— Womanhood
Books
Womanhood
Vagina, vulva, lady garden, pussy, beaver, cunt, fanny…
…whatever you call it most women have no idea what’s ‘down there’. Culturally and personally, no body part inspires love and hate, fear and lust, worship and desecration in the same way.
From smooth Barbie dolls to internet porn, girls and women grow up with a very narrow view of what they should look like, even though in reality there is an enormous range. Womanhood departs from the ‘ideal vagina’ and presents the gentle un-airbrushed truth, allowing us to understand and celebrate our diversity.
For the first time, 100 brave and beautiful women reveal their bodies and stories on their own terms, talking about how they feel about pleasure, sex, pain, trauma, birth, motherhood, menstruation, menopause, gender, sexuality and simply being a woman.
Womanhood is the third project in the Bare Reality series. For me, personally, it has been my most potent and transformative work to date. The process of creating these embodied stories of pleasure, sex, pain, trauma, birth, motherhood, menstruation, menopause, gender and sexuality has changed me – I feel freer, more in my prime, sexier and more powerful than ever. I’d love Womanhood to do that for other women. It’s time to reclaim our womanhood, on our terms and in our words.
Womanhood will be supporting Eve Appeal, a national charity raising awareness and funding research into gynaecological cancers.
Limited edition prints for sale.
“This is an important book. ‘Womanhood: The Bare Reality’ starts a much needed conversation about a woman’s body in a very direct way.”
“The vulva stories Dodsworth has collected made me laugh and cry, moved by the openness with which each person talks about sexual liberation, grief, loss, abuse and everything in between. The very fact that vulvas feel so controversial to look at underlines the power of the project.”
“Dodsworth’s project is a simple but groundbreaking idea that gives women back a sense of ownership over their own bodies”
“A tender yet taboo-exploding message of women reclaiming their womanhood.”
Media
Read about Womanhood in The Guardian Weekend magazine
Womanhood on The BBC
I wrote for The Telegraph
An interview with two of the women who took part and I on Woman’s Hour
Interview on BBC World
Buy the book:
From the publisher Pinter & Martin
Book talks:
Women Rising Folkestone 10th March 2019
Vagina Dialogues - in conversation with Daisy Johnson at Blackwell’s Oxford 17th April 2019
The Candid Collective, London, 11th July 2019
Cheltenham Wellbeing Festival, 13th September 2019
HowTheLightGetsIn, Kenwood House, London date tbc September 2019
Red Line Book Festival, Dublin 7th October 2019
