he thing about guys’ bits is that they’re all hanging out the front there. A guy might wonder whether his willy looks like everybody else’s but he certainly gets an idea of what his own looks like, getting an eyeful every time he gets his pants off.

Us girly persons, on the other hand, have our genitalia (a very scientific word for girly bits) tucked away out of sight between our legs. The only way we can get a good look is to hold a small mirror between our legs and angle a light or torch so that we can see what’s going on down there. I can recommend this to you if you have a room with a lock on the door.

What you’ll find down there between your legs is the vulva. This area includes the inner and outer lips which surround the vagina, called the labia minora and the labia majora. There’s also your clitoris, which is a small, very sensitive ‘button’ of flesh that has no other purpose but to provide you with sexual pleasure (wacko).

Then there’s the opening to your urethra that leads from the bladder; and the opening to your vagina which is where menstrual blood comes out. Further to the back is your anus, which is the opening from the bowel at the end of the rectum. It is a good idea to work out which is which, not least because some people have accidentally tried to put a tampon up their bum, or they worried a tampon might get lost inside their vagina (it can’t) because they didn’t know enough about their girly parts to be going on with.

Even though your first look, or feel of your girly bits might lead you to believe that your parts are weird because the lips seem too big, or there’s too much hair, or not enough, or the inside walls of the vagina feel knobbly, I’ll bet you your girly parts are absolutely normal. You’re just not used to them yet. For example, during your mirror inspection, you may see some of the hymen at the entrance to the vagina.

The hymen is a thin piece of membrane which partly covers the vagina when you’re born, and can become torn or holed by a tampon, exercise, or the insertion of a penis. When the tearing happens this may hurt, or you may not notice it. Even after the insertion of many tampons, or after years of regular sex, little bits of the hymen remain. So don’t think that’s weird either. Your girly bits are not meant to look like a neat little diagram.

Heaps of people worry about whether their girly bits are strange, mostly because they’ve never seen everybody else’s, or even anybody else’s.

Inside, there are a lot of other girly bits that men don’t have. These include ovaries; the womb (also called the uterus) where a foetus can grow into a baby, and where menstrual (period) blood comes from; and various other accessories to the whole shebang, such as normal vaginal mucous, fallopian tubes, and the cervix. Many of these girly bits can be damaged by sexually transmitted diseases, which is why it’s important to always wear a condom (actually, not you, the guy should be wearing the condom) during sex. I’m not going to go into the whole gorgeous inside girly bits story here, because there are whole books written about it.

If you’d like to know what your body is doing or looking like, outside or in, check out the diagrams and info in some books (remembering that diagrams are just indications of what to expect, not exactly what yours should look like).

The experts who can reassure you are at Family Planning Clinics in every capital city (see the phone book) or any women’s health centre or clinic at hospitals, or a doctor you trust. They see different girly bits all day long, every day, and won’t in the least mind checking out yours. It’s part of their job description. And if you don’t want to see a Family Planning nurse or doctor, you can get them to send you some pamphlets, or you can browse in their library.