The Innovative Marketing of Lady Parts
Bonnie Gross, the force behind a great film and a really great roll-out campaign
When I met Bonnie Gross, we immediately started talking about vaginas. We were watching a gorgeous French film called Midwives (loved it, includes VERY realistic cinema verité style footage of childbirth!). I asked Bonnie about her film, Lady Parts, and she told me her story.
Lady Parts, written and executive produced by Bonnie and based on her experience with chronic vaginal pain and, eventually, a vulvar vestibulectomy, is the kind of film we almost never see. Honest, funny, irreverent, centering female reproductive health in a totally non-cringe way. And the whole thing is based on Bonnie’s story, and she’s wholly (joyfully?) unashamed to talk about it. I’m so excited to introduce her and this film to you, Dear Reader.
BB: Tell us about your film.
BG: Lady Parts is a dramedy feature film in which a young woman’s sex life becomes a family affair when she has to undergo a vulvar vestibulectomy. On the verge of finally breaking into her dream career in Los Angeles, Paige (a hilariously deadpan performance by Valentina Tammaro) is forced to put everything on hold and move back in with her parents so that she can have the surgery that promises to alleviate years of vaginal pain. Her loving but over-enthusiastic parents learn that saying the word “vagina” may in fact be the first step in advocating for women’s health.
The director, Nancy Boyd, and I both pulled from our own horrifically cringe-worthy experiences with vaginal pain in order to tell a story about the difficulties women face receiving treatment. We wanted our film to be heartfelt, laugh-out-loud funny and brutally honest, offering audiences a glimpse into an experience many women face, but few talk about, either on or offscreen.
BB: How long did it take to make Lady Parts, and what was that process like?
BG: It took more than eight years to make Lady Parts. The story really began when I was 13 years old and felt too embarrassed to tell anyone that tampon insertion was painful. I thought it was normal to feel pain and just smiled and kept pushing. I spent years with chronic pain that was constantly dismissed by doctors. Anything touching my vestibule, the opening of the vagina, felt like a hot knife digging in. The condition was not just about sex, it affected every waking minute of my life and took a high toll on my relationships and mental health — but most of all because it felt like no one believed me or took my pain seriously. Not to mention the stigma that surrounds this part of the body.
It took three years and thousands of dollars before I got a correct diagnosis. And once I had the surgery (and spent a year recovering with bed rest and dilators) I wondered why, before any of this happened, I had no idea what any of these V words meant! I wanted to know why no one was talking about these issues and why I couldn’t find any media about the subject.
I wrote a blog post about the surgery and ended up receiving over six hundred views and an overwhelming response from women experiencing similar issues. I made it my mission to start putting out content about these “taboo” topics in the hopes that we could normalize them and start conversations. In 2017, I bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles with no job and no place to live, armed only with my air mattress and new vagina. I went back to school at UCLA and there, began writing Lady Parts.
I tried pitching, but it seemed no one was ready to tackle this taboo topic. Then over the pandemic, with time to reflect, I realized what I had to do: I was going to self-produce and self-finance Lady Parts. If there is no seat at the table, I was about to pull up a damn folding chair. I rewrote the script, scheduled a Zoom table read, started an LLC, and began pre-production.
We did principal photography in Los Angeles the summer of 2022. During this time I was still working a remote full-time job as a post coordinator in New York. I would wake up around 3AM PST to get a head start on both jobs, work full-time New York hours, then be on set for up to fourteen hours, then repeat. This went on for at least a month. And during this time, because of the low budget and resources, I was also driving the production truck, heading up crafty, acting as prop-master…really just anything and everything that needed to get done.
It takes a village to make a film, and this Vagina Village was the best team I could have asked for. Almost every department was run by a woman: Executive Producer (me), Producer Meghan Griesbeck, Director Nancy Boyd, Director of Photography Olaa Olabi, Editor Edith Belmont, Composer Hollie Buhagiar, Costume Designer Jessica Campbell and Colorist Katie Jordan. The film features a lot of sensitive and intimate scenes. We wanted to do them safely and do them well, so we partnered with Intimacy Coordinator Allison Bibicoff.
We finished post in 2023 and premiered at Florida Film Festival in April, 2024, winning the Audience Choice Best Narrative Feature Film and the Special Jury Award for Screenwriting. From there, we swept the festival circuit, selling out screenings across the US.
We wanted to take this very real problem and make it digestible to the public, immersing the audience in a story rather than spewing medical facts and a swirl of depressing statistics. And seeing the impact this story had on audiences makes everything worth it.
BB: We talked a little bit about the remarkable actions you and your team took to promote Lady Parts and create events and partnerships at festivals. You really made your film feel like an event, and I think that in this landscape, we can all learn from the way your team innovated. Please tell us what you did!
