March 2009 Archives

We're all familiar with the hand turkey, that staple of second-grade Thanksgiving celebrations across America. (Though the enjoyment is apparently not limited to second grade.)

When I took an embryology course last summer, I decided to adapt the hand-tracing aesthetic to the illustration of marine larvae. The result? A Hand Pluteus in 10 easy steps!

PART I: The Body

Step 1. Trace your hand.

Step 2. Place your other hand over the traced hand, lining up the fingers. Trace only the thumb of this hand.

Step 3. Close the body along the bottom with a continuous curve from outside of pinky to outside of forefinger, cutting off both thumbs. Draw another line from inside of pinky to inside of forefinger, cutting off middle and ring fingers.

PART II: The Skeleton

Step 4. Get a new color. Start with the postoral skeletal rods.

Step 5. The outer branch of these skeletal rods is fenestrated, so add some holes.

Step 6. Now add the anterolateral skeletal rods. Don't forget to fenestrate!

Step 7. Finally, the posterodorsal skeletal rods. Note the lack of fenestration.

PART III: The Gut

Step 8. Get a new color. The digestive tract runs through the center of the pluteus, and its muscular wall is quite thick. The overall shape changes with peristalsis during feeding, so it's all right to take some liberties here.

PART IV: Finishing Touches

Step 9. Now that your pluteus has a gut, you can feed it. Green algal cells would be appropriate.

Step 10. Display your creation proudly!
What's that?

You don't know what a pluteus is?

Oh. Well. It's the larval form of echinoids (sea urchins and sand dollars) and ophiuroids (brittle stars). They acquire their arms in pairs as they develop, leading to progressively older two-arm, four-arm, six-arm, and eight-arm plutei. You've just drawn a six-arm pluteus, of course. Here's the six-arm pluteus of Dendraster eccentricus, the Western sand dollar, in two focal planes for enhanced 3D effect:

This is important.

I'm not being puerile, prurient, or (worst of all!) pedantic.

I recently saw the Vagina Monologues for the first time. But I'm not here to discuss the horrific, heartbreaking stories of Bosnian, and, this year, Congolese women and girls. And I'm not going to speculate on or contribute to the controversy surrounding the play.

Instead, let's talk semantics.

Here's a vocabulary lesson: the vagina is the female reproductive orifice, which functions in copulation and birth. The vulva is the external female genitalia, including mons, clitoris, and labia as well as the vaginal opening.

The Vagina Monologues are, for anyone who hasn't seen them, absolutely and unarguably about vulvas, and are also committed to promoting accurate and open communication. For such a theatrical piece to abandon a precise, anatomically correct term in favor of an ambiguous, inaccurate one is nothing short of a disappointment. To me. Personally.

I am aware (and have become more so during recent discussions on this topic) that the colloquial usage of vagina has usurped the definition of vulva, and that vagina is in fact the word that most people learn first and use most often. E.g. on the playground: "Boys have penises and girls have vaginas!" Okay. I know that language is fluid, that vocabulary re-invents itself, and I realize that languages constantly adopt new words and meanings while shedding those that are obsolete.

But I'm not giving up vulva without a fight.

The word vulva fills a real need in the English language: to describe the female external genitalia. We have excellent and unambiguous words for male genitalia. No one says "penis" and means "penis and scrotum," or vice versa. Why can't we keep "vulva"?

Most of my friends are in the midst of their childbearing years. I make this plea to those who do, in fact, bear children: Let our daughters learn to name their vulvas (vulvae) at the same age they learn to name their elbows.

I did. Thanks, Mom.

Update

A friend lent me Vagina Monologues, the book. There are more monologues written than are presented in any single performance, so I knew I hadn't seen them all, but I didn't know that I'd missed "The Vulva Club". Eve Ensler introduces this piece by copying a letter she received:

As the honorary chair of the Vulva Club, we would be more than pleased to make you a member. However, when Harriet Lerner developed this club over twenty years ago, membership was predicated on the understanding and correct usage of the word vulva . . .

Hah. Apparently, the letter prompted Ms. Ensler to write another monologue, but not to make any concessions on her pre-existing usage of vagina.

If, as I was, you're wondering whether that letter is only a tongue-in-cheek jest on the part of a private disgruntled citizen like me, check out this article by Dr. Harriet Lerner.