A healthy sex life can also help you spot the early signs of a problem

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Certified sex and relationship practitioner Georgia Grace agrees: “I hear this all the time – due to a range of social, cultural, religious factors, or even and individuals upbringing and lack of access to positive and shame free sex education, so many of my clients feel a great amount of shame, fear, discomfort, vulnerability, even disgust, around looking at their genitals. People in their 20s, 30s, 40s, even up to their 70s, can struggle to look at their genitals,” she says.

Start with self-exploration

Although it’s unlikely for something really serious to be observable through visual inspection, it suddenly felt bizarre to me that there are a handful of people who have seen so much more of my genitals than I, the owner of them, ever have – including, but not limited to, my GP and my waxer.

“It can have a huge impact on your sexual wellbeing, and your connection to your body,” Grace says. “People often won’t know how to touch or stimulate their body, they may not even know how to name their genital anatomy. Having an awareness of your body, knowing how you want to be touched and how to build arousal in your body is the foundation for great sex – without this knowledge it can be challenging to communicate sexual wants and needs in partnered sex. Self-exploration and awareness is the foundation.”

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Grace often describes that disconnection as “feeling like a blank space from our belly button down: a lack of connection to the whole pelvic region. It can be very challenging to feel pleasure and sensation in an area of our body we completely ignore. It might be more of an emotional disconnection that shows up during sex, many of my clients experience discomfort receiving pleasure or oral sex, noting the fear of what sexual partners may think of their genitals. It’s also just a really edgy thing, to look at your body or touch it, if you’ve never if you’ve never done it before.”

Grace and Kang are in agreement that looking at our genitals in the mirror is useful for overall health, wellbeing, understanding our bodies and working through feelings of shame. The benefits are endless, according to Grace: “educational, sexual, for body image, building connection, a partner practice in learning together – there are infinite benefits to building a visual connection to your body”.

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