Introducing The World’s First Vagina Beauty Contest

Maybe being in the sexy toy industry does not necessarily make someone an asshole, but Brian Sloan’s situation is a bit different. [4] The American sex toy entrepreneur created the competition, so he could find the perfect vagina to replica on one of his sex toys.  According to Elite Daily the sex toy manufacturer got ‘everyday women’ to upload pictures of their vulvas for people to rate from 1-10. The top three were used to design Sloan’s new product. The aim of the contest was to determine what type of vagina men prefer – all contestants had to do was submit a photo of their vulva with a piece of paper saying: #AutoblowVaginalBeautyContest.  [1] According to a press release for the contest, competitors can win up to $5,000, simply by digitally photographing their vulvas while awkwardly holding a printed-out hashtag in the frame and uploading this image to the Internet for strange men to judge and vote on. [2] The winners are flown out to Los Angeles to have their genitals 3D-scanned to create new snatch-style ports for Sloan’s Autoblow device.  [2] “A dirty little secret of the adult toy industry is that the majority of vagina masturbators that are supposedly molded from porn stars and sold as replicas are in fact not molded from porn stars and are far from being replicas,” Sloan explained in an email to the Daily Dot. [2] “Most companies use ‘stock’ vaginas and re-brand them with new identities multiple times with new packaging. If you lined up all of the vagina toys available today, you’d find 75 percent of the vaginas to be strikingly similar.” (Which we gather hasn’t exactly been a problem for consumers, but OK.)

The point of the exercice is this: Sloan wants to give men a say in the aesthetics of their masturbatory aides—even if it’s ultimately a superficial distinction. He admits that what he’s really doing is scanning vulvas and slapping them on top of the standard Autoblow “sleeve” in place of that weird rubberized mouth, “but ‘vulva’ doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘vagina.’” [2]  “I didn’t want to go through the time and expense of 3D scanning the kinds of vaginas I liked and then finding out that most guys preferred other types,” he said. “I prefer the exploded hamburger type heavy on the meat flaps, but I know a lot of other guys prefer the moose knuckle style.  I’m just interested as a businessman in giving men exactly what they want. So a contest is, as far as I know, the only way to do that.” [2]  Sloan went so far as to promise accurate skin tone in the finished products: “It’s important for our customers to feel that they are actually inserting themselves into the vaginas that won the contest.” Owners of vaginas of all shapes and sizes are encouraged to apply, with the exception of those who prefer to go au naturel, as the machine “can’t 3D-scan hair.” [2]

After the contest was announced, 182 women submitted photos of their vaginas, which were ranked and voted on by 134,707 of the website’s 1.2 million unique visitors from 191 countries. The data from the contest was also used as the basis for a study, which “investigates the diversity of vulvas and the public opinion about different vulval morphologies,” measuring according to such standards as “labia minora length, labia majora length, and clitoral hood length.” [3]   The winners were crowned based off of the score. Then some scientists (if you can call them that) looked at the photos, took some measurements, and broke them up into types so we can decide which characteristics and types of vagina scored highest. The compiled everything into something called “The Vulva Paper“, everything you want to know about how people voted in a vagina beauty contest in one place. [16] For a long period of time, 38-year-old Coralyn Jewel of California had the lead, with a 7.2 rating.

Cynics may see this as a misogynistic (if undeniably brilliant) marketing ploy by Sloan. Indeed, Mic’s Nicolas DiDomizio sniffed that “determining what the ‘best’ vagina is…especially based on appearance, doubles down on the already pervasive judgment of women’s bodies by men,” while The Gloss’s Lisa Marie Basile declared the project “utterly creepy and sexist…objectifying…just ridiculous.” [3] [9]  After all, in a world where women are already made to feel bad about themselves for their thighs and butts and bellies and stretch marks,  it’s just logical that we need to start judging vaginas too. [3]  When asked if she thought the Vagina Beauty Pageant might have a negative impact on women who felt self-conscious about their vulvas to begin with, Nell (who finally won the contest) dismissed the idea. “If I thought it were damaging, or that negative for women, generally, I wouldn’t have even participated. I believe that I am a person who tries to lead a life according to some basic ethics, so I wouldn’t have done it if I honestly thought it was harming women generally,” she said. “I honestly think it’s harmless … if there’s something out there creating standards for vagina beauty, it’s mostly porn, where you get a lot of women undergoing labiaplasty. That’s absolutely more harming.  “Objectification itself is not the problem. It’s something that happens naturally to all of us, I think, both men and women.”[1] “You just have to understand that your vagina might not be attractive to all voters, but others may find it very attractive,” says Kia, 24, whose boyfriend encouraged her to submit her vagina because “he thought it would boost my confidence.”   Kia has previously only compared herself to porn stars, and has felt self-conscious that her vagina looks “stretched out” since she had two children.  “It makes me feel better knowing there are a lot of vaginas out there that look similar to mine,” she says.   25-year-old Odette Delacroix, an adult actress, porn producer, and fetishist (coincidentally, she is the only woman whose face is visible in her photo), says she thinks “every vagina is beautiful and unique, and it’s interesting to see some people have preferences just as they do with faces.” “It’s almost like an art piece to see all the different submissions,” she adds. And she’s not going to “run out and get a face-lift on my vagina” if she doesn’t win. [9]  Nell, the winner, ended up with a score of 7.7, while the woman in last place scored just 1.8. First prize was $5000, second prize was $2500 (Jenny from Bavaria – 7.3) and third prize was $1250 (Anita from Hungary – also 7.3). Each lady in the top three have very, very neat-looking, completely hairless, special places. [8]