"Into this lacuna created by non-naming come degrading, disgusted terms for labia – 'beef curtains,' 'fanny flaps'” – that reinforce the sense that squeamishness is warranted..."

"Second-wave feminists [had] consciousness-raising women’s groups where everyone would examine their vulva with a hand mirror. That fell out of fashion in the 90s and 00s – surfing a post-ironic, anti-earnest wave, feminism was suddenly fine with the hidden, private vulva. Any public notion of what a vulva looked like was created by pornography, starting with complete hairlessness..... [There is a] digital native generation that [looks at pornography and thinks] 'Oh my God, that is not what I look like' [and doesn't want] to talk to anyone about it, because that would be mortifying.'... The artist Jamie McCartney produced The Great Wall of Vagina – 400 plastercast vulvas – in 2011... (He knows that the casts he has made are of vulvas, not vaginas, but the word play doesn’t work so well.)... 'While casting, I discovered that loads of women.... would look at other casts and say: "This one’s so neat," or: "I wish mine looked more like that." I was incredulous – there really wasn’t any sense in my mind that some were good and some were defective. And this ideal was created in my name, apparently, because that’s what men like. I just thought: "Fuck that."'...  On social media, even the most conceptual works of feminist visual representation often have to be taken down due to nudity or 'community' guidelines...."

From "Labia liberation! The movement to end vulva anxiety for good/Women have long been taught to be ashamed of their vulvas, with increasing numbers turning to cosmetic surgery in pursuit of genital ‘perfection.' But a new generation is fighting back" (The Guardian).

ADDED: I'm trying to grasp "post-ironic, anti-earnest." Seems contradictory, but maybe that's what they were. I do remember finding the consciousness-raising era feminism too earnest. But I don't really know when feminists were not earnest. As for irony, if the later feminists were post-ironic, when was the ironic era in feminism? I lived through the whole thing and observed it, through my own varying levels of irony and earnestness.

And let me say that I like "The Great Wall of Vagina" as photographed at The Guardian, though I can see I didn't like it, based on different photographs, when I blogged about it — here — in 2012.

Also, I remember the original plastercasters, who preserved the form of male genitalia, specifically rock-star genitalia (Hendrix, etc.). Was that post-ironic and anti-earnest? The penises were erect. Does that help answer the question?  

AND: From that last link: "Meeting Frank Zappa, who found the concept of 'casting' both humorous and creative as an art form (though he himself had no interest in submitting to the procedure), Albritton [AKA Cynthia Plaster Caster] found in him something of a patron. He moved her to Los Angeles, which she described as a veritable groupie heaven, with no lack of willing assistants eager to prepare the subjects for casting. In 1971, after her apartment was burglarized, Zappa and Albritton decided the casts should be preserved for a future exhibition, entrusting them to Zappa's legal partner, Herb Cohen, for safekeeping. The exhibition idea did not take off however due to a sudden lack of famous rock stars willing to participate...."

The phallocracy crushed the woman artist. Meanwhile this Jamie McCartney gets shows and recognition. (And, no, he's not the James who is the son of Paul McCartney. That James, who's about the same age as the "Vagina" artist, became a musician.)