ladyparts

 

I’m not really sure where the term "vagina music" originated.  The first time I heard it was in Nicole Holofcener’s awesome film Walking and Talking, when a male character complained to his female car-trip cohorts, "Are we gonna listen to this vagina music the whole way there?" ("Yes!") The second time was almost a decade later,  on an episode of Six Feet Under wherein one of Claire’s art-school friends demands , "You guys are gonna have to change this vagina music immediately."

From these, we can infer that vagina music  = music that others feel subjected to and wish to avoid.

Nonfictionally, in my own life, it’s come up in less confrontational instances, usually in discussions of the famed Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival—which was originally founded to showcase what was specifically called women’s music—or the once-mighty Lilith Fair. I used the expression  just last weekend to  refer to a band playing Portland’s Pride festivities whose skinny jeans and self-conscious rattails screamed ’80s synth revival ,but whose amps bleated out something much more Indigo/DiFranco.