for my tastes, I was very specific about what of my pubes I wanted to keep. I was so specific that we actually got a marker and drew lines indicating what should go. The laser technician was noticeably surprised by how much of my pubic hair I wanted to keep. I felt slightly judged.

Personally, I like to have options with my bush. I like to be able to be completely bald or have a lush patch of fur in the front. I am, however, completely certain that I want the hair on my outer labia (or as my former manager Adella used to call it “the undercarriage”) gone. See, it gets caught in my lacy underpants sometimes and hurts when it gets pulled out.

Fun factoid: I didn’t really wear underwear until a couple of years ago. It probably has something to do with spending so much of my childhood in a leotard and tights, where underwear turns into this bunchy mess that ruins the lines of an arabesque. My coming-of-age tale of learning to love lingerie isn’t really the current topic of discussion, but the bottom line is that my time with Digital Playground showed me how nifty underwear can be. I really took a liking to panties. I’ve never been able to get used to the pinch of a pubic hair getting ripped out by panty elastic though.

So I decided the undercarriage hair had to go. While we were down there, it made sense to kill the few hair follicles that live outside the panty lines… the ones that I always shaved or tweezed or waxed regardless of whether I was growing a full untamed bush or going for a more manicured look. I decided to go ahead with laser removal because I get razorburn like craaaazy and it hurts.

When I tweeted yesterday about the fact that I was having some of my vulva hair semi-permanently removed, some of my followers had a small “Stoya is going to have a perma-bald pudenda forever” party. I can see why some of you may have assumed that, but you are incorrect.

Maybe I’m just a bit snappier or more short-tempered this week than usual, but I reacted very negatively to what I perceived as a lack of appreciation for pussies in their natural state.

I just want everyone in the world to know that twats are incredibly varied and all wonderful, and I have intensely negative emotional reactions when I see anything that seems like vulva judgment.

Pubic hair comes in different colors, different textures, and different patterns of distribution. Vaginal canals (the part that can be fun to stick things in) have different textures. Labia come in different colors and sizes. If a woman wants to keep all of her pubic hair and nurture how wild it is or get rid of it completely, that is her choice. Whether a woman has light pink inner labia or dark purple inner labia, labia minora that reach outside of the majora and wave around like a flag, labia minora that are all tucked up inside in a way that looks kind of like a coin slot or absolutely anything in between, her pussy (in my opinion) is inherently beautiful.

-Stoya

(or: Stoya vs. Lady Porn Day Part 2: The Twat Talk Just Keeps On Comin’)

“Stoya’s experience is that the porn industry cares about what her body – including her vagina – looks like because of production value. That I understand: if the vagina was the bedroom of a house, each wall should be painted, the floor should be finished, the glass installed in the windows and a door frame put in place. Each vagina – and cock, and anus, and mouth – should look finished and clean.
However, mainstream porn – and the cosmetic industry, and mainstream media – has gone further than that. They’ve homogenized vaginas into a single “preferred” look that screams pre-pubescence: tight, light-colored and completely hairless labia, with a bare pubic mound (okay, sometimes there’s a liiiiittle tuft) and a bleached anus. Not only must the bedroom be “finished and clean,” but every window should be square, every door made from the same wood, every wall painted beige.”

-Reply by Jennifer Nicole via the Demoiselles

Uh… hey ladies… I kind of really hate to break this to you… but I work in mainstream porn. Digital Playground, the company that I’ve been with for the entirety of my hardcore career, they’re about as mainstream as you can get.

They’re everywhere. I can’t walk down the street in a major metropolitan area without seeing my face (or butt cheeks) in the window of an adult store. That Pirates movie was cut into a softcore flick and Blockbuster carries it. When Vivid still had a booth at the Adult Entertainment Expo, Digital Playground’s was sandwiched between them and Hustler.

Google ‘em real quick. Digital Playground is the company that launched Jesse Jane and Tera Patrick. That very same mainstream porn company sends someone running outside with an umbrella if they see me wander into the harsh LA sunlight on set. They don’t want me beige. DP’s main director, Robby D., is the one that got me to grow my pubic hair out in the first place.

