
Orange Is the New Black Shows Adults Can Be Clueless About Anatomy Too
September 22, 2014
I don’t know about you, but I am a big fan of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black. The show highlights some of the struggles of prison life—dirty bathrooms, correctional officers and prison gangs—in a dark, yet funny way. One scene in season two, episode four, “A Whole Other Hole,” really stuck with me for one reason in particular: the scene was about the fact that some adult women don’t know much about their genitals.
Poussey, one of the inmates, talks about inventing a device that would be used to pee without squatting on the nasty toilets in the prison. She mentions where to place the device when peeing; however, her friends have lots of misinformation on where the “pee hole” is. This leads to a full blown lunch-time discussion on where urine exits the female body. Is it inside the “sex hole,” inside of the clitoris or is it a completely different hole, they wonder.
Where do girls urinate from exactly? As inmate Sophia later explains, the urethra is located between the labia minora, below the clitoris and above the entrance of the vagina. It’s a separate hole from the vaginal opening. Meanwhile another inmate, Taystee, discovers how her body works while looking at her vulva with a hand mirror in a bathroom stall. This is a great scene, but the fact that she didn’t know how her body works to begin with had me a little worried. This scene might be funny, but it was also kind of disheartening to me.
Although the scene is funny and lighthearted, it highlights the fact that even some adults don’t know how their bodies work. This is simply because no one took the time to teach them—whether it be in school or at home. If some adults don’t understand how their bodies work, how do they expect us to know? Basic knowledge about anatomy should be taught in sex ed. Nothing should be overlooked—especially when it comes to our bodies. This scene makes it clear that all teens deserve comprehensive sexuality education about how their bodies work. Knowing where pee comes out of the body is just the start. The more we know about our bodies the better off we are, and as Sophia put it, “Get to know your own cha-chas, OK?”