"What does it do?" Lily May, aged two and three-quarters, is asking her usual catalogue of questions, this time in the bath, surrounded by a flotilla of Shrek toothbrushes and Postman Pat waterproof books. I hear the whirring cogs inside the mind of my husband. "Well, it's, um, it's a bit like Ned's winkle. Ned has a winkle, and you have a ... um ..." "A cherub," says Lily, beaming.
She does indeed. Though, when she hits school at four, I doubt very much anyone else in the playground will have one. Other little girls might have a coochie, a hoo-hoo, a fluff ... actually, almost any word that could apply to a pet guinea pig seems fit for the job. Welcome to the shadowy world of euphemism for the female genital assemblage - a crazy complication of interrelated elements, admittedly, but surely one which deserves a communal, colloquial name.
Later in life, of course, there are more options, from the clinical to the hot-to-trot raunchy. The former belong to the medical community, fine for pointing out the site of a pain, useful during the ignominious explorations of pregnancy and childbirth. The latter, though, don't belong to us at all. Not to women. The majority of words used conversationally to describe female genitalia are mostly the preserve of men - and men, at that, whom you wouldn't much like to meet propped up at a bar. Coated in sleaze, overlain with connotation, these kinds of words, from the c-word down, are the argot of the porn industry, and consequently taboo.
What you're left with, then, is a series of ludicrous Disney words. There are the pretty, Blue-Peter-kitten names (minnie, fairy, fluff), and terms with an affectionate nod to nature (butterfly, daisy, flower). Then there are the nonsense words: cootchie, poontang, fuzzy, toosh. But historically, the more prosaic terms have prevailed. Many of us grew up with a front bottom, others with in-betweens, down there, pink parts and lady-bits.
And let us not forget the edibles. "During pregnancy, the ultrasound technician called it a cheeseburger," says one mother, "but I don't want [my daughter] to have to think about her vagina every time she pulls up to a drive-thru." "My parents told me mine was a kipper," says another. You have to feel sorry for that little soul.
As Dr Catherine Blackledge, author of The Story of V, a fascinating dip into the cultural background and etymology of the vagina, points out, there is a wealth of available names - but not one with which we are collectively satisfied. "There are so many varied and incredible terms for female genitalia, far more than there are for male genitalia, and yet we still say there isn't a good enough or safe enough one. Why are we so fussy? I think it's time to stop blaming the genital words, and look at the emotions that genitalia elicit. We are still less comfortable and confident talking about female sexual anatomy and female sexual pleasure than we are about males'."
And so, to disguise our embarrassment, the words come sugar-wrapped. The sheer scale of options says much about the issue: "There are no collectively accepted words," agrees Dr Pat Spungin, founder of Raisingkids.co.uk. "Boys have several options, but girls simply don't. Many of the available words - muff or pussy - refer only to adult genitalia. The words used by little girls may be sweet, but they're not shared."
Whereas men have strong, short words for their bits, women, even in adulthood, have soft, welcoming words, the upshot of a childhood spent pussy-footing around the subject, or not mentioning it at all. While men have something to show and shout about, we have what is deemed to be a non-place, a non-identity, a lack - not just physically, but linguistically and, by extension, socially and culturally. As classic feminist theorists have it, without an appropriate, universal label, there is a lack of ownership, a separation of girl from body, and a subsequent alienation from sexual identity. For Germaine Greer, back in 1970, this was the basis of female subjugation and disenfranchisement. Not much has changed. While boys remain intimately connected to and involved with their genitalia from an early age, the very secrecy surrounding their vaginas leaves girls at best in the dark, and at worst shamed by their unlabelled nether world.
Dr Blackledge recognises this alienation. "If you don't feel comfortable with, or have a name for, your vagina then how can you be connected with it?" she asks. "This lack of connection partly explains why too many girls and women become anorgasmic. It's easy to see that not giving something a name, or not being happy with a name, isn't the best way to strike up a fruitful relationship."
