Top model Natasha Poly explores a wide range of sexual fantasies and fears, styled by Sally Lyndley. The incomparable hair dresser and now photographer/creative director Luigi Murenu HAD to be the vision behind Natasha’s vagina dentata references, lensed with now partner Iango Henzi for Lui Magazine’s March issue.

If ever there was an ultimate example of a male paranoid fantasy, it’s the ‘vagina dentata’. The fear that a woman’s vagina contains teeth that will castrate a man is rooted in the notion that the female body has hidden and dangerous secrets that can be lethal.  Freud actually said ‘Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of female genitals.’

Women have been the contorted focus of male fears for thousands of years, as they sought to control that which they didn’t understand. Freud’s assertion that such a negative response to female genitals is innate, rather than learned over centuries from traditions and negative teachings about women remains suspect. We know that vaginas were once revered as mystical, spiritual female attributes. It seems more likely that placing these hideous burdens on the female body is deeply rooted in the collective unconscious.

Related: The Great Wall of Vagina | Learning To Love Our Genitalia