About the Book
The Pussy Papers
About The Book
The Pussy Papers is a battlecry for women, and a personal altar to feminity.
A defiant manifesto, harrowing yet triumphant memoir, and celebratory manual,
the book is for anyone who identifies with,
or is sympathetic to the experience of being female.
Author, mother of two, and Founder of Huge Pussy, Jacqueline Buckingham starts with the recent past, recounting how her feminist film censored by Amazon
and female empowerment product line banned by Google
led to a revolutionary way of being a woman in the world
by way of a rebellious totebag.
After being denied the right to advertise by the biggest companies in the world, having to lay off her staff, being put out of business was followed by spiraling into a depression. A single mom on the edge of giving up her dream and life’s work, she woke up to the fact that backing down would be acquiescing to an antiquated paradigm that has
kept women silent, subordinate, and small.
The radical totebag, a manifestation of being uncensorshed, symbol for daring to be unashamed, and clear sign of patriarchal disruption, had 2 words printed on the front in giant letters: HUGE PUSSY. With the new definition on the back, the casual accessory representing misogynist opposition disrupted her own pattern of shame directed at the female body and sexuality and led to her committment not just to live by her own rules, but to share them too.
Realizing those of us with pussies have been
encouraged to be tiny, deprived to be diminutive, and directed to be nearly non-existent,
she decided it was time to defy all that was small and disobey the old rules to empower others with fewer rights.
With these new rules, new definitions, and a new way of life, the author shares her personal story of how shaming the female body leads to silencing the female voice through her timely flashbacks to teenage pregnancy, abortion, and rape. Being advised to keep all of it quiet was followed by body dysmorphia, self-hatred, eating disorders, mental health challenges, and a suicide attempt 3 years later.
Three decades later, while global scholing her daughter throughout Australasia, writing a book about the horrors that happen to women throughout the world, she was banned from entering a temple because she had her period and began to write about
The Pussy Problem and the global result that ensues.
Her thesis being that the inherent shame in having a pussy results in the unequal distribution of power between those with pussies and those without them.
With pussy being at the crux of our massive global imbalance of power,
the author poses that activism starts with changing our own beliefs about ourselves.
Enter the Pussy Papers, her collective writings over a 7 year period that she calls the 7 Year Bitch. Raw from the ending of a 21 year marriage to a man 20 years her senior, the author poured her her heart, mind, and soul onto the page. Having been with him since she was 18 years old, she found herself at 40 on her own for the first time and raising a daughter. Needing to become the dominant force in her life to be the role model her daughter deserved, the words became her new truth and operating guide.
Embodied in the new definitions of Pussy, having Huge Pussy Energy, and living a Huge Pussy Life, and replete with a Pussy Pact, Pussy Process, and 12 Pussy Personas, the Pussy Papers changed everything. From what she ate to how she exercised, where she lived to what she believed, how she spoke to what she thought, every belief she held to be true was challenged in the Pussy Papers, as a woman, mother, american citizen, and member of our global society.
Making the connection from the seeds of shame to stunting autonomy over ones body and authority over one’s voice, she decided to put an end to her own self-imposed shame. She stopped numbing the pain and embraced sobriety, stopped repressing past trauma and faced the present, and stopped silencing her voice to adopt freedom of expression. Writing about the suppression that had fueled her 20 year battle with depression, like being pregnant in high school, raped in college, and suicidal by the time she was 18, she vowed not to pass down those seeds of shame to her children.
Transforming shame to celebration via the Pussy Papers over that 7 year period was cathartic. Seemingly peripheral at the time, the Pussy Proces and Pussy Personas and are now essential to her mental health, Huge Pussy Energy, and Huge Pussy Life.
She drew on her studies at Harvard in Lifestyle Medicine and Neuroscience, at Stanford in Compassion Cultivation, and certification as a 500+ yoga instructor to create The Pussy Process. Comprised of simple daily rituals based in positive psychology, practical neuroscience, and accessible movement honed over 7 years, the process was designed for the busy woman juggling it all.
She drew on her studio art background and B.A. in art history, studies of fertility goddesses, feminist artists, and famous muses to develop the Pussy Personas. With superhero sounding names and artistic representations, each was born from a repressed shame that now embodies a triuphant transformation. The Bodacious Boss, born from slut shaming represents self-loathing to self-loving. The Liberated Lover stemming from abortion shame symbolizes trauma to trust. The Vocal Vixen born from assault shame stands for victimhood to victory.
The Pussy Papers gave her the process and power to redesign the paradigm of her life.
In it she found the structure and strength to redefine what is means to be a woman.
Empowering to say the least, the Pussy Papers, amongst other things, begat a compassionate divorce, a groundbreaking adventure, and a revolutionary rite of passage with proof that shame can be transmuted into celebration.
The bag that changed it all is now making its way around the world, not just redefining the word pussy but raising funds for women who want abortions but can’t get them.
In the author’s world, being called a pussy is cause for pride.
It means to be uncensored, unashamed,
and proud to be an otherworldly, orgasmic, resilient, flexible, life-giving humanity vessel
with Huge Pussy Energy, living a Huge Pussy Life.
She believes it is entirely in our power to change the world for ourselves and others
and it starts with changing the meaning of pussy.
Pussy means power.