Women’s History Month: Peaches’ “Vaginoplasty”

Peaches is a role model–and not just because she has made a career of being as vulgar as possible, collaborated with both Iggy Pop and Tone Lōc, regularly wears pink hot pants, and had her breasts casted by Cynthia Plaster Caster, although those are all admirable achievements. No, Peaches is a role model because she creates fearless art that is entirely her own. Her 2000 debut album, The Teaches of Peaches, was released when she was 36 years old, an age when most women begin disappearing from the public eye. On her latest album, 2015’s Rub, Peaches continues to defy, and confront, ageists and misogynists alike with her brand of absurd, hyper-sexual humor.

Of course, it’s not all humor. If you think that Peaches’ music is just an endless onslaught of dirty jokes, then you’re wholly missing the point. Her music and performance art deal with issues of gender and sexual identity, aging, and beauty norms.

The Rub track “Vaginoplasty” is an ode to big vaginas, loose vaginas, and just vaginas in general, including those that are surgically constructed. It’s shocking only because there are so few songs written with such candor. Female genitals are not often talked about without being shrouded in euphemism, and yet here’s a catchy song with the lyrics “pussy’s big and I’m proud of it.” Then there’s the music video (above), with Peaches wearing a vulva hat, complete with a bush, flanked by two dancing vaginas.

It’s the sort of meatheaded stupidity that is so often associated with men’s obsession with their dicks, and it’s about time that women started feeling the same amount of love and vanity for their own genitalia. Gotta get it get it, girl.