von Hottie: The Blog

“Who will plow my vulva?” - Inanna, the original von Hottie

This weekend, while participating in an early workshop for Little Lord’s spring show, JewQueen, based on the biblical story of Esther, I learned about the goddess Inanna.

Inanna is my new favorite goddess, and quite possibly the Mother of all von Hottness. Also, I want her poem to be my new audition monologue. Here is the excerpt I read, emphasis mine.

“Who will plow my vulva?” Perhaps you have never asked this question, but the old mythological Queen of Heaven does ask it in a 4,000-year-old text (translated in Inanna by Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer and storyteller Diane Wolkstein). Inanna loves her body, and she presents an image of pride that has much to teach women today. The text says, “When Inanna leaned back against the apple tree, her vulva was wondrous to behold. Rejoicing at her wondrous vulva, the young woman Inanna applauded herself.” Starhawk writes that in this text “the erotic power of woman is seen as a force that generates good for all the community. The image of a young woman frankly praising her own vulva is hard for us to comprehend in a world in which women are conditioned to hate their bodies.” Inanna lives in a world “in which there is no conceivable reason why she should hesitate to express and rejoice in her beauty.” And since we now understand the springtime and fertility connections between Purim’s Queens and Inanna, let’s look at the text:

My vulva, the horn/ The Boat of

Heaven/ Is full of eagerness like

the young moon./ My untilled land

lies fallow.

As for me, Inanna/ Who will

plow my vulva?/ Who will plow my

high field?/ Who will plow my wet

ground?/ As for me, the young

woman,/ Who will plow my vulva?/

Who will station the ox there?/ Who

will plow my vulva?

Dumuzi replied: “Great Lady, the

king will plow your vulva./ I, Dumuzi

the King, will plow your vulva.”

Inanna: “Then plow my vulva, man of my

heart!/ Plow my vulva!”

- From “Our Book-of-Esther Problem, a 12 page Lilith Feature” by Rabbi Susan Shnur