Megan Fox at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards held at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, California on August 9, 2009 7. Paris Hilton I’m also on a mission to empower girls and women – ensuring we grow up confident and proud of what we have between our legs. I believe a vital first step in achieving this is using positive, respectful language for our genitals, that’s why I am campaigning too add the word verenda to the dictionary as the positive, respectful word for the vagina; it means the parts inspiring awe, respect or reverence. Please do sign and share my petition at www.change.org/SayVerenda and let’s change the world one word at a time. Kristen Bell just found another use for double-sided tape: on overlap-front dresses with dangerously high slits. That says it all really, that the only thing worth writing about the vagina was its diseases,” she says. “You could get all sorts of histories about the phallus, the different festivals, all celebrating male virility. There was this aching gap where there was nothing about the woman, so I pretty much walked into a publishing deal.” I think there’s there’s a moment that every person born with a vagina shares, and that is when you realise that you are treated differently to people who have a penis, that you are not treated with the same level of respect,” she says. “I do think women were all wounded in some way. We feel negative about our genitalia, because it seems to be the source of why we are treated differently.”

Raising the skirt: the unsung power of the vagina reveals this revolutionary view of female genitalia and points the way to a new understanding of what it means to be female. An inspiration for millennia, the vagina is actually a muscular marvel of engineering - sensitive and strong, fluid and flexible. Far from being a passive vessel, female genitalia control the most important role of all: the survival of the species. She is also the author of The Man Who Saw the Future: a biography of William Lilly, the story of the world famous seventeenth-century astrologer whose celestial forecasts enthralled the nation and changed the course of the English Civil War, and how the Establishment attempted to silence him and astrology for good (Watkins, 2015). The culturally framed gesture of lifting the skirt or kilt Copy of a Hellenistic Aphrodite Kallipygos at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg.I wish I had been told these stories as a girl. Stories fostering a sense of pride and potency in being female. Stories valuing female genitalia, valuing girls and women. I like to imagine a world where every girl and woman knows these stories of how powerful it is to have a vagina. I have collected many ‘raising the skirt’ stories but I know there are more out there – if you have an account of how mighty the vagina is from your culture’s mythology, history or folklore then please share it with me. Stoichita, Victor I.; Anna Maria Coderch. (1999) Goya: The Last Carnival, Reaktion Books. pp.118. ISBN 1-86189-045-1

Thank you very much for your interest in this project and I very much look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. There is an inherent contradiction between the physical demands Canavan places upon her body and the stillness that is matched by the slow passage of time. When fertility goddess Demeter wanders the earth refusing food and drink as she mourns the loss of her daughter Persephone (who is imprisoned in the underworld after being abducted by Hades), the land loses its energy source, crops shrivel and famine ensues. It’s only when older woman Baubo lifts her gown and points out her naked vagina to the goddess that Demeter finally laughs and accepts sustenance and the world becomes fecund once more. Japan tells a remarkably similar myth of how vaginal display restores fertility to the earth after angered sun goddess Amaterasu-o-mi-Kame has withdrawn from the world. Isis-Aphrodite 2nd-1stC BCE

WHEN: The 1st and the 15th of each month words and images will highlight the joy and the challenges of being both a mother and an artist. Imagine a world where girls and women are told stories fostering a sense of pride and potency in what it means to have a vagina. Stories valuing female genitalia; stories revealing the vagina to be the ultimate symbol of female power. These stories exist: they are ‘raising the skirt’ stories. Everyone with a vagina should know them.

To read Andrea O’Reilly’s piece on Feminist Motherhood go to our link here, and read her piece also live online at ProCreate Project. Art and Performance by Nicola Canavan: Raising the Skirt The vagina is the ultimate symbol of female power. Sexual power, creative power and apotropaic power – the power to prevent harm. For too long, though, the true extent of vaginal power has been ignored, hidden and misrepresented. A weekend of intercultural grocery shopping, culinary adventures and sharing stories about ingredients, journeys, migration, nationality and material culture.Many historical references suggest that anasyrma had dramatic or supernatural effect—positive or negative. Pliny the Elder wrote that a menstruating woman who uncovers her body can scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning. If she strips naked and walks around a field of wheat, caterpillars, worms and beetles fall off the heads. Even when not menstruating, she can lull a storm out at sea by stripping. [4] La Fontaine plate Raising the Skirt has been launched in 13 countries and translated into ten different languages: in Poland it is Wagina, in the Czech Republic Vagina; in Finland Vaginan Tarina – Vagina Story and in Spain Historia de la Vagina: un territorio virgin al descubierto – History of the Vagina: a virgin territory uncovered. Kristen Bell looking embarrassed while holding her dress down at the “Veronica Mars” premiere in Hollywood, California on March 12, 2014 20. Lindsay Lohan

The vagina is the ultimate symbol of female power. Sexual power, creative power and the power to prevent harm. For too long, though, the true extent of vaginal power has been ignored, hidden and misrepresented.Zeitlin, Froma I. (1982) Cultic models of the female: Rites of Dionysos and Demeter, Arethusa. pp.144–145. Morris, Ellen F. (2007). "Sacred and Obscene Laughter in 'The Contendings of Horus and Seth', in Egyptian Inversions of Everyday Life, and in the Context of Cultic Competition". In Schneider, Thomas; Szpakowska, Kasia. Egyptian Stories: A British Egyptological Tribute to Alan B. Lloyd on the Occasion of His Retirement. Ugarit-Verlag. ISBN 978-3934628946 Kourtney Kardashian on the balcony of Eden Roc Hotel in Miami, Florida on October 11, 2012 9. Kelly Brook Tanya Burr at the ‘Iron Man 3’ UK premiere held at the Odeon Leicester Square in London, England on April 18, 2013 16. Myleene Klass We just want to let Kate Middleton know that she isn’t the only one who has suffered a wind-related wardrobe malfunction. In fact, it’s happened to plenty of other high-profile celebrities, including one other royal.