The notorious V.A.G.

Last weekend, while on a camping trip, my friend and I, bonding over our love of the open road, found ourselves brainstorming an ingenious business model: A trucking company hauling lady products to lady customers: Tampons, delicate pink plastic razors, pretty-smelling soaps and shampoos.

“Our motto will be ‘Got a vagina? We’ll find ya!’” my friend exclaimed with excitement.

A genius slogan, but if some lawmakers had their druthers, one that’s also a crime.

Indeed, a hoo-ha over the technical, medically correct word for hoo-ha erupted last week after a Michigan state representative was barred from the state House floor for uttering the V-word.

State House Republicans silenced Rep. Lisa Brown after she spoke out June 13 against a bill that aimed to, among other things, criminalize any abortion carried out after 20 weeks gestation.

“I’m flattered you’re all so concerned about my vagina,” Brown told her fellow representatives in explanation of her opposition to the bill. “But ‘no’ means ‘no.’”

Brown’s use of that choice word was an affront to several of her colleagues’ delicate sensibilities.

“What she said was offensive,” said Rep. Mike Callton. “It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company.”

Majority floor leader Jim Stamas agreed and, citing concern with “the decorum of the House,” banned Brown for one day from speaking on the floor.

Seriously? Shut down for saying vagina—a word that’s inarguably an integral part of a bill designed to regulate, at least indirectly, vaginas? A bill that, for the record, features the word vagina three times? My stars, why don’t they just pin a scarlet “V” to her little lady jacket while they’re at it?

(Meanwhile, Brown’s colleague, Rep. Barb Byrum was also given a one-day verbal time-out after she tried to, as part of her own protest against the abortion bill, attach to it an amendment regulating vasectomies. The horror.)

I’ll be the first to admit that, at least socially, the word vagina is somewhat awkward. And, certainly, it inspires equally awkward verbal replacements—vajayjay, anyone? But any social embarrassment over the word is the result of an overarching institutional and cultural squeamishness when it comes to discussing body parts and their bodily functions (see also: tampons, menstruation, labia and vulva. OK, maybe vulva really is an odd little word, but still.)

Vagina isn’t a swear word, it’s not vulgar, and, frankly, it’s much more embarrassing that so many adults still allow themselves to be inflicted with such an adolescent case of the heebie-jeebies when it’s uttered in their presence.

True story: I was once assigned by a newspaper (not this newspaper, duh) to write an article about The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s series of soliloquies on all things notorious V.A.G. Along with the assignment, my editor handed down one adamant piece of instruction: Use the actual word vagina as little as possible.

True story update: Six times turned out to be five times too many.

(Update to the update: So far this column contains nine uses of the word.)

On Monday, Ensler staged a performance of her play on the steps of Michigan’s state Capitol in Lansing. Several female legislators, including Brown and Byrum, joined Ensler in the readings. During the event, the word vagina was uttered many, many times in front of thousands of supporters and, as it turns out, grown men did not actually die from shock or embarrassment.

Vagina. Vagina. Vagina.

Grow up and get over it.