I don't think it does much for anyone

The reliably amusing BoingBoing has this, complete with photograph:

A McDonald's near LAX has a big poster outside showing hamburgers, and a neighboring gas station mini-mart ad displays its snacks and beverages. And now a nearby strip club and adult shop on Los Angeles' Century Boulevard is advertising exactly what it has to offer -- in very plain language. Passersby on the busy thoroughfare were greeted Tuesday with a freshly posted sign outside the Century Lounge proclaiming "Vaginas R' Us." (...)

Ha! But that reminds me of something that really ticks me off, from a picky, fanatically accurate point of view, and I hate to pick on the lovely and hilarious Go Fug Yourself girls but this is not the first time they've done this:

Paris looks so...sweet. Wholesome. Cute. Well-coiffed. Nicely shod. I can't even see her vagina.

Well, no, of course you can't. That's because you don't have a speculum.

"Vagina" is the Latin word for "sheath" (and, for good measure, it's also the root of the word "vanilla", because of the shape of the vanilla-bean). It's the inside part. "Vulva", on the other hand, is the outside part, the part you can see if the lady in question is a careless dresser: it too is Latin (duh). The two words are not the same thing, and they're not interchangeable.

And I don't want to hear anyone saying that we use "stomach" or "throat" for both an inside and an outside part of the body: that's clearly something else altogether. For the record, and for all time: "vagina" and "vulva" are different, in exactly the same way that "mouth" and "esophagus" are different. Can I make it any clearer?

So get it right, world. I want the English language cleaned up and I'm not going to be around forever.