BG: Here are a few things:
Lady Parts Swag Bags. We’ve been making swag bags that include a Lady Parts sticker, a Lady Parts branded condom with a QR code for our screenings, and a Lady Parts friendship bracelet for festival trading, and a discount code to our Etsy store with merch. These are available at festival venues and handed out at screenings.
So far, we have distributed over 3000 bracelets and swag bags and stickered over 4000 condoms. Each festival gets a unique Lady Parts design and discount code on our Etsy store, which offers mugs and t-shirts, pet bandanas, underwear, and more. Our team loves to wear our Lady Parts merch around the festival.
At Florida, we partnered with a company called The Pelvic People who specifically make toys and products for people like myself with pelvic floor dysfunction and did an event with them.
Menstruation Stations. We have been putting “menstruation stations” in venue bathrooms during film festivals. This includes free tampons, pads, and panty liners. We also put bowls of condoms in the men's bathrooms if they are separate. Each station also has a QR code to buy tickets.
Press and Social Media. We reach out to local press and influencers to help spread the word. We also did multiple podcasts and interviews leading up to screenings. And Instagram! We love to make fun and engaging content to market ourselves at each festival as well as keeping up with current trends. In between festivals, we stay relevant and active by posting frequently according to the latest social media trends. Some of my personal favorites include Moo Deng, Spotify Wrapped, Halloween Costume Pack, and CapCut Edits.
BB: How was the reception at festivals? It seemed to me, when we met at the Florida Film Festival, that you were doing an incredible job of finding and fostering the local community around the film.
BG: The reception has been beyond words. We have sold out multiple festival venues, garnering a huge Lady Parts fan base, and a five-star average rating on Letterboxd with over sixty reviews, and over eighty different lists.
At the Sidewalk Film Festival, our screening was the first to sell out, weeks before the festival started. The festival had to turn people away and created an Encore screening the next night, which sold out almost immediately.
Due to the overwhelming turnout and success at our first festivals, we were invited to be the opening and closing night feature at multiple festivals including Stranger Than Fiction in Jackson, MS as well as Cinetopia Film Festival in Ann Arbor, MI.
All of this happens in part because we partner with local brands, whose missions also align with our own, to promote the film at upcoming festivals and screenings. During our NYC screenings these included Sugarwood in Soho, Please in Prospect Park, and SHAG in Williamsburg.
In Orlando, for the Florida Film Festival we did sexual education chats and Q&As at Woodshed and Drunken Monkey. These chats would aim to show how clear communication about sex and our bodies makes us all safer and happier and they include anonymous Q&A’s.
Along with this, we partnered with national and global brands to help spread the word — and offer ticket giveaways. Other giveaways have included vaginal waffles from Sugarwood and gift cards for dilators and lube, which have gotten over 3000 views, and over 50 comments. This includes Intimate Rose, who actually donated the lube and dilators we used on set. They also have pamphlets with resources and a Lady Parts discount code that we provide at screenings. We have also partnered with The Pelvic People, who have generously donated over 15 Kiwi vibrators to us to raffle off during the Q&As after our screenings. At Cucalorus, I even announced the raffle winner in a vulva costume.
We also partnered with Tight Lipped, a grassroots advocacy group by and for people with vulvo-vaginal and pelvic pain, where I am also the NYC community builder. We hosted Lady Parts-themed events around New York, to bring people together, and learn how we better to engage the community. We hosted a bracelet-making party with over 50 members, filling out half of our seats at showings. There is a huge Tight Lipped community in Los Angeles and we have done bracelet making parties there as well.
BB: Have you found distribution?
BG: Currently we do not have a distribution deal signed, but are talking to a few leads.
BB: What are you working on now, and what inspires you?
BG: I want my next feature to focus on my own personal story, while still educating about vaginal health. The tentative name is The Woman in the Wallpaper, based loosely off Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s literary classic The Yellow Wallpaper.
Hysteria was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, but its lingering effects remain in our medical systems and society. For instance, 75% of women in the U.S. will experience a yeast infection, leading to 1.5 million medical visits annually, yet no new treatments have been developed in over 50 years.
Women's health conditions are often dismissed or misunderstood, and many struggle to receive proper diagnoses or treatment. Personally, fluconazole — the leading anti-fungal — failed to address my chronic yeast infection, which spiraled for three years while doctors and partners insisted nothing was wrong driving me to insanity. Just as The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bell Jar explored women's hysteria, my next feature shows how all these themes are still prevalent.
More and more, in this landscape, I believe artists need to think in entrepreneurial ways like Bonnie to ensure our films reach their audience.
You can watch the trailer for Lady Parts here. And Bonnie’s newest endeavor is Brainwomb, an incredible post-production resource, offering support at every phase of post.
Next week, I’ll be talking to Anne Marie Johnson and Marty Gottlieb about their beautiful film The Addiction of Hope.
As always, sending love,
Brooke
Congratulations, Bonnie! I look forward to seeing Lady Parts!