Because why should a vagina be hidden in shame?

Achor, 53, a Web site producer and Internet project manager, is on a mission to proclaim the vagina as a symbol of the creative and sacred power of womankind.

"Our wombs are our power source, the place where we create life," she said. "Women are the root; we are the source. We need to begin to honor the source."

She is aware that strictly anatomically speaking, her designs are not of a vagina. "These are really vulvas, but for some reason, vulva doesn't sound sexy," she said.

An ebullient feminist who shares a cottage home in this Northern California town with her husband of 23 years and a lively herd of five Chihuahuas, Achor has created a line of vagina-shaped pillows, pens and purses to encourage reverence for women's genitalia.

Achor sees her work as complementing that of playwright and activist Eve Ensler, whose show "The Vagina Monologues" has invited women to explore their feelings about their genitals and has sparked an international movement to end violence against women and girls.

In the folded shapes with which she adorns journals and pens, Achor is following in the footsteps of feminist artists like Judy Chicago, who in the 1970s began using images of the vulva to symbolize womanhood. Many viewers saw similar symbolism in the flower paintings Georgia O'Keeffe created in the early 20th Century, although O'Keeffe objected to such interpretations.

"Women in the '70s were trying to define themselves," said Marilyn Dunn, an art historian at Loyola University Chicago who teaches courses on women and art. They "were looking for some kind of form to value women's experience, women's distinctive identity and female power."

They chose imagery based on the folded shape of the vulva, which was seen as "something distinctly feminine," Dunn said. But it has not been without detractors.

"It can also be seen as reducing women to biological essentialism, the thinking that everything is biologically determined and that defines women completely," Dunn said. And such images can reinforce the stereotype that women belong to the realm of nature while men are aligned with reason, she said.

Achor is the local organizer of the 2006 V-Day fundraising performance of "The Vagina Monologues" in Sonoma County, and will travel to Miami this week to sell her vagina-themed wares at a kickoff for some 200 V-Day organizers around the country.

A Microsoft-certified software engineer who moves easily in the cerebral world of e-commerce, Achor says she thinks women are indeed strongly influenced by biology and a close connection with nature. She thinks these aspects of women's lives should be honored, not seen as inferior.

On her Web site (www.badmimi.com), visitors can read her mission statement, in which Achor describes how having children transformed her.

"As I pushed my babies out into the world I felt like the most powerful being on Earth. It was the single most healing experience of my life. I have been a lioness at heart ever since. I knew what I had between my legs and no one was ever going to tell me otherwise.

"Over the next few decades I reconnected with my genitalia. I came to realize that my intuition and ability to love like a lioness came from this part of myself. Tracking feelings of power, warmth, and `knowing' lead me back to the seat of my femininity, the sacred magical flower that lies between my legs."

Asked to visit the site, Martha Thompson, professor of sociology and women's studies at Northeastern Illinois University, came away ambivalent.

"I loved her mission statement; it's very celebratory and women-centered," she said. But some of the products, she said, reflected "much more of a traditional, male-centered view of sexuality." For example, BadMimi.com sells thong underpants with a risque demand printed on them.

Achor described the thong's message as her personal response to denigrating attitudes toward women's bodies.

"We've heard our whole life the whole thing about vaginas being smelly, ugly and dirty, so, yeah, there is a touch of anger there."

The idea of designing vagina items began to brew when Achor's friends, well-acquainted with her strong feelings about female power, made her a gift for her 50th birthday.

"It was a big vagina altar," she said fondly. "When you opened up this box, it was almost like a picture frame, and in the center they had a picture of me. It was almost like giving birth to myself."

Her husband, Rodger Bridwell, was taken aback.

"I was shocked," he said. "You open [the box] up and there's that vagina in there. But then you open up and start listening to the derogatory attitudes people have." And he wasn't shocked any more.

Achor treasured the altar so much that when a friend was about to have a baby, she tried to buy her some kind of vagina icon on which she could focus during labor, to give her strength and reassurance.

She couldn't find a thing.

"There was not one vagina anything," she said. "Not even a joke. I mean, you can find penis everything--key chains, hot sauce, you name it. But I couldn't find anything. It was like the vagina doesn't exist."

The physically hidden nature of women's genitals has meant that they are rarely depicted in art as compared with male genitals, said Carrie Brecke, who teaches feminist theories of the body in Roosevelt University's Department of Women's and Gender Studies.

The result has been disastrous for women, she said.

"What happens ... is that it becomes mysterious, which usually translates into monstrous," she said. "We fear that which is hidden."

Achor began designing products that would take the vagina into public view, chose the name BadMimi--a nickname from her grandson, who calls her "Mimi," when she wouldn't let him have his way--hired a manufacturer and placed BadMimi.com online and in stores.

Customer reaction at Milk & Honey, a store in Sebastapol, Calif., that sells the BadMimi line, has been intense.

"People love it," said Candra Rainey, one of the store's owners. "They will gather in the tantric [sex] section where we display the little ... purses. People will bring their friends back to see it."

And women buy the items, she said. "The biggest response is women feeling empowerment and pride," she said. "... To have somebody make these products in a way that's almost humorous--[Achor] can cross the line with people who feel timid or shy."

Women have sent Achor heartfelt messages of gratitude through her Web site.

"You are so right on about how we women are taught from an early age we should not touch or look at our vaginas," one wrote. "I have never thought mine was beautiful. I actually have always thought MINE is ugly!!!

"... Believe me, from now on I will try to remember that it is like a diamond, the doorway to heaven!"

"There's just this huge ball of neurosis surrounding the whole subject of vaginas and women's genitalia," Achor said. "We have to break it all open."

Inside that ball, she said, is a treasure that can transform women's lives once they realize it. She urges that transformation in the words on a BadMimi T-shirt: "Live like you have diamonds between your legs."