Pussypedia
A free, bilingual, inclusive encyclopedia of the pussy made for you to understand. It is a book and a website.
Pussypedia The Book
Pussypedia: A Comprehensive Guide was published by Hachette Go! in August 2021. It was a #1 seller in its category on Amazon, and has since sold over 10K copies and been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, and Ukrainian. It received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.
“Pussypedia is a hilarious, ridiculously informative and absolutely necessary atlas for people with pussies…Mendelson takes an inclusive and intersectional approach to demystifying all things pussy. This book is a joyful, frank, and comprehensive corrective to the cultural ignorance surrounding people with pussies. If pussy is the promised land, this book is the compass that will guide you there."―Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
The book, published two years after the launch of the website, took a different approach from the 101 nature of the website, diving deeper into the science and how the science has historically been produced:
There is still a shocking lack of accurate, accessible information about pussies and many esteemed medical sources seem to contradict each other. Pussypedia solves that with extensive reviews of peer-reviewed science that address old myths, confusing inconsistencies, and the influence of gender narratives on scientific research––always in simple, joyful language. Through over 30 chapters, Pussypedia not only gives the reader information, but teaches them how to read science, how to consider information in its context, and how to accept what we don't know rather than search for conclusions. It also weaves in personal anecdotes from the authors and their friends––sometimes funny, sometimes sad, often cringe-worthy, and always extremely personal––to do away with shame and encourage curiosity, exploration, and agency.
Since its launch in July 2019, Pussypedia has had over 1.2 million visitors (from every country in the world, yes, even North Korea!) and over 2 million page views. It won a People’s Voice Webby for Education and 1st place in the National Mexican Design Biennale in the Socially Impact category in 2020. Pussypedia has been covered by: Fast Company, OZY, The BBC, Design Matters, Autostraddle, Bust, Dame, Hello Giggles, Glam, Men's Health, The Lily, Now This Her, CosmopolitanMX, TimeOut Mexico, Mas por Mas, Cool Hunter MX, TV Notas, Canal 11, Metro, Télérama, Le Figaro, and many many other publications from every continent.
Pussypedia.net aims to address the lack of quality, accessible information about our bodies on the internet. Pussypedia is a community-sourced project: the product of people all over the world working together. It is a platform meant to facilitate our ability to collectively generate high quality, accessible information. Pussypedia contains:
A 3D interactive model of the whole-pussy* system made by Biodigital so you can see what we’re talking about and get a spatial understanding of what is in your body.
A portal of rigorously vetted resources. There are great resources for sexual and reproductive health on and off the internet but they are scattered, and often too hard to find. We collect, review, and curate quality resources and make them searchable.
Original articles: our articles range in topics from puberty to prolapse, menstruation to menopause, trans health to reproductive rights. Our articles are rigorously fact-checked and written for you to understand. See our protocol for writers here, and for fact checkers here.
I created this project with María Conejo, Michael Yap, Jackie Jahn, a (~2.6x funded) Kickstarter, and 200+ global volunteers.
The 3D Interactive Model
click the images above to see the full model
Why?
Talcum powder increases risk of ovarian cancer (the odds of ovarian cancer were 1.3 times higher among women who used talc compared to women who did not). Women who douche once per week or more experience bacterial vaginosis 1.17 times more often than women who do not douche. And yet, both talcum powder and douches are sold on the shelves of most pharmacies. Labiaplasty is now the world’s fastest growing cosmetic procedure among teenage girls, despite a lack of evidence that it’s even safe.
Institutions with resources don’t often fund research about pussies. Of what little sexual health research exists, too much centers on male, cis, and heterosexual needs and the majority is practically inaccessible to the vast majority of people who need it. In a vacuum of high-quality information, most of what we learn about our bodies comes from a misogynistic cultural legacy and from advertisers who use shame to sell us products that often harm us. Ignorance and shame rob us of our agency over our bodies, our capacity to experience sexual pleasure, and too often, our self-worth.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge is the tool to assert control. We should, at the very least, have the power to control our own bodies. For that, we need a lot more access to information about them.