My youngest son is going through a pulling down his trousers phase. I find it a bit endearing and a lot infuriating. I can sort of understand why he finds it enjoyable. It never fails to induce squeals of embarrassment/delight/horror from the small people around him. It makes him the centre of attention. It is transgressive and therefore must give him a bit of kick. It probably feels nice to expose one’s cooped up parts to the breeze.
But it occurs to me that you don’t see little girls parading their pudenda with the same frequency or gusto. In fact I’ve never seen a girl do it in public. I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that you’re far more likely to see a small boy than a small girl indulging in a spot of genital exhibitionism.
It must be, partly, because there’s something there, in the male anatomy, that looks, inherently, comical. An appendage. A leaky spout. An odd piece of apparatus. A dangly afterthought. Whereas the female equivalent – it’s still much harder to name it – is less obvious, less silly looking, less nameable.
In the case of a small boy displaying his willy, the stock reaction is to laugh. Reprove, admonish as parents must, but also, acknowledge the joke. Ha ha look at the willy. Isn’t it funny. Isn’t he cute. Now put it away, there’s a good boy.
Not so, I dare say, with a small girl.
But there must be more to it than just the way things look. The very word, pudenda, derives from the Latin word for shame. Vagina, likewise, derives from the Latin for sheath, or scabbard. In other words it is not so much a thing in itself but a form of concealment. Something not to be seen.
I don’t know quite why I’m writing this or what conclusions to draw.
Ariadne Birnberg 