Butterflies, pearls and peonies: Vaginas in art

Some of the earliest representations of vaginas can be found in Venus figurines, named after the Roman goddess of love, desire and fertility. One of around 100 such objects uncovered in Europe, Venus of Hoehe Fels dates back 40,000 years. Carved in mammoth tusk, these figurines portray women with plump abdomens, exaggerated hips and small, faceless heads.

Westerners can thank the Kamasumtra for introducing the Sanskrit word yoni as a reference to female genitalia. Translated as "origin" or "source," yoni is not found in original texts, but Sir Richard Francis Burton adapted it in his 1883 translation to avoid offending Victorian sensibilities. Yoni sculptures, representing the womb, vagina or vulva can be found in temples across Southeast Asia.

Around 150 examples of Sheela na gig, a grotesque in the art of the gargoyle, can be found on church buildings in Ireland and England. Thought to have originated in the 11th century, these figurative carvings of women with exaggerated genitalia might represent a pre-Christian mother goddess religion. Another theory is that their location on churches shows they represent female lust as hideous.

"The Mother of American Modernism" is perhaps best-known for her close-ups of colorful flowers. Although she consistently denied the allusion to the female genitalia, critics have often considered the works representative of women's sexuality for their abstract outlines as well as the sensual color scheme.

Representations of the vagina or vulva are often taken up by men, perhaps most famously by Gustave Courbet in the 1866 painting "The Origin of the World." Not all depictions are well-received, as British sculptor Anish Kapoor discovered after revealing "Dirty Corner," which stands at Versailles, a piece that he was quoted as saying signified "the vagina of the queen coming into power."

Avant-garde and unencumbered in her aesthetic, Icelandic singer Bjork worked with Hungry, a Berlin-based make-up artist and drag performer, and the artist James Marry to create the pearl-laden mask she wears in the self-portrait that adorns the cover of "Utopia." Undertones in songs like "The Gate" and "Blissing Me" thus become more explicit in an album that rebukes violent men and embraces love.

Fashion as art. Fashion as a political act: In 2017, women took to the streets of Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump. And they did so while wearing hand-sewn or knitted pink hats, known as "pussy hats" in reference to a vulgarity Trump had been recorded using. The hats became a symbol of women reclaiming agency over their own bodies.