Privates going public

I once read a quote about the difference between the way men and women think about their privates, and it went something like this:
For a woman, her privates are her privates, but men consider their privates to be publics.
I mean why else would the world's most iconic lingerie brand have a name like Victoria's Secret?

For an illustration of the above, I have a funny forward from last year. The woman bit has been pushed a little too far I think, but I can say with some authority that a summary of my life experiences so far features more men than women scratching their nethers, or their butt, or peeing in public. And it was one of the reasons I was very interested in sending my pink chaddies to Pramod Mutalik (for the Pink Chaddi Campaign). My motivation was not to vent my ire and embarrass a crook fanatic. I think the biggest reason for the success of the Pink Chaddi campaign was in giving permission to women to make their privates public. Women and men alike were for the first time talking about female underwear in a most unusually raucous way.

Women's intimates travelled the world with the very successful Vagina Monologues, which allowed women to say "vagina" freely without hemming and hawing.

Yet, Pink Chaddi was still about an underwear, and Vagina Monologues was only a play and a book. I thought women had a long way to go before they could go out there to get some true sunshine where the sun don't shine.

Then I heard about Boobs for Booze. I got over the shock very quickly and realised how incredible and amusing this idea was. No, the judges weren't bra experts. No they didn't feel the women up. No they weren't sleazy. They were just there to guesstimate your size and give you a drink for free. There were the token activist women calling this event sexist, demeaning and disrespectful. If this event really was really intended to be sexist, they would have left the ping pong sizes out, and made this a ding dongs only one. But this event was exactly the opposite of sexist - it was a fun night, when for once (to improvise on a tired abused cliche) size, shape, bounce, feel, direction etc. didn't matter. It the pushed conversation about breasts into a humorous and completely non-sexual area. It was in fact the complete anti-thesis of Victoria's Secret and Pirelli calendars - women were getting drunk, laughing and talking about them unapologetically (unlike the detractors).

I love the brand Strip. To my mind, even though it perpetuates a stereotype (hairless is sexy), it speaks of the issue in a very liberating way. It takes feminine intimates out from a very constrained world and brings them smack in your face, and sprinkles everything it says with a sense of humour that puts you at ease. Of course it just makes business sense haha, but I am yet to come across a beauty parlour talks about the fun of a Brazillian Wax - before, during and after - so unapologetically.