“Almost Nothing is Not a Pussy” –@look_at_this_pusssy
Mary Catherine Lawler
The LA-based Eva Sealove and Chelsea Jones started Look at This Pussy, affectionately abbreviated as LATP, as an in-joke, but their co-founded instagram account has blown up to over 7.600 followers. Re-envisioning the every day in terms of the yonic rather than the phallic and shattering the idea that only phallic shapes, symbols, and signifiers are visible Sealove and Jones provide a new lens for the everyday, working in what they call “visual euphemism” (Dazed).
Engaging in this “visual and textual project”, the BFF pair post vaginas seen in architecture, clothing, food, plants, cats and caves (ha ha), public art, advertisements, and other sources and exposing these shapes previously thought “unseeable” or “nonexistent” vis-à-vis those resembling the male anatomy, Jones and Sealove train their instagram followers and their larger audience to look for and recognize the female form in everyday objects and animate life. They also receive many submissions from fans and incorporate the most unique and crazy of them into their social media account.
Featured online in for example Dazed, Wut, Bullett, and Paper, Sealove and Jones have attracted significant attention with a new perspective that is “militantly anti-shame” (Sealove in Bullett interview) and all about “peep[ing] the puss” (Paper). The Fusion article on the 20-somethings even coined a new German word for “vaginal doppelgängers (or, voppelgängers)” – for the snapshots. In using pictures of simulated or recognized vaginas, the pair additionally enjoy the benefit of dancing around most – though not all – censorship.
In response to the question/request to “[d]escribe the perfect pussy”, Jones answers “I think that all pussies are perfect, in being un-perfect. I don’t think the ‘perfect pussy’ really exists. My pussy, your pussy, everybody’s pussy is fucking perfect” (Bullett). Also, when asked which pussy is their favorite, both replied that each has its own unique merits.
Though unfortunately both have received some pushback (“please stop sending us pictures of your dicks” – Sealove, in Dazed, the ‘it’s-a-vulva-not a-vagina’ terminology debate, and accusations of being anti-trans and essentialist), the yonic-seeking duo, Sealove and Jones, have over 7.600 Instagram followers convinced – “almost nothing is not a pussy”. They push for self-acceptance for women and a broader understanding of the difficulty of existence as a woman, while arguing for de-mystification – not, both underscore, de-sexualization – of the female form.
For more LATP, don’t miss Sealove and Jones’ podcast, which will be released on May 1, 2016, called ‘Do What Feels Right’.