If we're lucky (and diligent), it will keep beating until our last gasp. The heart is the body's muscular work-horse. She's clearly deeply in love with the organ in her care – one that most of us take for granted, and few of us will ever see in person. she tends to turn up to the party late', is grimace-inducing, and undermines their effort to give equal footing.ĭr Stamp self-deprecatingly describes herself as a 'fancy plumber'.

That said, describing the egg as 'the diva of the party. In fact, eggs are on the move too, and head down the fallopian tubes to do the meeting and greeting. They also challenge the idea of the egg as a passive entity, just waiting to be impregnated by go-getter sperm. Now we understand that the structure of the clitoris and penis mirror each other to a great extent, each with their own version of a head, glans, shafts and erectile tissue.Ĭharting the early development of male and female sexual organs, they conclude that 'the penis is nothing but an overgrown clitoris with an inbuilt urethra'. As early as the 1800s, they remind us, anatomists knew it was just the tip of a much bigger and more complex organ hidden from view, but somehow that knowledge was forgotten or suppressed by subsequent generations of scientists. 'It's hair-raising to think that doctors have shown so little interest in a structure that can, in the worst of cases, cause modern women to lose their honour or their lives,' they lament.Īnother misperception Brochmann and Dahl address is that a women's clitoris is a small and singular 'pleasure button'.

None of this, however, stops women from seeking hymenoplasty surgery to 'repair' their hymen in the hope that 'they bleed on their wedding night'. Likewise, the state of a girl's hymen isn't a reliable indicator of sexual abuse either. Its appearance and structure vary between women, it doesn't serve as a seal that keeps the vagina shut (in fact, it very rarely covers the whole entrance of the vagina), and doctors who still conduct virginity tests are deeply misguided, if not fraudulent. The hymen exists, they confirm, but the flexible ring of tissue is laden with more cultural baggage than it deserves. The Wonder Down Under sets out to challenge popular myths about the vagina, starting with the gnarliest and possibly deadliest of all: the misguided belief that the state of a women's hymen is proof of her virginity. (Go Norwegians, who needs Netflix for fun?)

Similarly, when Brochmann and Dahl set up their blog Underlivet (The Genitals), it took off, becoming one of the most read health blogs in Norway.

The Story of V by Catherine Blackledge