Body Parts of Shiny Silicone and Cozy Felt
The release of the teen vampire film New Moon on November 20, 2009 and the hype surrounding it was a hot topic on the news digest website Newser.com that week. Among the articles was “14 Scariest Twilight Souvenirs.” In case you live under a rock where there are no teenagers, Twilight is the first book, and subsequently film, in a four-part series by Stephanie Meyer. New Moon is its sequel. As a not-quite-diehard Twilight fan (or “Twihard”) myself, I actually liked several of the items offered up as merchandise no self-respecting adult would ever intentionally own. I wouldn’t go so far as to don a pair of underpants with Robert Pattinson’s face on them, but if you would, then more power to you. If there was one item on the list I would proudly own, it would be the sparkly dildo.
You can see it here on the Eden’s Fantasy website: the Vamp, made by Tantus. Reviewer Carrie Anne describes it thus: “Whether or not you’re into vampires, the Vamp is sure to please. And if you are? Happy fantasizing! The Vamp really does seem like a bloodless, beautiful, undead cock.” Clearly modeled after the fictional Edward Cullen, vampire hero of the Twilight series, the Vamp is the color of very pale Caucasian flesh. Like Edward, it sparkles in the sunlight.
Vampire dildos I have no problem with; I echo Carrie Anne’s “happy fantasizing” sentiment. The one item I had the most visceral reaction to was, literally, viscera. It was the “felt Bella womb with fetus.” The exact comment I left was, “I was OK with the panties and the dildo, but the felt womb with fetus is a little far.” That was phrasing it mildly. I was imagining some kind of two-dimensional body part cut out of red and pink felt. I had flashbacks to first grade, when my classmates and I could make pictures on a felt board using basic shapes cut out of various colors of felt. The Bella womb, pictured on gawker.com, is 3D, and resembles a plush bird’s nest inside a pink grapefruit-meets-undergraduate feminist art student’s body image project.
Even before I saw the picture, though, I was repulsed by the idea. Who, outside of an obstetrician-gynecologist’s office, needed a disembodied, pregnant uterus? What would make this particular womb, out of all the wombs in the world, an object of so much fascination that someone would actually take the time to make one?
Other people who left comments were just as repulsed by the idea. “I’m speechless with disgust,” one wrote. “Stop being so damned creepy,” another wrote. One blogger even subtitled his posting on the subject “Creepiest ‘Fan-Made’ Ever.” The majority of commenters echoed these feelings, though a few defended the craft project.
Upon further reflection, I questioned my own initial reaction to this unusual objet d’art. Why was I so repulsed by this womb? I have a womb, and my womb and I get along fine. It’s a bodily organ, no different in some ways from my spleen, my liver, or my kidneys. Why should there be anything embarrassing, much less repulsive, about being the owner of a womb? What cultural baggage was I carrying around, after all?
Warning: Major Spoiler Alert
To get to the bottom of this womb--its cervix, if you will--perhaps we should examine the story of Bella and how she came to be pregnant. You won’t find the tale in
Twilight or
New Moon; Stephanie Meyer saved this for her Twilight series finale,
Breaking Dawn. In this book, Bella and Edward get married. She’s a 20-year-old human being; he’s a 90-something vampire who eternally appears to be 17. Somewhat like the scary vampires of folklore, Edward is a dangerous predator. His body is rock-hard; Bella describes him as feeling as if he’s made out of diamonds. His strength is tremendous, and he has to put conscious effort into not accidentally crushing Bella. For this reason, he’s rejected all of her earlier efforts to make love, afraid he’ll break her. After their wedding, though, he can’t deny her any longer. As ignorant as a real seventeen-year-old about his own anatomy, Edward believes he is infertile, and the couple doesn’t bother to use contraception. Days later, Bella realizes she is undergoing an accelerated pregnancy. Though nearly all of Edward’s vampire family agrees with him that it is medically unwise for a human being to carry a half-vampire fetus to term, Bella zealously defends her right to carry her child, at great risk to her own body.
Asked in an interview whether she wrote Bella’s pregnancy the way she did for storytelling’s sake, or whether there was a meaning behind it, Stephanie Meyers replied, “A story has to have an element of danger and hazard. If there isn't a risk, if there isn't something that goes wrong, there's no story. But no, the pregnancy wasn't a punishment. When you're writing characters, one of the things you do to make it interesting is you push them past their limits, and that's when the story gets exciting. Sadly, it's kind of fun to torture your characters.”
The idea of pregnancy as punishment is an ancient one, likely predating Genesis 3:16: “Unto the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply the pain of thy childbearing; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and yet thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’” Pain in childbirth was the first woman’s, Eve’s, punishment for having disobeyed God. This Biblical pronouncement was, for centuries, justification for treating women as if childbearing was our sole purpose in life. In the 1800s, a male physician was quoted as saying, “It is as if the Almighty, in creating the female sex, had taken the uterus and built up a woman around it.”
