When Kurt Andersen took over as editor of New York Journal, he printed out a listing of “annoying phrases” he didn’t need his writers to make use of. After I was 32, I wrote about this record on Cup of Jo, then added a phrase that I personally hated: moist.
Moist? Ew, gross. For those who described banana bread as moist, it sounded vaginal. And I actually didn’t just like the phrase vagina. It was bizarre, type of icky. I averted saying it, even on the physician’s workplace. *shudders*
I used to be removed from alone. In 2012, The New Yorker requested their Twitter followers which phrase ought to be eradicated from the English language. “In the long run, there was a runaway un-favorite,” they wrote. “Moist.” 5 years later, meals author Emily Johnson even lamented this cultural aversion in her Bon Appetit piece “Cease Getting Mad at Me for Utilizing the Phrase ‘Moist,’” explaining that “you may solely describe a hen thigh as juicy so many instances.”
@amazonmgmstudios Some prefer it moist. Some prefer it dry. Your name. See Rosamund Pike in Saltburn, in choose theaters this Friday and in all places Thanksgiving
And did you ever see this scene from Saltburn? “I used to be a lesbian for some time, you already know,” the mom says. “However it was all a bit too moist for me ultimately. Males are so beautiful and dry.”
Effectively.
Now that I’m older, and fortunately the tradition has grown and shifted (massive nod to Broad Metropolis right here, which loudly celebrated girls’s our bodies and needs), the phrases moist and moist and damp truly sound so heat to me, so compelling. They remind us of girls? Of intercourse? Good! I can’t consider how a lot they’ve modified in my thoughts, with out my doing something apart from passively absorbing the tradition round me.
The phrase “vagina” additionally sounds utterly totally different — shut and endearing, just like the beloved identify of a long-time pal. My pal’s younger son not too long ago misremembered my identify and referred to as me “Vajenna” all evening, and I used to be so honored and charmed. How attention-grabbing, proper? Do you’re feeling the identical? Or in another way? Or nothing in any respect?
As we speak, Toby and I toured a highschool, and the admissions director led us down a stairwell peppered with ceramic tiles made by college students. One tile confirmed the Statue of Liberty; one other, a basketball. After which I noticed one in every of a vulva. “Oh, look!” I stated, pointing. “How cool is that?” I liked that the coed had felt impressed to make it and the college had then displayed it.
It truly wasn’t the primary vulva art work my youngsters had seen — my sister, Lucy, has a sculpture by Sophia Wallace in her eating room, which means a terracotta clitoris seems within the background of many household images. And I’m excited to see the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, which options one in every of Wallace’s big clit sculptures, impressed by the power and charm of swans.
Additionally, necklaces!
What about you? How do you’re feeling concerning the phrase “moist”? “Vagina”? “Vulva”? Have your emotions modified or stayed the identical? No mistaken solutions, in fact; please share your ideas beneath. xoxoxo
P.S. Intercourse-positive parenting for prudes, and is that this the sexiest podcast?
