About Me - Ellie

My name is Ellie.

I’m the girl behind the camera (and sometimes in front, when it all gets too fun and I want to be involved!)

I’m not a photographer,

I’m not a writer,

I’m just a girl with a huge passion that went through a big journey to get to the place I'm at now. My story starts back in high school (isn’t that where all insecurities start?) around the time I started going through puberty. One day, I was sitting at my desk in the maths classroom and a boy behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and he handed me a folded up note. I opened it and it read “Do you have an innie or an outie?” This, my friends, was the first time of oh so many that I had heard the word “outie”. It is used to describe a woman’s inner labia that hangs below the outer labia.

As I had never seen another vulva, I had no idea. All the thoughts and nightmares of a usual teenage girl went running wild through my brain - IS MY VAGINA WEIRD? AM I NORMAL? WHAT THE HELL IS AN OUTIE?!?!?! After years of self hate with this area of my body, I eventually went to see a plastic surgeon. I was so nervous, I couldn't even explain what I wanted. I didn’t have an inner labia that I wanted trimmed, I had big outer labia that I wanted “liposuctioned”. I didn’t know any of the correct terminology, because all I had learnt about my vulva in sex education was that if I was to have sex, to wear a condom (which is great advice, but maybe if I had learned more I wouldn’t have found myself in this EXTREMLY awkward situation). So with the words I knew, I said to the doctor “I want liposuction." We went into his office and he pulled out a yellow highlighter. He started drawing on my inner thigh. I was standing there in my undies, super confused looking down at this man. I eventually spoke up and asked him “Sorry, why are you drawing those lines on my leg? He looked at me and said "You want liposuction, don’t you?” I whispered back to him “On my vulva, not my legs…" He asked me to show him my Vulva and I slowly took off my undies. He was kneeling down. He looks up at me and asked “Ellie, have you ever seen another Vulva?” I told him "I’ve seen a few, but they don't look like mine."

What this man did at this moment saved me from cutting off half of my labia. He educated me. He used nice words to tell me that not all girls have the “barbie vagina” that you see in magazines and porn and what I was asking to have “liposuctioned” was completely normal to have. He told me to go home and google what vulvas look like and educate myself. He could have dusted off his hands and said “Great, I'll give you the Rolls-Royce of vaginas" and just taken my money. Instead he was so kind and humane, and I am so grateful every single day for this man to be the one my path led me too.

I now want to do the same for all the women out there contemplating going through surgery due to a lack on knowledge of that area on their own body.