There's been some talk of the world down under, and I don't mean Australia.
I'm talking about vaginas — or, as some now call it, vajayjay.
Vajayjay?
According to last Sunday's New York Times, vajayay — first heard on "Grey's Anatomy" last year — has been embraced by Oprah, who declared: “I think vajayjay is a nice word, don’t you?"
“Jay-jay” is childlike like “pee pee or doo doo,” and that “cleans up” the word, says Harvard psychology professor and author (“The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”) Steven Pinker, who counts at least 1,200 terms for the vagina in the history of the English language.
Do we really need to "clean up" vagina? (OK, maybe some women do, but that's not what we're talking about here ...)
I thought Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" addressed that.
Many like it, including men — Philadelphia radio talk show host Michael Smerconish finds the word vagina "starkly clinical."
"I see a vajayjay as a happy and inviting place, with a warm and fuzzy connotation," he blogs. "Vajayjay says 'hello ... welcome' and 'open for business.'"
Open for business? Plus, who likes 'em fuzzy anymore, anyway?
I have a few names for my vagina, and I use them when appropriate. I highly doubt vajayjay will join them. (Although it is a joke among my friends to refer to it as a "magenta," so labeled by a friend's then-6-year-old daughter.)
However, in light of how everyone seems willing to sell off the rights to name everything from ball parks to the Golden Gate Bridge nowadays ... I am hereby selling the rights to call my vagina whatever you want:
The Oracle O-hole?
Verizongina?
Comcasticlit?
Name your price ...
So, do you vajayjay?