Cat Women: The Hood That Is Part of the Lips

There is a small structural question you can answer about your own body in a mirror, and most people have never thought to ask it. Does the hood over the clitoris run continuously into the upper edge of the lips, or is it a separate fold of skin sitting above them?

Both arrangements are perfectly ordinary. Neither means anything about your health.

In the framework Amara Charles sets out, that question is a sorting criterion. She states that in Sheep Women and in Cat Women the hood and the lips form one continuous piece of skin, and that in the other seven of her types the hood is a separate fold. The underlying variation is real. The claim that it maps onto exactly two of nine types is hers.

Between Sheep and Buffalo

Cat sits at the southwest of her wheel, between Sheep in the South and Buffalo in the West, and is defined as a blend of the two. Both cardinal types have their own article in this series.

The blend rule is strict about neighbours. A blended type can only draw on the two cardinals either side of it, which is why nothing in the system combines Sheep with Wolf or Buffalo with Deer. Opposite points do not mix.

The cardinal types get long entries full of finger distances and internal depths; the four blended types get a compact one covering direction, physical features and temperament. This article is short because the source is.

The anatomy

Hood. Pronounced, covering the whole clitoris, but on a shorter shaft than the long tunnel-like hood of the Sheep description.

Where hood meets lips. Continuous with the upper part of the outer lips, as above.

Outer lips. Noticeably thick or puffy, which is the Buffalo side of the blend, but less full and less richly folded than the Buffalo description itself.

Inner lips. Often smaller than in the Sheep description.

Inside. Shallower than the Sheep description.

As with all four blended types, Charles says a woman may have the internal features of one neighbour and the external features of the other, or the reverse. Thickness, fullness, folding and hood size all vary enormously in healthy bodies, and none of the above is a fault. The broader case for that is in Are My Labia Normal? The Honest Answer.

The double hood, which is the book's claim and not ours

Charles writes that Cat Women sometimes have what her system calls a double hood: two similarly sized folds of skin, one covering the clitoris and a second hanging below it. She asserts that this occurs only in Cat Women.

We are reporting that, not repeating it. Nothing supports the word "only" beyond the assertion itself, and tissue around the hood varies a great deal from body to body without any reason to expect one fold arrangement to belong exclusively to one group of people. If you have noticed something like this on yourself it tells you nothing at all about your health. Inside the framework it is a marker; outside it, the exclusivity part is unverified.

What Charles says about the character

Southwest, in her wheel, is the place of dreams, symbols and adventure, and everything that follows is her account rather than ours.

She describes Cat Women as true exhibitionists who look demure at first, and qualifies that carefully: not brash showing off, but a willingness, in moments of intimacy where they feel completely safe, to let their beauty be seen with a kind of regal pride. She calls them the most majestic, confident and giving lovers of the nine types. She also describes them as picky and aloof, bestowing affection when and on whom they choose, needing time alone in dark quiet places, and unusually sensitive to smell, taste and touch. Her advice to a partner is to give plenty of space and make desire clear, while never leaving her ignored. The sounds she makes are what the system calls her Secrets of Self-Love.

Charles is blunt about the downsides too. In her account Cat Women avoid direct confrontation, hold on to a resentment for a long time, and can be indirect to the point of losing track of what they actually want. The challenge she sets is saying plainly and openly what they want in the first place.

One line deserves lifting out, given the subject of this series. Charles writes that Cat Women are easily hooked on self-doubt, and let insecurities about their bodies get in the way of their own sexual expression. Whatever you make of the typology, that describes something real and very widespread, and it is certainly not confined to one ninth of the population.

Read it and decide for yourself

Charles's stated method is self-identification. She says a genital type cannot easily be seen, that working it out means considering internal and external features together with a mirror or a partner, and that a woman may have one direction's anatomy without any of its described qualities. So nobody here is going to hand you a verdict.

Source

Amara Charles, "The Sexual Practices of Quodoushka: Teachings from the Nagual Tradition" (Destiny Books), chapter 8, "Female Genital Anatomy Types". Charles has taught this material in her own workshops since the 1990s.