The Diversity of Yoni Art: Meli the Lover

For this article, I would like to analyze an art piece by Mélina Lamoureux, aka Meli the Lover vis-à-vis the imagery that it evokes. I first learned about Meli the Lover's work after searching for yoni/ vulva art online.

After training as a graphic designer and working for ten years in the field, British Columbia-based artist, Mélina Lamoureux began illustrating independent works motivated by a strong desire for creative freedom and self-employment. Starting with a small Etsy shop, she is now a full-time illustrator whose art is housed and sold in hundreds of stores across the world. Her work is inspired by women, the magic of their bodies, their connection to nature, and the phases of the moon.

Mélina Lamoureux, aka Meli the Lover

Many of Mélina’s followers describe feeling seen by her art and some have described her work as therapeutic. Sharing with Mélina a love of the ocean, the West Coast, old growth forests, and surfing, I certainly feel a strong sense of calm, feminine identification, and grounding from this illustration that presents meandering blue water emerging from the body of a woman. In this image, we see the phases of the moon above a mountain range. The woman's body is an ocean that spills out like a waterfall to become a pool. The blues and purples of this picture evoke the colors of the throat, third eye, and crown chakras that relate to speech/voice, intuition, and transcendence.

Analysis of WAP - Mother Earth from a Scientific Perspective

WAP - Mother Earth, Copyright: Meli the Lover, 2024

WAP – Mother Earth is a beautiful representation of the fluids of women’s sexual and reproductive organs that serve numerous purposes. The waterfall could represent sexual excretions that can improve her and her partner’s sexual enjoyment and which might facilitate reproduction, or amniotic water that gushes when the baby breaks the amniotic sac which can lubricate the birth canal (or analogously when Mother Earth births life). So little is known about these fluids in the field of science. Imagine that a 2018 meta-analysis (or analysis of existing studies) of women’s sexual fluids found that there are very few research studies on this subject and that most studies have less than 10 participants (Pastor and Chmel, 2018). The sexual lubrication fluid is an ultra-filtrate of blood plasma released from the vaginal venous plexus. It “may also contain peritoneal and follicular fluid, uterine fluid, cervical fluid, and secretions from Bartholin’s and Skene’s glands” with daily production around 6 g that will differ in consistency and color depending on the stage of the woman’s monthly cycle (Pastor and Chmel, 2018). Batholin’s glands are located on either side of the vaginal opening and Skene’s glands are located on either side of the urethra. Remember that women’s vulva has three main areas, the clitoris at the top, the urethra in the middle for urination, and the vaginal opening at the base. These sexual secretions have high potassium and low sodium compared with plasma (the watery component of blood) and an average pH of 4.7, meaning more acidic. As a comparison, seminal fluid is more alkaline at 7.2-7.4 pH.

The prostrate in women (or those assigned female at birth - AFAB) plays a role in what is called squirting which only became a medical term in 2011. Research studies differ regarding the prevalence of this gland, aka prostate, meaning that three different studies report vastly different prevalence rates for the existence of the prostate: two thirds of women, half of women, and 85% of women have a prostate! What?! It weighs one tenth to one quarter the weight of the men’s prostate (or those assigned male at birth – AMAB) and has “more musculofibrous tissues and ducts, but substantially fewer glands” (Pastor and Chmel, 2018). The role of the prostate in women or those AFAB is unclear; some studies assume that prostate secretions have an antimicrobial or protective effect against urinary tract infections”. Squirting or gushing is the involuntary expulsion of a fluid (from the prostrate) that is biochemically similar to urine or diluted urine during or after an orgasm and has a color described as clear as water. Fluids from the woman’s prostrate have a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) that is similar to that which is released in seminal fluid.

In sum, there are three main fluids that women and AFAB expulse from their vulva and vagina during sexual activity including,

1. an ejaculate which is “the secretion of a few milliliters of thick, milky fluid by the female prostate

2. squirting which is “defined as the orgasmic transurethral expulsion of tenths of milliliters of a form of urine containing various concentrations of urea, creatinine, and uric acid”

3. coital incontinence, the involuntary expulsion of urine during penetration or orgasm that is “stress urinary incontinence or detrusor hyperactivity” (Pastor and Chmel, 2018), but may not be.

With WAP – Mother Earth, I reflect on many ideas and concepts including the importance of water and fluids to life and human happiness. The oceans, lakes, and rivers of this planet are healing, but also exploited. They flow, but human beings also control them to derive electric power and re-direct them to conquer the land and reform it. Mother Earth births and sustains all and requires its waters to make that possible. Thus, from Mother Earth’s waters, all life on this planet came into existence and thus, we owe our existence to the WAP of Mother Earth. The association between WAP and Mother Earth gives a new and unique meaning to this urban acronym sometimes invoked to celebrate women’s sexuality and sometimes invoked to celebrate men’s sexuality depending on who the invoker is.

To learn more about Meli the Lover and her artwork, her website is below.

Works Cited:

Pastor, Z., & Chmel, R. (2018). Differential diagnostics of female “sexual” fluids: a narrative review. International Urogynecology Journal. 29: 621-629.