Bonnie Gross is the writer and executive producer of Lady Parts, an award-winning indie comedy based on her own true story of living with chronic vulvar pain and eventually moving home with her parents to undergo a vestibulectomy — surgery to remove excess nerve endings in the vulvar vestibule. The film has screened across the country and won multiple awards, but before any of that, Bonnie spent years being told to relax, drink wine, try lube, and just "breathe."

Callie and Jaime sit down with Bonnie to go deep on what it's really like to have a condition called neuroproliferative vestibulodynia — where too many nerve endings in the vulvar vestibule cause severe, chronic pain. Bonnie describes what it felt like from the time she was a teenager: tampons that felt like burning, sex that felt like a hot knife, everyday activities like wearing pants or riding a bike that most people don't think twice about. She walks through the years of medical gaslighting she experienced, including doctors who blamed anxiety, suggested she stop being "so promiscuous" (ironic, since pain was the actual problem), and prescribed Xanax instead of investigating her symptoms.

The conversation gets into the real details that nobody talks about: what dilator therapy actually involves after surgery, how long it took (about a year to get to dilator number four), and the mental work required to retrain a body that had spent years in protective guarding mode. They also talk about pelvic floor dysfunction, what "hypertonic" actually means, and why pelvic PT is one of the most under-recommended tools in women's healthcare.

Bonnie shares the moment her insurance company called her surgery cosmetic, denying coverage for the removal of nerve tissue causing her daily pain. She also opens up about her traumatic first pap smear at 18 — a doctor who held her down and told her to stop squirming — and how that experience kept her away from life-saving screenings for years, even knowing cervical cancer runs in her family.

The group digs into a bigger systemic issue: right now, there is nothing in OBGYN residency curriculum requiring that doctors learn about conditions like vestibulodynia or lichen sclerosus. Endometriosis was only recently added to training guidelines. Bonnie volunteers with an organization called Tightlips, which is currently pushing to change that.

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Lady Parts | IG

Lady Parts Website

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