It’s official! Vulvalippen is entering the Dutch dictionary.

In Dutch, the word most people learn for labia is schaamlippen: literally, “shame lips.” Shame is built into the name of a normal part of the body before many of us are old enough to question it. This autumn, vulvalippen will be added to the online Dikke Van Dale. One word has changed. What it makes possible is much bigger.

Language can feel harmless because we inherit it. We hear a word at home, in a classroom or in a doctor’s office and repeat it. Over time, that word becomes the frame through which we understand the body it describes.

Schaamlippen does more than point to anatomy. It carries an instruction: this is private, embarrassing and difficult to name. Its history reaches back to the Latin pudenda, meaning parts to be ashamed of. That old idea has survived in everyday Dutch, including in medical conversations.

We believe the words used for our bodies should help us understand them and care for them. Vulvalippen does exactly that. It is clear, anatomically accurate and free from a judgement nobody asked for.

Ellen Laan asked the question first

This moment belongs in the longer history of sexual emancipation in the Netherlands. Professor of sexology Ellen Laan spent years challenging the inequality, silence and myths surrounding women’s sexual health and pleasure.

In 2021, during a public conversation about “schaamlipschaamte,” Laan proposed a term that said what the body part is without telling its owner how to feel about it.

“Misschien moeten we het daarom hebben over vulvalippen. Een anatomisch correcte benaming. We hebben het ook niet over schaamballen.”“Perhaps we should call them vulvalippen. An anatomically correct term. We don’t call testicles ‘shame balls’ either.” Ellen Laan, 2021, as reported by LINDA.

She ended with a call to others: “Wie helpt mee deze nieuwe naam te pushen?” Ellen died in 2022. She did not get to see the word enter Van Dale, yet her question continued to travel through clinics, organisations, classrooms, media and conversations between people.

Her legacy matters here. A campaign can create a visible moment, while lasting change is built by people who keep naming what is missing long before the wider culture catches up.

How Schaamteloos began

In 2023, we were tired of seeing International Women’s Day reduced to slogans and seasonal marketing. We wanted to put our energy into a specific change that could improve how women in the Netherlands talk about their bodies.

Together with The Pleasure Society and The Vulva Gallery, The Oh Collective joined the Schaamteloos campaign. We brought well-known voices and leaders from the intimacy and lifestyle space together for a large portrait shoot. They lent their faces and platforms to a simple request: use vulvalippen.

In 2024, we used International Women’s Day to bring that request to a wider audience. The portraits moved online, sparked conversations and gave people a term they could start using immediately. Since then, The Oh Collective, The Pleasure Society and The Vulva Gallery have used vulvalippen consistently in our own communication and have discussed the language with partners across our industry.

More recently, the Dolle Mina’s brought renewed public force to the movement. Their actions, including outreach to doctors and public posters, reached people far beyond the original campaign community. The official recognition of vulvalippen grew from this collective effort, with Ellen Laan’s early advocacy at its foundation.

Why one word can affect healthcare

The strongest case for vulvalippen is practical. To ask for care, a person first needs words for what hurts, changes, itches or worries them. A term carrying shame can raise the threshold around an intimate conversation, especially for children, teenagers and anyone who has never been taught neutral anatomical language.

Hearing schaamlippen from a doctor can quietly reinforce the idea that this part of the body should stay hidden. Hearing vulvalippen makes the conversation factual. It gives patients and professionals a shared word that describes the anatomy and leaves embarrassment out of the diagnosis.

This also affects pleasure. People deserve to talk about sensation, consent, discomfort and desire with the same clarity they use for any other part of their health. Better language cannot solve every inequality in sexual healthcare. It can make the first sentence easier to say.

A dictionary entry is a beginning

Van Dale’s decision is important because it removes a familiar objection. Vulvalippen can no longer be dismissed as an invented campaign word or corrected as improper Dutch. It has earned a recognised place in the language because people kept using it.

The old term will remain in the dictionary. That makes the next step ours. Dictionaries document usage; people decide which words become normal at the kitchen table, in a consultation room, in journalism and in sex education.

At The Oh Collective, we will keep choosing vulvalippen. We will use it online, with our partners and in The Oh Collective Playground in Amsterdam, where conversations about intimacy and pleasure happen face to face. Every use helps the word become less unfamiliar.

Changing the dictionary took years. Changing everyday language starts the next time we speak.

The change we want to hear

We want a child to learn the word without learning embarrassment alongside it. We want someone to point to pain and describe where it is. We want medical professionals, teachers, parents, partners and journalists to have language that treats the vulva as part of the body rather than a source of shame.

That is why this entry matters. Vulvalippen gives us a better word. Using it gives that word power.

This campaign was shaped by many people over many years. We are proud to have helped carry it forward alongside The Pleasure Society, The Vulva Gallery, the Dolle Mina’s and every person who chose to change their vocabulary. Above all, we honour Ellen Laan, whose work helped give the movement its words.