Aside from my desire to defend the company that I’ve directly worked for and can speak from personal experience on, there really is plenty of pubic hair in porn, a variety of labia sizes/shapes, and a reasonable amount of different vulva colorings. I’m starting to wonder how you arrived at the opinion that this pre-pubescent pudenda look is so prolific in the adult industry.

Oh, and thanks for posting that sweet photo of my sweet outfit from AVN this year, but I only made the skirt. The top is a vintage Vivienne Westwood ebay find. I should really re-check that post and see if my wording is misleading or unclear.

I am a porn star.

I am a lady that makes porn.

I hear a lot from women about how they are uncomfortable with their vaginas. They wonder if it looks right, smells right, is the right color, shape, size, proportionate, if their labia stick out too much (or even not enough).

I hear that they appreciate my comfort with my own protruding labia and take it as validation that they don’t need a hairless “coin slot” vulva where everything is all tucked in in order to be attractive.

It’s nice to hear that ladies like my body and like that I run around with no clothing on sometimes, but seriously, you need to understand something.

Dudes do not give a fuck.

I’m focusing on female/male sexual interaction here because men that only have sex with men have reasons for not wanting to touch your pretty lap flower that have nothing to do with its scent or aesthetic value, and I really hope that women who have sex with women are already openly down with the fact that pussies come in a wide and beautiful array of looks, feels and smells.

But seriously, dudes that are into chicks don’t give a fuck.

Porn dudes don’t give a fuck.

Dudes that I have sexual things to do with in my off time do not give a fuck.

I don’t give a fuck either. Personally, if I am touching the vagina of someone I find attractive, I am much more focused on joy that I am touching it and figuring out what the best way to make it orgasm is.

I’m pretty sure I missed #ladypornday on rabbitwrite.com. That’s fine because the only days for me that aren’t lady-porn-days are usually rhinestone-something-within-an-inch-of-its-life-and-practice-removing-it-gracefully days or lay-around-with-little-clothing-on-and-discuss-sex days, which are really only semantically different. I think anything that encourages more of an open discussion and dialogue about sexuality is wonderful. I did, however, feel the need to respond to something written by The Demoiselles for #ladyporn day. In the piece, the writer says

“Because looks are everything when someone’s about to give you an orgasm.
…well, okay, maybe in porn they are.”

and I just can’t let that go without replying to it. On the porn sets that I have been on, the director, production company, camera guy, etc. care what the vaginas look like. They care for the same reason that a contractor might leave a light switch plate off in his own home but really ought to make sure every detail of a home they are building for someone else is perfect. We are producing a product and every detail should have the highest production value possible.

But the male talent? They don’t care. They get paid to have fun with the most meticulously groomed ladies available to the adult industry, and (in my experience) even if you’re having sex with them off set just for fun they don’t give a flying rats ass what kind of half grown out razorburned disaster area you’ve got going on in your crotch as long as it doesn’t look diseased and you’ve taken a shower recently. Even then, the shower might be negotiable.

Men outside of the porn industry that I’ve had sex with don’t care. There was one who couldn’t stand to look at the bloody mess that period sex created because he associated all that blood with somehow hurting me, but if a towel was down and the lights were off, it didn’t matter at all. Men in my personal life don’t expect me to be perfectly groomed, over glossed and decked out in fake eyelashes, nor do they expect the C cup breasts that I appear to have on my box covers.

Please… get to know your vagina. Find out what it looks like in various states of arousal. Find out what it smells like over the course of your monthly cycle. Get in there with a mirror and a speculum and really get to know it. Whatever it does is right for it, and the only time you should be concerned is when your Gynecologist is or if it’s doing something out of character. Don’t let a sexual partner tell you something that’s normal for your body is gross or wrong. If they do, don’t let them back until they’re ready to deal with the reality of sex.

But seriously. Dudes… they aren’t really known for noticing details. They usually don’t give a fuck.