"bold, courageous, beautifying, radiant and captivating when there’s a story and based on a conversation that led up to it. It’s not just an image. It shows an element of trust."

A man rhapsodizes about the photo of a "full-frontal bare vulva" texted to him by his his 24-year-old girlfriend. Quoted in The New York Times in "The Selfie That Dares to Go There/Men are not the only ones texting pictures of their private parts."

Much of the article is about how to take a good "v-selfie":

“Snapchat filters banish blemish and razor bumps,” she said, adding that when she gets really fancy she uses Photoshop. “My mother is a photographer — lights and background are everything. Sometimes filters can make the ‘v’ look shaved even if it’s been two days and you’re stubbly. You want your ‘v’ to look good, so whatever light, filter, position will make your ‘v’ look best, that’s the one you should use. I use it as a narrative, as if you’re telling a story. It’s an aspect of that, it’s not just a vagina.”

I was going to say the use of "v" was a convenience for those who know the correct word is "vulva" but feel they ought to say "vagina" to fit in with those who don't.

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. “When I was in high school, if you had pubic hair, it was embarrassing,” Ms. Stout said....

“We’re in a generation full of people that want cosmetic improvements so they can share images,” [said adonna’s dermatologist Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank]. “I think the feeling of one’s sexuality is very much a center point of one’s image of themselves.”...

“I sit on the bed, prop the phone on a pillow and set the timer,” said [lingerie consultant Stephanie] Ms. Moreno, a petite brunette with large luminous brown eyes and tapered nails painted bright sapling-green. “It’s not just sexual, it has artistic merit and beauty. It’s sentimental and more intimate than sending my face.”

Later, a friend of the author's opines that if the woman doesn't include her face in the shot it looks "like leftovers at a cannibal dinner party."

The article descends into darkness with the discussion of women who don't "feel empowered" by taking and sending "v-selfies." A modest or revenge-porn averse woman is framed as a coward, "afraid to look at or experience their own intimate feminine beauty."

Nick, a 31-year-old software salesman and former Marine who served two combat tours in Iraq and the Republic of Georgia, brought up his girlfriend’s sexual inhibition to his PTSD therapist, who prescribed they take V-selfies over a mirror.

“She was very unsure of herself, very unconfident,” Nick said. “We didn’t have sex very often. It wasn’t something she was super-comfortable with, but I was in love with her. I was like, ‘O.K., well I guess I’ll find a way to make this no longer an issue.’”

A subsequent lover was far more overt, sending some images “including her face, which I thought was ambitious and I would advise against it, but yeah — she just wasn’t afraid.”

Wow! What happened between those last 2 paragraphs?! Did Nick dump the woman he loved because she didn't step up to the therapist-prescribed porn shoot?! Where's the #MeToo spirit now? Does it drop out of the picture whenever it interferes with some giddy theme of the joys of sex?

This article caused me to do an image search...



... I had to wonder what the hell is "sapling green," that color on the "tapered nails"?