“Skinny dipping?” I thought to myself. “For the love of God why do we have to go skinny-dipping?” I was already uncomfortable being crammed on the bus with the 35 other girls on the high school cheerleading team, and now they were going to throw this on me too?

I had just made it onto the squad (Go Jaguars!) and we were all being shipped out to cheer camp at a lake house for the summer. A couple of the girls from my grade had made the cut, but most of the team was made up of “cheer vets” who had been in the group for a couple of years already. While I was thrilled to have made the team, the older girls had come up with some “off–the-itinerary” plans that I definitely wasn’t excited about.

They told us rookies that as a part of our new cheerleader initiation we would all have to get naked and go skinny dipping together in the lake. I had never even been in my bathing suit in front of these girls, and now they wanted me to get completely naked with them?

As we drove, the older girls kept talking about all of the times that they had been naked in front of each other. I started to sweat. Maybe they were trying to make us feel more comfortable, but I can tell you, it sure wasn’t working.

“Kristen has the cutest pussy, it’s so small!”
“No I don’t, Emma does!”
“At least it isn’t like Sarah’s!”
“Oh my God hers was so weird, what was all that stuff like hanging down from it?”

Okay, so it’s safe to say that I was mildly really totally freaking out. But it wasn’t that I was ashamed of my body . . . just that one part in particular. My vagina.

A million questions raced through my mind.

How many different ways can a vagina look?
What if mine’s weird?
Did mine have things hanging down that the other girls would laugh at?
What does a normal vagina look like?
Does everyone have a normal vagina but me?

I had never seen another girl’s private parts, not even my mom had seen mine since I was a kid and honestly I hadn’t really inspected my own all that much. But anytime I did look at it, the word “cute” definitely didn’t come to mind. To me, vaginas were just sort of weird looking. I just assumed that how all vaginas looked!

All I could think was “PLEASE DON’T LET MINE BE WEIRDER THAN SARAH’S!”

When the time finally came for us to have our “initiation,” I was super hesitant to undress, but I guess what made me feel more comfortable was that everyone seemed a little bit embarrassed.

When we were all naked standing by the side of the water, waiting for our next cue, I noticed that not a single girl on the squad look the same down there.

Some were hairy, some were shaved, some had longer parts hanging down and some didn’t, some seemed pink and some seemed brown. They all looked so different that it was impossible to compare them! I wasn’t ashamed of mine anymore; in fact I kind of started to like it.

I felt a wave a relief crash over me as I jumped into the lake, realizing that there isn’t a “normal” type of vagina. They’re all different . . . just like girls.

Do you ever wonder about having a normal vagina? Tell me about your own body drama in the comments!

How Much Do You Really Know About Your Vagina?

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