When Kurt Andersen took over as editor of New York Magazine, he printed out a list of “annoying words” he didn’t want his writers to use. When I was 32, I wrote about this list on Cup of Jo, then added a word that I myself hated: moist.
Moist? Ew, gross. If you described banana bread as moist, it sounded vaginal. And I really didn’t like the word vagina. It was weird, sort of icky. I avoided saying it, even at the doctor’s office. *shudders*
I was far from alone. In 2012, The New Yorker asked their Twitter followers which word should be eliminated from the English language. “In the end, there was a runaway un-favorite,” they wrote. “Moist.” Five years later, food writer Emily Johnson even lamented this cultural aversion in her Bon Appetit piece “Stop Getting Mad at Me for Using the Word ‘Moist,’” explaining that “you can only describe a chicken thigh as juicy so many times.”
@amazonmgmstudios Some like it wet. Some like it dry. Your call. See Rosamund Pike in Saltburn, in select theaters this Friday and everywhere Thanksgiving
And did you ever see this scene from Saltburn? “I was a lesbian for a while, you know,” the mother says. “But it was all a bit too wet for me in the end. Men are so lovely and dry.”
Well.
Now that I’m older, and thankfully the culture has grown and shifted (big nod to Broad City here, which loudly celebrated women’s bodies and desires), the words moist and wet and damp actually sound so warm to me, so compelling. They remind us of women? Of sex? Good! I can’t believe how much they’ve changed in my mind, without my doing anything other than passively absorbing the culture around me.
The word “vagina” also sounds completely different — close and endearing, like the beloved name of a long-time friend. My friend’s young son recently misremembered my name and called me “Vajenna” all night, and I was so honored and charmed. How interesting, right? Do you feel the same? Or differently? Or nothing at all?
Today, Toby and I toured a high school, and the admissions director led us down a stairwell peppered with ceramic tiles made by students. One tile showed the Statue of Liberty; another, a basketball. And then I saw one of a vulva. “Oh, look!” I said, pointing. “How cool is that?” I loved that the student had felt inspired to make it and the school had then displayed it.
It actually wasn’t the first vulva artwork my kids had seen — my sister, Lucy, has a sculpture by Sophia Wallace in her dining room, meaning a terracotta clitoris appears in the background of many family photos. And I’m excited to see the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, which features one of Wallace’s giant clit sculptures, inspired by the strength and grace of swans.
Also, necklaces!
What about you? How do you feel about the word “moist”? “Vagina”? “Vulva”? Have your feelings changed or stayed the same? No wrong answers, of course; please share your thoughts below. xoxoxo
P.S. Sex-positive parenting for prudes, and is this the sexiest podcast?
