It was Thanksgiving, and Matt Silver was sitting around a table with his family when his year-old girlfriend texted. He retrieved the phone with his foot. Silver, a year-old screenwriter, was telling me of receiving his first V-selfie eight years ago. The V-selfie, though very much here, is perhaps less insistent.
Shared on dating apps or in texts, it has been sent to create longing and a sense of intimacy: a missive of lust and promise to lovers, or would-be lovers, who are separated. Silver, whose new long-distance girlfriend of two years they met on Tinder took seven months before she sent her first intimate portrait from her bedroom in Hong Kong in shimmering morning light, with a glimpse of a Buddha in the background.
It shows an element of trust. The new intimacy, like everything else, is virtual. Wooing, connecting, arousing and even cuckoldry is virtual.
The vulva has been occasionally flashed in real life as performance art. The smartphone has democratized and arguably cheapened, like so much else, this particular form of expression. Nudity was celebrated in my art and striptease world. But to my somewhat puritanical mind, your vagina, or technically vulva, was a sacred region glimpsed only in person. My idea of an erotic message was a perfumed handwritten letter with curvaceous letters lacing the page, not a texted iPhone flora selfie, or even an analog portrait on my Rolleiflex. And stare into the mirror and wonder what others see.
Millennials are doing more than taking a peek. Many are happy to share. Mieka Dovey, 28 a musical theater actress born in Denmark, said she and her friends take artistically styled and composed shots. Freda, 25, a photographer and studio manager who identifies as being part of the L. Lexi Stout, 27 and the executive director at VSpot Medi Spa on Madison Avenue, which provides grooming services for the nether regions, has flashed her iPhone flora, stored in the cloud, to friends at a bar.
Stout said. Models come for V-Lightening. The more fearsome-sounding V-Plump, Ms. Barshop said, injects fillers and your own blood plasma into the labia majora to smooth and plump. Barshop said, include porn stars and princesses.
Catherine Goodstein. I asked Dr. Frank how vaginal rejuvenation plays into the expectation that with intimate portraits we are all meant to look more polished, sculpted, refreshed and perfect. Frank said.
Stephanie Moreno, 30, is a lingerie consultant who likes to startle her boyfriend with smartphone flora as a way to stay connected during their opposite work schedules. Moreno, who is accustomed to seeing women naked for fittings, is comfortable with every part of her body and often incorporates her abdomen, breasts and waistline in her V-selfies.
She likes natural light streaming in from her window. Filters from the VSCO app, she said, create a more ethereal look. Moreno, a petite brunette with large luminous brown eyes and tapered nails painted bright sapling-green. Not all women feel empowered, and some are afraid to look at or experience their own intimate feminine beauty.
I broached the topic with my friend Tom Robbins, an author who has received panties at book signings, but never a V-shot. Sach Dev, 29, a television news producer who writes philosophy, said he had gotten only two unsolicited but not unwanted images from women he has dated. After pondering the topic overnight, Mr. Vaginas are more nuanced, and both their pictorial encapsulations and the reasons for sharing them might correspondingly brim with dimensionality.
Part lust, part love. You can interpret the mystery many ways. Silver said. He gazed at his phone as if he was looking at painting. It was erotic and loving.
Titillating Filters Mieka Dovey, 28 a musical theater actress born in Denmark, said she and her friends take artistically styled and composed shots.