Vagina is not a dirty word

It's been used to provide pleasure for my partner and me. It has also provided safe passage for my children. I've certainly used it every single day of my life, so it gets a little grubby regularly and I take care to keep it nice. I've never needed to wax it (thank heavens, because I hear it hurts). In order to keep it strong, I do regular daily exercise because, for women especially, physical fitness of this particular part of my anatomy ensures that I will never need to get anyone else to open my jars for me.

And no one has ever complained about its portrayal on national television.

My life would not be the same without my right hand.

And the same could certainly be said about my vagina, although I hope I never have to use it to open jars.

The Carefree ad has been causing a stir for using the word "vagina".

A spokeswoman for the Advertising Standards Bureau tells me there have now been 70 complaints about an ad for a Carefree sanitary product to be used for mid-cycle discharge. That's not a huge number compared to the 220 complaints the ASB received when the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities' Rip&Roll campaign publicised condoms last year. Compared to the infamous beaver ads from 2008, it's a mere blip. Personally I prefer to call a vagina a vagina and a small carnivorous marsupial an antichinus.

The complaints about the Carefree ad are - in equal proportions - about the naked woman and the use of the word vagina. And Jason Cornelius, the state president of Family First for New South Wales and the ACT, says that advertisements such as these should never be screened during certain hours because of the impact they may have on young children (the Advertising Standards Bureau rated the Carefree ads as PG because they understand where small children come from).

The advertisement has screened during MasterChef - and Cornelius says that television stations should advertise that some programs [and he's talking about MasterChef here] are not suitable for people with health problems.

''We value health eating programs and stuff like that [but] if we took everything off air which was dangerous to kids and families, it would leave nothing to be shown.''

Which leaves us with the dangerous vagina.

Janet Currie is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney who specialises in health and physical education.

Should young children hear and use the word vagina?

The answer is clear. ''Teachers providing sex education in schools today have to use accurate and factual information which includes use of correct anatomical labelling,'' she says.

''This empowers boys and girls to understand their bodies and use correct labels. It's the normal medical labelling of a body part without any fear or sense of embarrassment.

''Understanding anatomy and correct labelling - that's in line with sex education principles. Other labels can include slang words and we don't need it to be a put down.

''I think it would be great if people could just talk about their bodies.''

As Currie says, we are happy to hear the words pancreas, prostate and breast. Or even hand. And no one blinks.

I'm pretty sure the people at Carefree will be delighted with the rumpus. They pay for ads and they get plenty more publicity around the campaign - partly because the model says vagina and partly because she looks naked. That's a very hard sell for a product we don't really need.

For me, that's the real challenge of this advertisement. We are so busy obsessing with real labels for real body parts and naked women on prime-time television, pay television and the internet (pah!) that we forget what it is that this advertisement is actually selling - which is the use of sanitary pads when you aren't actually menstruating, to deal with the ickiness - ''even that bit of discharge in between our period is our body working to keep the vagina healthy''. Apparently, young women now need a Carefree product to deal with what the rest of us have dealt with for centuries - and we didn't need some new bit of sanitary protection to deal with it. Any minute, someone's going to try to sell me ways to rip my pubic hair out even though we've had pubic hair since whenever and have had perfectly satisfactory sex throughout that period. And even better than satisfactory on many, many occasions.

I know there are some women who are planning to write to the ASB in support of the ad. I'd rather write in support of the real and honest portrayal of our bodies on television, on radio, in magazines and newspapers, on the internet. But I think that won't go far enough.

And I thought to myself, I might rock up to the next meeting of the ASB with a placard in support of truth in advertising. It turns out they don't want my company.

A spokeswoman says the location of the meetings is never revealed - to keep people with placards away. Shame, I was just working on my anatomical sketches with the correct labelling.

Let elbows be elbows.

■ Follow me on Twitter @jennaprice or email [e-mail]