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Naomi Wolf’s new book Vagina attempts to empower women’s sensual desire by reducing the confusion surrounding women’s sexual bodies. Her descriptions of recent studies on the psycho-physical connections of the vagina and stories from her own experiences aim to reveal the full power harnessed by women when focused on their vagina. She has been faulted for the lack of rigor in her intellectual work and for her propensity to generalize from the personal. The design for the book’s US cover (the United Kingdom edition has a different design) demonstrates many of the same difficulties critics have found within the book. The title indicates the book is about vagina, that passage from the uterus to the vulva, except the term vagina is used “somewhat differently from its technical definition,” as “the entire female sex organ, from labia to clitoris to introitus to mouth of the cervix.” No single word unifies woman’s sexual parts, so vagina, derived from the Latin for sheath, serves here to wrap it up. Since the vagina is a female sexual part, the word automatically alludes to women, so this book can discuss women, the gender and sex, while examining a body part. Generalization is made easy; since all women have a vagina, having a vagina makes a woman like all others. Choosing as a title the word vagina implies a definitive study, but when not contained to the medical the word slips easily into other associations, as her own redefinition indicates.
--The capital letter V
Florid script suggests personal writing and private letters from a day gone by. It is often used for romance novels because its curls are associated with femininity. Flourishes and adornment divorce it from representing the stern work of analysis. The text can dive into the personal and rise to the universal in a single stroke, and yet not connect with the rest. This may be appropriate for the topic, but such wandering undermines the suggested seriousness of the effort. The wavering line reads as vacillation. Arguments will loop and leap, and possibly leave you hanging.
--The author’s name
The author’s name takes as much horizontal space as the title, indicating she is equal to her topic. Both the title and name are in red which draws the eye so both the title’s self-declared topic and the author’s name vie for attention. Vagina and Naomi Wolf are established as important visual elements; linked through size and color, they come together. That the vagina and Naomi Wolf are intertwined puts in question whether the vagina presented isn’t particularly Naomi Wolf’s experience of her own. In contrast to the elaborate script of the title, the simple font of her name implies she is a clear, careful writer. Her topic has been shown to be sweeping, though, so she might find herself carried away. A conflict seems inevitable.
--The subtitle
The subtitle indicates that the vagina is not simply a part of the human body like the knee or nose, but has her own life story to share. The biographical slant on the topic personifies the body part so that the vagina’s life either overwhelms or conflicts with the whole-bodied woman’s life. Either way, a woman’s life is then defined by her body, specifically her sexual body–an ideology that many women fought to eradicate only a few decades ago. Since there is no personal pronoun in the title or subtitle, the biography recounts the experience of all vaginas. An individual woman must either accept this broad tale told to her by another, or reject such generalizing to define her own sensual-sexual identity. Naomi Wolf’s subtitle establishes the very grounds for much of the criticism she has received. That the story told has been inadequate is implied by the need for a new account, but the new does not address the problem with the old–indiscriminate generalizations about a deeply personal area of a woman’s life.
--The stem of the fig leaf beneath the hand
Discussion of the vagina may seem like a hole in women’s lives, but this book fills that need with a peek inside. The keyhole in the cover encourages a voyeuristic approach by covering the stated body part with the quintessential fig leaf. The keyhole and the fig leaf signal there are many barriers to enter the vagina’s secret realm. Through the hole, we see a hand holding a fig leaf with a remarkably phallic stem. This is odd. There are many images of a fig-leafed Eve without such a stem, which makes the choice of this image peculiar in the context of celebrating the body part that the fig leaf is not only hiding, but covering with a seeming penis. Despite the title’s attempt at clarity, the language and the design elements (the subtitle, the fonts, and now the partial picture) exhibit confusion.
--The picture within the circle
Underneath the paper cover, Cranach the Elder’s 1531 painting of Eve is printed onto the hardback book, though only in part. Because Eve is the historical representation of the Judeo-Christian world’s rejection of female sexuality (though men’s was shamed at the same time), she is a natural choice to recall the vagina’s obfuscation. Women’s sexuality was chastened for centuries, though the question remains whether vaginal shame is a greater problem then the years of intellectual veiling that women also endured. Women didn’t need a brain–still don’t apparently, since the painting printed onto the hardback cuts Eve at her eyebrows. (This is particularly inappropriate given the book’s extensive discussion of scientific studies showing the importance of a vagina-brain connection.) In general, Naomi Wolf wants women to see their vagina in a new and positive light. Though a man is perfectly capable of painting a woman sincerely, given this book’s attempt to encourage women’s engagement with their sexual selves, why not exemplify that with artwork by a woman? Many female artists have produced work on the vagina in the last few decades, and been challenged for so doing. In the early eighties, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party was threatened with censorship because of its unhesitant depictions. The vagina’s new biography might have chosen an image less than five centuries old.
--The author’s attribution
Naomi Wolf is a “bestselling author,” read by many on topics of great relevance to women such as the socio-cultural demands of physical perfection that constitute the beauty myth. Wolf’s first book was described as “smart, angry, insightful...a clarion call to freedom” by Gloria Steinem, who has remained silent about this one. If it was time for the vagina to reassess her position in the world, then perhaps Naomi Wolf might revisit some of her work in The Beauty Myth. She spoke there about the impact of visual images, and media studies scholars have continued to illuminate that effect. Images can be interpreted, and a book cover is no different. I don’t blame Cranach’s Eve or the stylized fonts for highlighting the confusion of this book. Though Naomi Wolf expounds on the vagina-brain connection, her enthusiasm is focused on the “nurturing and sustaining” vagina. This is a pity because her seemingly simple topic is actually quite complex and could have been nurtured and sustained by the brain’s particular skills, analysis and synthesis. The lack of consideration in the design reveals the lack of coherence that has concerned the critics of her book. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can.
