I'm all for body positivity when it comes to kids. That means you should teach your children the names for their body parts and should not instill shame. That does not mean, however, that it's appropriate to bring so-called "vagina" cookies as treats for your second grader's classroom.
Photo credit: Rachel Kramer Bussel via Flickr, CC BY 2.0
The teacher's story was related on Reddit, where she also provided screenshots of the angry emails she received from this mom in question, who not only hoped the teacher got beat by an abusive husband every night, she insisted that we should teach people about the vagina and how to please it. Nope. Just nope.
First of all, if this woman is really a feminist, she should know that unless her cookies were decorated with a birth canal, they really aren't vagina cookies… the external female genitalia is called a vulva.
Next, these are second graders, and while they likely would not be scarred for life by vulva cookies, that is something that each parent needs to decide for their own child. They don't need to be confronted by a decorated vulva and be expected to eat it in the name of feminism. Frankly, not every adult would be comfortable chowing down on desserts in the shape of genitalia, whether it be a penis or a vulva. While I don't find the idea gross or disgusting, I still don't think it's appropriate in a school setting unless every parent is on board and the teacher knows about it in advance.
Demystifying our anatomy is crucial (especially after I watched a video of women who had never seen their own vulvas), but pushing this agenda on your child's classmates in the second grade — and as a complete surprise to the teacher — isn't the way to do it. It would make a good prop for a sex ed class in middle or high school, especially if penises were also represented. But not there, and not at that age.
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