A V with a View: VieVision and Vulvas

When’s the last time you looked at your vulva? Not a cursory glance while you groom, but an up close and personal look, the way you might investigate your hands after a manicure.

If your answer is “never,” you are far from alone. By sheer virtue of anatomy—being more or less tucked away—it isn’t a view you can easily access. But your genitals are an important part of you and the idea that many people don’t know what they look like down there is troublesome.

Kinkly interviewed Eden Laurin from Nyssa, creators of the VieVison Leg Mirror—a mirror with a built-in light that's designed to give you a hands-free view of your vulva.

Read: The Benefits of Knowing Your Body (and Your Vulva!)

Nyssa is a company born from what the founders recognized as gaps in products (and ultimately knowledge) for people who give birth, particularly post-partum. They have a line of “fourth trimester” products, designed for use as your body heals and adjusts in the first few weeks following giving birth.

Laurin describes how the VieVision grew from there: “Very quickly, we realized how many times in life that we're going through these experiences as women, and there's either language [we don’t have], we're missing education, we're missing the understanding or ability to articulate what's going on in our bodies.”

In addition to a need for post-pregnancy comfort products, Nyssa identified a need for vulva owners to be able to see themselves: changes in their body, or identifying where exactly it is that a pain is coming from. Having this information when you go in for a doctor’s appointment can be a game changer.

I wasn't treated like a patient. And I didn't have the language.

Laurin shares the story of being told, weeks after the fact, that she had torn badly enough while giving birth to need stitches. But it wasn’t her healthcare provider that told her, it was a family member who had stayed with her in the delivery room despite being kicked out and saw. “[I had] a deep disappointment that I had stitches in my body and nobody told me, I wasn't treated like a patient. And I didn't have the language; I didn't know to ask about the stitches.”

Read: 5 Myths OB/GYNs Want You to Stop Believing About Your Vulva

This touches on the driving mandate of Nyssa: educating vulva-owners and equipping them with the language and knowledge to advocate for themselves and their bodies. Nyssa calls these issues “Unmentionables,” referring to the “hushed realities” of vulva-having bodies.

“We go through these intensely transformative times. From going through puberty, and now we're using different supplies, different materials to navigate puberty, we have to figure out how we apply them, where we put them, how we use them, you go through life, we can have cysts, and fibroids, and just a number of things that we go through, and then we could have a baby and your vulva is going to go through this massive recovery. And through all of that, we can't even see it.” Laurin explains.