November 1st, 2007
The VaJayJay Dialogues.
I again missed one of the most important dialogues of the century: The vajayjay dialogues.
[1]“It’s an inevitable outcome of one of those vague principles of life: the superior somehow unfolds out of the inferior. Likewise, language evolution begins with the urgent grunting of a guy with a club, moves through a “Me Tarzan, you Jane” phase, and ends finally with the epitome of civilization – the whip crack enunciation of Sir Laurence Olivier as Hamlet,”. Or Chandra Wilson as Miranda Bailey a pregnant doctor who had gone into labor on Greys Anatomy as she admonishes a male intern, “Stop looking at my vajayjay”.
Haven’t been a fan of Oprah since she released Dr Phil upon the world, busy over the last six months or so I was unaware that vajayjay was her new fave word, or that everyone from Jimmy Kimmel on down the food chain has been using it since it was introduced in an episode of Grey’s anatomy, by Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer, last winter due to “broadcast” being uncomfortable with the use of the word.
From the need for a non clinical word, a pet name, the need to get off “the euphemism treadmill”, to the need to make it sound more childlike and therefore clean it up, linguists from around the country weighed in as the NYT asked What Did You Call It?
Now, vajayjay’s just a given for me,” Ms. Rhimes said. “It’s a word I use, a word my female friends use, a word I’ve heard women in the grocery store use. I don’t even think about where it came from anymore. It doesn’t belong to me or anyone at the show. It belongs to all women.”
So, there ya go.
Me, I’m old skool. I call a toe a toe, a finger a finger and a vagina a vagina. Maybe I just don’t have enough opportunity to reference my vagina while in a grocery store or while talking to friends.
I must get out more.
[1] The The First Word