In some ways, Bella Swan is more like a 19th century heroine than a modern woman. She is fragile, delicate, and often in need of male protection. Bella is also a popular character, and a young woman in love. Many female readers no doubt see themselves in Bella, frail and flawed as she may be. Through her, they can safely imagine themselves in her skin, pregnant, and expecting a baby of another species, from another world. The prospect of being such a “chosen one” is both thrilling and terrifying, and reminiscent of another Biblical pregnancy, or of the many god-human couplings of Greek and Roman mythology.
Charlaine Harris, the creator of the
Sookie Stackhouse paranormal series and its televised version, HBO’s
True Blood, once explained the sex appeal of the undead: “…The idea that this guy who’s been with every kind of woman over hundreds of years has a special interest in you is very powerful. Plus, if he’s been having sex for hundreds of years, by now he must be pretty good at it!”
So, if the idea of sex with a vampire is more erotic than repulsive, it’s easier to see why Bella’s pregnancy would hold some fascination. Pregnancy is a bodily phenomenon; it can’t take place without a complex interaction between the uterus, ovaries, sperm, a host of hormones, and impulses generated by the brains of the biological mother and father. This complex interplay is also fascinating, so why not contemplate, and create, a pregnant womb?
Support Womb Pride
In the 1990s, members of WHAM!, the pro-choice Women’s Health Action and Mobilization group, handed out bumper stickers that said, “Support Vaginal Pride.” It showed that, with the help of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, we had come a long way from the days when Eldridge Cleaver could say, “Women? I guess they ought to exercise Pussy Power,” and have it universally understood that “Pussy Power” was a joke and a derogatory statement. Yet here we are at the beginning of the 21st century, still freaked out by a uterus.
Look at an anatomical drawing of a uterus, and it doesn’t look particularly “creepy” or “gross.” It looks something like an upside-down pear with a small, donut-shaped hole where the stem would be. The donut is labeled “cervix,” and the top of the uterus is called the “fundus.” Besides being essential for reproduction, the human uterus also functions during sex. Orgasms vary from woman to woman, but for some women, stimulation of the cervix and/or contractions of the uterus are important parts of a satisfying orgasm. Women who have had hysterectomies sometimes report having a less satisfying sex life afterward, as well as feelings of losing a part of themselves, feeling “less female,” and, in the cases of premenopausal women, of having been “robbed” of the ability to have children. The uterus is one of the many things that makes a woman feel like a woman.
There is a danger to over-emphasizing any one part of the human anatomy. As Rob Bell writes in
Sex God: “Picture a group of high school boys standing by their lockers when a girl walks by. One of the boys asks, ‘How do you rate that?’ They then takes turns assigning numerical values to the various parts of her anatomy, discussing in great detail how they evaluate her physical attributes….The problem is that ‘that’ is actually a ‘she.’ A person. A woman. With a name, a history, with feelings. It seems harmless until you’re that girl?and then it hurts. It’s degrading. It’s violating. It does something to a person’s soul.”
Note that Bell’s argument applies equally to women and men. Bella has every right not to be reduced to a mere pregnant womb, just as Edward has the right not to be reduced to a sparkly hard-on.
At the same time, there is no reason to pretend these body parts don’t exist. So say it loud: we have wombs, and we’re proud.
Resources
Bell, Rob.
Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007.
Berkinow, Louise.
The American Women’s Almanac: An Inspiring and Irreverent Women’s History. New York: Berkley Books, 1997.
Boston Women’s Health Collective, The.
Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition For a New Era. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Davis, Erik. “Fan Made: Bella’s Womb from Twilight (aka Creepiest ‘Fan-Made’ Ever).” http://www.cinematical.com/2009/02/05/fan-made-bellas-womb-from-twilight-aka-creepiest-fan-made/ February 5, 2009.
Gastaldo, Evann. “14 Scariest Twilight Souvenirs.“ http://www.newser.com/story/74206/14-scariest-twilight-souvenirs.html. November 17, 2009.
Jagger, Azaria. “Twilight Premiere Brings Out the Freaks: 14 Twihard Creations and the Stories They Inspire.“ http://gawker.com/5406324/twilight-premiere-brings-out-the-freaks-14-twihard-creations-and-the-stories-they-inspire/gallery/. November 17, 2009.
Morgan, Robin, editor. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From the Women’s Liberation Movement. New York: Random House, 1970.
Rems, Emily. “Love Bites: The Author Whose Novels Inspired True Blood Makes Her Stories Hurt So Good.” BUST, February/March 2009.
Rojas Weiss, Sabrina. “’Twilight Tuesday:’ Stephanie Meyer Answers Your Burning ‘Breaking Dawn’ Questions.” http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1592582/story.jhtml. August 12, 2008.
The Jerusalem Bible. Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1992.
The Vamp product description. http://www.edenfantasys.com/dildos/strap-on-dildos/vamp
Originally published March 2010