Life

A Vagina Pop-Up Is Coming To NYC This Month & It's Everything You've Ever Wanted

by Lea Rose Emery
Sustain Natural

There a lot of different ways to embrace your vagina. You can do some self-exploration with a mirror. You can talk to your friends about your vagina and all its quirks. You can research all the different types of vulvas to help learn to love yours. Or you can go to a vagina pop-up event that is completely designed to look like a vaginal canal — womb included. Yup, you can get lost in a huge vagina.

From April 17-April 22, NYC will get the the chance to visit the "Get On Top" pop-up from Sustain Natural, a natural sexual wellness brand that offers all-natural and organic tampons, condoms, lubricant, and wipes. They've been changing the period game by offering bio-degradable plant-based tampon applicators and manufacturing products that are paraben-free and without any animal byproducts or synthetical fragrances. And, when you consider that tampons and condoms go inside of you, I think removing all that stuff is a pretty easy idea to get behind.

The pop-up is opening to celebrate a new book from Meika Hollender, co-founder and CEO of Sustain Natural, called Get On Top, which is a sex-positive, pleasure-positive, and safety-conscious look at everything from periods to consent — and the events at the pop-up will be celebrating the topics covered in the book. Basically, you get five days of vagina goodness.

After building Sustain Natural for nearly four years and seeing how it sparked conversations about sexual health, Hollender was inspired to create a space for women IRL to come together and talk about sexual health.

"For years we’ve been having these conversations via our customer service team, in the media, and on social media, but Get On Top put a stake in the ground in helping us define our voice and role in sexual and reproductive education," Hollender tells Bustle. "When we were trying to figure out how to celebrate the book launch, the idea of a traditional book tour didn't really feel right since it's not really a traditional book! We thought we'd turn it on its head and sort of 'tour the book' instead, staying in one place and dedicating each day of the popup to a different chapter... I'd always hoped that Get On Top would make space for women to explore their bodies and their sexual health and wellness, so this literal space honors that for me. Also, I've always dreamed of doing a sex and periods version of the Museum of Ice Cream so...."

Sustain

Hollender hopes women walk away from the pop-up events with a sense of empowerment and clarity. "I want women to come out of our space with answers to their more pressing questions, and with the tools to get cliterate, experience equal pleasure, and protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy and STDs," says Hollender. "The whole experience is meant to be educational, entertaining, and exciting. We want visitors to get that getting to know yourself and your body can be totally fun; that a Friday night talking about PMS and a Saturday discussing contraceptives can make for a weekend well spent!"

While the events and panels aim to educate and empower, the shop just sounds really fun, too. There's a "Coochie Counter", organic products, and a bathtub full of tampons. But, most importantly, they have a vulva selfie booth. A VULVA SELFIE BOOTH. I'm really starting to wonder why one of those hasn't been in my life already. Just the idea of it makes me so happy.

If you're in NYC and want to know all of the exciting details, here's what you need to know:

Location: 208 Bowery Street

Dates: Tuesday, April 17 - Sunday, April 22

Hours: 12 p.m. — 6 p.m. for the retail store, 6 p.m. — 9 p.m. for events

I'm all for anything that helps women embrace their vaginas and sparks a conversation about important issues like consent and pleasure. And this pop-up seems like the right mix of whimsy and education to help make that happen. Whether you want to visit it for the panels or just poke around a shop that is all-vagina, all the time, it seems totally worth taking a look and seeing what all the fuss is about.