If you arrived here searching for a vagina cushion, welcome. There is just one small anatomical correction to make before we go any further: what most people casually call the vagina is actually the vulva.
The vagina is the internal muscular canal. The vulva is the external genital area, including the labia, clitoris, vaginal opening and surrounding structures. That distinction matters, because one of the reasons I created the Vulvalicious® Cushions was to make female genital anatomy easier to see, touch, understand and talk about.
And, admittedly, because I thought the world could use rather more beautiful vulvas sitting proudly on sofas.
What Are Vulvalicious® Cushions?
Vulvalicious® Cushions are handmade, three-dimensional fabric representations of vulval and female sexual anatomy. They are tactile, colourful and beautiful enough to be pieces of textile art, but they were originally created as educational models.
Female sexual anatomy is wonderfully three-dimensional. Structures overlap, some parts are visible while others extend beneath the surface, and erectile tissues change during arousal. A conventional anatomical drawing can show us where structures are, but being able to lift, touch and explore a three-dimensional model gives us a very different way of understanding how they relate to one another.
That was at the heart of Vulvalicious® from the beginning.
Meet the Vulvalicious® Family.
Each Vulvalicious® Cushion has her own character, fabrics and personality. The cushions are not identical anatomical clones, and deliberately so. Real vulvas come in an extraordinary variety of shapes, sizes, colours and proportions, and I wanted the cushions to celebrate that diversity rather than reproduce a single idealised image of what female genitals are supposedly meant to look like.
Some Vulvalicious® Cushions are used by sex educators, therapists, midwives and other health practitioners. Some travel to workshops and professional trainings. Others live on sofas, beds and therapy-room chairs, where they have a remarkable ability to start conversations before anyone has said a word.
People look, often look again, and sooner or later someone asks, “Is that…?”
Yes. It is.
And that is usually where the interesting conversation begins.
The Vulva Is Not the Vagina
One of the most basic pieces of sex education is also one that many people were never taught accurately.
The vulva is the external genital area. It includes the outer and inner labia, the clitoral glans and hood, the openings of the urethra and vagina, the vestibule and the surrounding tissues. The vagina is the internal canal leading from the vaginal opening towards the cervix.
Getting the language right is not about becoming anatomy police. Having accurate words for our bodies helps us understand them, care for them, communicate about them and describe what gives us pleasure. It is difficult to talk confidently about something that has remained unnamed, euphemised or misunderstood.
And Then There Is the Clitoris
The clitoris is perhaps the clearest example of why three-dimensional anatomy matters.
For generations, diagrams often represented it as little more than a tiny external bump. The visible clitoral glans, however, is only part of a much larger erectile structure. The body of the clitoris extends internally and divides into two long crura, or legs, while nearby vestibular bulbs also become engorged during arousal.
Once you begin to understand that anatomy, female sexual response stops looking like a collection of isolated buttons and starts to make far more sense as an interconnected system of erectile tissue, nerves, muscles, blood flow, sensation and attention.
This was one of the things that fascinated me when I began studying and teaching female arousal. Why were so many of us never shown this anatomy clearly, and how different might our relationship with our bodies be if we had been?
Why Make Anatomy You Can Touch?
A flat diagram is useful, but a tactile model offers something different. With a Vulvalicious® Cushion you can explore structures physically, lift the labia, locate anatomical landmarks and understand where different parts sit in relation to one another.
That makes the cushions useful for sexuality and relationship educators, somatic sexologists, counsellors and therapists, midwives, health practitioners, teachers, workshop facilitators and anyone wanting a more embodied way to learn about female anatomy.
You do not need to be a professional, however. Many people choose a Vulvalicious® Cushion simply because it is beautiful, provocative, funny, celebratory or wonderfully unusual.
Education and delight do not have to live in separate rooms.
There Is No One “Normal” Vulva
Perhaps one of the most important things we can learn about vulvas is just how varied they are.
Inner labia may be small or prominent, symmetrical or quite different from one another. Clitoral hoods vary, outer labia vary, colour varies, and bodies change through age, hormones, pregnancy, birth and life.
There is no single template that everyone is meant to resemble.
That matters in a culture where many people encounter idealised or highly selective images of female genitals long before they ever see the ordinary diversity of real bodies. Accurate anatomy can help, but so can simply seeing more variation represented without embarrassment.
The Vulvalicious® family was created with that spirit in mind: individuality, character and celebration rather than conformity.
The Story Behind Vulvalicious®
The Vulvalicious® Cushions grew from my work as a somatic sexologist, educator and performer, and from my long-standing interest in finding ways to talk about sexuality that are accurate, embodied and enjoyable. I wanted people to be able to really see, touch and explore vulval anatomy in three dimensions, without any live vulvae being harmed in the process!
Anatomical diagrams are useful, but they can only go so far. I wanted something tactile that could be handled, opened, examined and used to show how the different structures of the vulva and female arousal anatomy relate to one another. Something accurate enough to teach with, approachable enough to invite questions, and beautiful enough that people actually wanted to pick it up and explore.
So I began making what became the Vulvalicious® Cushions.
They have since found their way into workshops, clinics, classrooms, therapy rooms and homes, helping people explore anatomy in a way that is tactile, approachable and memorable.
You can read more about the design process here.
Sex Education You Can Put on the Sofa
Perhaps that is what I still love most about Vulvalicious®. They occupy an unusual space between anatomy model, textile art, conversation starter and celebration.
They are educational without being clinical, playful without being trivial, and beautiful while depicting a part of the body that has spent centuries being hidden, censored, euphemised and misunderstood.
Understanding anatomy does not tell us what we should enjoy. Bodies, sensation, arousal and pleasure are deeply individual. What a better anatomical map can give us is more curiosity, more language and more possibility for exploring what is true for our own bodies.
And sometimes that exploration can begin with something as simple as a gloriously unapologetic vulva cushion sitting on the sofa.
Explore the Vulvalicious® Cushions.
Meet the Vulvalicious® family in the yOni shop.
Whether yours becomes an educational tool, a piece of textile art, a conversation starter or simply the most anatomically intriguing cushion in the room, each one carries the same invitation: look more closely, learn more about the body, and celebrate the remarkable diversity of the vulva.
