When Kurt Andersen took over as editor of New York Journal, he printed out an inventory of “annoying phrases” he didn’t need his writers to make use of. After I was 32, I wrote about this checklist on Cup of Jo, then added a phrase that I actually hated: moist.
Moist? Ew, gross. In the event you described banana bread as moist, it sounded vaginal. And I actually didn’t just like the phrase vagina. It was bizarre, form of icky. I averted saying it, even on the physician’s workplace. *shudders*
I used to be removed from alone. In 2012, The New Yorker requested their Twitter followers what phrase ought to be eradicated from the English language. “Ultimately, there was a runaway un-favorite,” they wrote. “Moist.” 5 years later, meals author Emily Johnson lamented this cultural aversion in her Bon Appetit piece “Cease Getting Mad at Me for Utilizing the Phrase ‘Moist,’” explaining that “you possibly can solely describe a rooster thigh as juicy so many occasions.”
@amazonmgmstudios Some prefer it moist. Some prefer it dry. Your name. See Rosamund Pike in Saltburn, in choose theaters this Friday and in all places Thanksgiving
And did you ever see this scene from Saltburn? “I used to be a lesbian for some time, ,” the mom says. “Nevertheless it was all a bit too moist for me ultimately. Males are so beautiful and dry.”
Effectively.
Now that I’m older, and fortunately the tradition has grown and shifted (massive nod to Broad Metropolis right here, which loudly celebrated ladies’s our bodies and needs), the phrases moist and moist and damp truly sound so heat to me, so compelling. They remind us of ladies? Of intercourse? Good! I can’t imagine how a lot they’ve modified in my thoughts, with out my doing something apart from passively absorbing the tradition round me.
The phrase “vagina” additionally sounds utterly completely different — shut and endearing, just like the beloved identify of a long-time pal. My pal’s younger son lately misremembered my identify and referred to as me “Vajenna” all night time, and I used to be so honored and charmed. How fascinating, proper? Do you are feeling the identical? Or in another way? Or nothing in any respect?
Immediately, Toby and I toured a highschool, and the admissions director led us down a stairwell peppered with ceramic tiles made by college students. One tile confirmed the Statue of Liberty; one other, a basketball. After which I noticed considered one of a vulva. “Oh, look!” I mentioned, pointing. “How cool is that?” I beloved that the coed had felt impressed to make it and the college had then displayed it.
It truly wasn’t the primary vulva art work my youngsters had seen — my sister, Lucy, has a sculpture by Sophia Wallace in her eating room, which implies a terracotta clitoris seems within the background of many household pictures. And I’m excited to see the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, which options considered one of Wallace’s big clit sculptures, impressed by the power and beauty of swans.
Additionally, necklaces!
What about you? How do you are feeling in regards to the phrase “moist”? “Vagina”? “Vulva”? Have your emotions modified or stayed the identical? No flawed solutions, after all; please share your ideas beneath. xoxoxo
P.S. Intercourse-positive parenting for prudes, and is that this the sexiest podcast?
