Book offers women plain talk about sex

IT’S TIME for adults to stop talking like babies.

Ladies, please. Between your legs? It is not a “va-jay-jay.” That’s a word coined by Shonda Rhimes when the censors said “Grey’s Anatomy” was getting too anatomical. It is not your “lady parts.” And enough, please, with references to the “hoo-hah.” Can’t we just say vagina? Yes, Norwegian sex educators Ellen Støkken Dahl and Nina Brochmann admit, technically that’s only part of a woman’s sexual equipment — and not even the most obvious one.

But it goes to the real point of their book “The Wonder Down Under”: We would all be a lot healthier if we knew what we were talking about.

And we would all be enjoying a lot more sex if we knew enough to know what we wanted. And weren’t afraid to ask for it. The authors take a logical approach to every aspect of a woman’s below-thebelt health. They deliver lots of useful information, mixing in plenty of bizarre facts, weird trivia and pop-culture references while still cheerfully setting the record straight.

The myth-busting starts with Chapter 1.

If you’re a woman worrying if you A) look weird or B) smell bad, the answers are A) no and B) only if have an infection, which you would probably know about anyway.

Everyone is a little bit different, so stop wondering whether your husband looking genitals are normal and start enjoying proof of purity. them. Just don’t follow the The authors’ sex advice is practical. bad example of Princess Marie If it’s your first time — or Bonaparte. even your first time with a new

Frustrated by her lack partner — don’t go any faster or orgasms, the princess had further than you want. surgeon move her clitoris. And remember this is real life, It didn’t help. not a porn movie, which takes Oh, and the hymen? Time to something true and turns it into a dispel a lot of legends, most conjured fantasy — “a bit like the Hobbit up by sexist, insecure men. films,” the authors write.

The plain fact is that you can “There may be mountains in be sexually active and still have real life, but that doesn't mean one, or still be a virgin without there are dragons living in them. one. And even if there were, they

You can’t prove chastity by the wouldn’t have Benedict Cumberbatch’s vaunted maidenhood — though voice.” that belief still persists, widely If you want to have a more enough that some women opt realistic expectation of sex, they to restore the membrane with a advise, rewatch an episode of the hymenoplasty. HBO series “Girls,” where

Others turn to the internet for people hook up in all sorts fake hymens, complete with of ways, sometimes awkward, stage blood, to fool any honeymooning sometimes awesome. of a for

“Dirty talk and spanking seemed sexy in the latest Elle article, but when Adam and Hannah try it in real life, it turns into the very best kind of cringe TV,” they write. “‘Girls’ is the clash between the ideal and the reality.”

So how many times a week should you be having sex? And what kind of sex? There’s no one right answer, the authors assert.

The more important questions remain: Are you getting enough? And if not, why not?

There can be plenty of reasons — a deep depression, a failing relationship — but Dahl and Brochmann quote Manhattan sex therapist Dr. Shirley Zussman.

She’s described as “a little hunchbacked lady with full lips and sparkling eyes” who just marked her 103d birthday. Zussman’s seen a number of unsatisfied clients and offers her own diagnosis: Too much work and not enough communication.

“The women who come to me are so tired that they’d rather look at those damn iPhones than set aside time for intimacy,” Zussman declares. “We forget to touch each other and look each other in the eyes.”

What about the sex itself? The book offers suggestions for positions, including the “coital alignment technique,” or CAT, and cutesy cartoons to illustrate. Some incredibly practical, very Scandinavian advice, too: Wear a nice warm pair of socks to bed. The last thing you want is to be distracted, and what’s more distracting than cold feet?

The actual position you choose is less important than that you both have fun, although the authors admit satisfaction can be harder for women to achieve than men. It seems unfair, as the female orgasm has been studied, even prized, for centuries.

It was once believed a woman couldn’t become pregnant unless she had an orgasm.

Because heirs were terribly important to kings, that belief led to some bizarre royal decrees. In 1740, Austria's royal physician commanded that “the vulva of Her Most Holy Majesty should be titillated before intercourse.”

The lords and ladies of the 18th century knew what they were doing, but then Sigmund Freud arrived to complicate things. There were different kinds of orgasms, he insisted, the clitoral and the vaginal; the first, he pronounced immature and the second, he maintained, required a man.

That was not only sexist but wrong, as any woman could have