What Normal Looks Like

A woman I know was genuinely worried her vulva looked abnormal. When I asked what she meant, she said she’d been comparing herself to pornography. Not even thinking of it as pornography—just as the default reference point for what vulvas are supposed to look like.

The disconnect is obvious once you say it out loud, but somehow we keep internalizing porn as the baseline. Porn is a product. The bodies are selected for specific aesthetics, often surgically adjusted. You wouldn’t judge your own body against a Photoshopped magazine cover, but that’s what’s happening here—except it’s normalized and invisible.

Women’s Health Victoria in Australia made the Labia Library. It’s a collection of photographs showing the actual diversity of vulva anatomy: different shapes, colors, hair patterns, the full spectrum of what healthy looks like.

What I like about it is that it doesn’t need to make an argument. It doesn’t tell you to embrace diversity or love yourself. It just shows you the evidence. Here’s what’s real.

I think we navigate so much of life based on images we’ve unconsciously absorbed. Magazines, porn, social media. All of it curated, none of it representative. But because it’s everywhere, it becomes invisible. It becomes normal. It becomes the baseline you compare yourself to.

A project that just shows you what normal actually is? That’s surprisingly radical.