I took my 10-year-old daughter to see Taryn Brumfitt’s new film Embrace, an incredible movie which seeks to create a global change for positive female body image.
Taryn became a sensation across the world in 2o13 after she posted a composite photo: one of herself at a bodybuilding contest, the other after she had given birth to three children.
More than three million people liked the photo, and it triggered the beginning of her quest to harness positive body image activism with the Body Image Movement, and now with her film Embrace.
When I heard today that it had been given an MA15+ rating by the Australian censorship board due to images of "protruding labia" in a short sequence showing different images of vaginas, I couldn't even remember that part of the film.
More than 50 per cent of Australians have a vagina.
The rest - I think it's safe to say - either came out of one or go into one on a regular basis.
Not to mention all the vaginas men (and boys) see in porn, with the average Australian male seeing porn for the first time at 11 years old.
So I'd say that seeing a vagina is neither a terrifying, disturbing or even mildly surprising experience for the vast majority of people on the planet.
Vaginas are not unicorns.
You can watch the trailer for Embrace below. Post continues after video.
And yet the image we have of what a vagina 'should' look like is still woefully screwed up.
The censorship board confirmed it yet again with this obscene ruling. It's the "protruding labia" that was deemed too terrifying for anyone under 15 to see, despite this brilliant film about the way women's bodies are portrayed being most helpful to that exact demographic - both boys and girls.