David Messer, professor of language and child development at the Open University, notes that naming things rationalises and orders them. "Vocabulary is linked to lots of skills, to language and an understanding of the world," he says. So why this deficiency for what is a crucial part of the female body? "It's more difficult to name something in its absence; we tend to have names for things we want to refer to. Functionally, a carer might have to refer to a penis - "Don't get that caught" - but there may not be a need to refer to female genitalia as much. Culturally, I would agree that it may disenfranchise women. The very lack of terminology serves to provide a greater contrast between males who have something and females who do not. I suspect the embarrassment [about the terminology] has to do with a lack of social acceptability in drawing attention to female sexuality at a young age."
"We need to point up the difference between secret and private," submits Dr Polly Carmichael, consultant clinical psychologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital. "A vagina is private, not secret or shameful, and that's what we should teach our children. But normalising it is crucial. In some sense, it doesn't matter what you call it, just that you're comfortable with it. The message to children should be that this isn't a taboo area, but it should be a private one."
Perhaps, in order to topple the taboo, we need to undertake a bit of word reclamation. A bit of naming not shaming. But where to start? Vagina, surely, is too grown-up a word. Like tapenade or mortgage repayment, it sounds strange issuing from the lips of a toddler. It is so formal. But it is a popular choice with liberated, forward-thinking parents.
"On balance, I am pro-vagina," one mother of three confides. "Using slang only stigmatises the correct term." Even so, isn't vagina is a bit of a mouthful for everyday conversation? As another puts it: "Vagina is such a laborious word. It's got three distinct syllables and you almost have to chew the word to get it out." More fundamentally, since I don't refer to "my vagina" and never have, why should I impose it on my child? (Besides, I know of one little boy who was taught the correct terms for genitalia by savvy parents, but misheard the word "vagina" as "china" and spent the next 10 years of his life mortified with embarrassment during geography). And even if you, the parent, refer to "penis" and "vagina" at bathtime, it doesn't necessarily mean your children will follow suit. "I was very particular about a vagina being a vagina in our house," says Laura. "But Chloe calls it her peanut. There's no shifting her."
Just as you'd cut up an apple to give it to a child, terminology does need to be cut into bite-sized pieces to suit their needs. We don't ask children if they'd like to defecate or urinate. It's poo and wee. So what's wrong with peanut? Well,correct labelling from an early age helps if there should ever be a problem, such as infection or even abuse. There's the crushing example of the primary pupil complaining that her "canary was hurt", and the message not getting through (although any teacher who can't crack an infant-school euphemism like this needs to retake their PGCE).
But even once you have chosen the anatomical route, the issue is still not resolved. Calling the entire area vagina is technically wrong. The anatomically correct term is vulva, a word rarely heard in any context and easily confused with something Swedish parked in the drive. And once you're at vulva, why stop? Should we bring up the labia and the clitoris to complete the picture?
Of course not. The point is most little girls are not aware of the elements or mechanisms of that area at that age, nor need they be. Technical terms are surely better left until their operational importance becomes required knowledge - about the time they start drawing ram's-head pictures of ovaries and fallopian tubes.
Blackledge suggests using the term yoni, "an incredibly beautiful and potent eastern word which is growing in recognition ... If you believe etymology matters, then yoni is acceptable in this way, too - it implies origin or source, with the idea of female genitalia as an object of worship, the sacred origin of the world."
A nice idea, perhaps - but, given its current uptake, pretty hard to insinuate on the national consciousness without an ad campaign. What you do end up with, though, after much deliberation, is a fanny. And even fanny is one of those words that comes with a silent snigger attached. Besides, in the US, it means butt, which can lead to much hilarious misunderstanding when you are seven or eight and meeting people from Oregon for the first time.
"There isn't a right and a wrong," says Dr Carmichael. "Children's responses to words are generally a function of the way a parent uses them." And, it might be added, how society uses them. If girls are to be given a chance to normalise theirrelationship with, and develop understanding of, their anatomy, we surely need to get over the giggles and arrive at one term which fits. But, please, not Kipper. It gives me the willies.