The revolutionary hyperrealistic model of a vagina created by a Spanish physiotherapist

Juncal Alzugaray, 41, laments the masculinized bias in medicine. She gives the example of how lab guinea pigs are selected. “Laboratory experiments on animals are done with male specimens, because researchers say that females are more difficult because they are cyclic,” the Basque physiotherapist and pelvic floor expert explains. “And that bias also influences how anatomy is taught.” In 2020, Alzugaray took advantage of the downtime as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic to address the issue and create a tool that, oddly enough, did not exist anywhere in the world in the 21st century. “I asked a friend in the United States if she could look there, and she couldn’t find one either. I was quite surprised, but… I said to myself: ‘Well, if it doesn’t exist, let’s create it,’” she says. So, she set to work to manufacture a pioneering hyperrealistic anatomical model of the vagina.

Alooa, as this prototype is called (a play on the words alua — vagina in Basque — and aloha, hello in Hawaiian), is gradually becoming a highly useful tool in teaching and in the work of doctors and other health professionals. Made in a specialized Barcelona makeup and special effects studio, Alooa consists of silicone and foam to approximate the real thing as closely as possible. Unlike the replicas that were used before — ”things made of crochet or cloth, which really infantilize women’s genitalia, or models of porn actresses’ vulvas,” Alzugaray says — this model replicates the vagina’s complete anatomy: the outer and inner lips, glans and clitoral hood, urethral orifice, vaginal orifice, vaginal canal... Alzugaray’s friend volunteered to serve as a model.

There are already several professionals who rely on Alooa for their work. One of them is Begoña Caldera Brea, the clinical director of FisioMedit, a personalized physiotherapy clinic in Madrid, Spain. “I am a physiotherapist who specializes in pelvioperineology, and in my work such a natural, lifelike model is crucial to approaching this area and explaining anatomy in my classes in an experiential and real way. Right now, it is essential to my daily work,” she says. She adds that her students are “shocked” when they discover the model.

Nuria Caballé, a physiotherapist and teacher at the Gimbernat University School of Nursing and Physiotherapy (Spain), mentions another use for Alooa: “I use it with my pelvic floor patients, so that they become aware of their pelvic sphere and gain self-knowledge of their genitals. When there’s pain or pelvic symptoms, this area is usually erased in our body and mental schema.” She also employs it in her classes. “The students barely have any real knowledge of the female genitals, and they are amazed to be able to practice with an almost real model, feeling the urethra, the cervix, and all the real external genitalia with a texture that is very different from the anatomical models we had before,” she says.

Juncal Alzugaray recalls some of her first experiences with Alooa. “I often support women who have been victims of sexual abuse, who have a brutal disconnection from their genitals, their sexuality, their pleasure... The first time I dared to take [Alooa] out [with] one of these patients, she started crying... I did not expect that. My patient hugged me and said: ‘Thank you so much, you don’t know what you have just done for all of us.’ At that moment, I told myself that maybe I had done something big.”

Alzugaray received public funding for her project through the Basque government’s Ekintzaile program and the Business Project Development Program of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. Amid the pandemic, she had to make an online presentation for the Basque government. “Most of the people listening were men of a certain age... I don’t think they understood the project very well. They asked me questions like whether I intended to set up a factory in the Basque Country, when I was content to develop my product the way I wanted it and get it to see the light of day...,” she says.

Now, following Alooa’s success (orders are even starting to come in from abroad), Alzugaray is considering new prototypes: “A penis at rest, for example, because all the models we see are erect ones, when it is normal for the member to be at rest. Just as there aren’t any references of female genitalia that don’t have to do with porn, the same thing happens with male genitalia, right?” Maybe she will end up setting up her own factory after all.

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