The School of Sexuality Project brought Los Angeles together for a packed afternoon where art, fashion, music, community resources and unapologetic self-expression made sex education feel less like a lesson and more like a celebration.
Partner Coverage | New Hollywood Magazine
A packed house, a whole lot of love and absolutely no shame in the room is probably the easiest way I can describe my afternoon at The Vulva Gala.
New Hollywood Magazine had the opportunity to spend the day with The School of Sexuality Project, and from the moment I walked inside, the energy was immaculate. This was not manufactured event energy with people standing around waiting for something interesting to happen; the room was already alive with guests talking, laughing, learning, shopping, twerkin’, meeting one another and genuinely participating in what had been created for them.
What I appreciated immediately was that everyone appeared to have their own reason for showing up. Some people came because they believe deeply in comprehensive sex education, while others were supporting friends, artists, organizations or businesses they love. For many queer and trans attendees, it was also an opportunity to spend the afternoon inside a space where conversations about identity, bodies and sexuality were not treated as something that needed to be softened for anybody else’s comfort.
Others were there for the fashion, the performances, the vendors and the experience itself, and I am sure at least a few people simply heard the words Vulva Gala and thought, Okay, I absolutely need to see what this is about.
Whatever brought everyone through the door, the beauty of the afternoon was watching those different reasons become one shared experience.
Community Was Built Into the Entire Room
One of the smartest things about The Vulva Gala was that community was never treated like a separate component of the programming. It was built into nearly everything happening around us.
Organizations including TransLatin@ Coalition and REACH LA shared the space with local creators, vendors and businesses such as Happy Brain Bake Shop, creating an environment where advocacy, entrepreneurship, education and entertainment could comfortably exist beside one another.
Guests could move through interactive stations and create their own vulva-inspired artwork while also finding practical resources such as free condoms, dental dams, binders and panty liners. Instead of hiding those materials behind a clinical presentation or making anyone feel self-conscious for needing them, the event made access feel completely normal.
That distinction matters.
So much of traditional sex education has been delivered through fear, discomfort or silence that we sometimes forget how differently people respond when learning is placed inside an environment that actually welcomes them. At The Vulva Gala, conversations about sexual health and the body sat naturally beside food, fashion, art and music, allowing guests to engage at their own pace without sacrificing the joy of the afternoon.
It was education without the lecture and access without embarrassment.
The Boyfriend Bar May Have Won Me Over
Among all of the activations happening throughout the venue, one of my personal favorites had to be the Boyfriend Bar, which was hosted by Bridgett’s actual boyfriend.
Yes, her real boyfriend was behind the Boyfriend Bar, and I thought the whole thing was adorable.
The concept captured so much of the personality that made this event successful because The School of Sexuality Project understood that conversations about sex, intimacy and relationships do not have to become overly serious in order to have substance. Humor can disarm people, playfulness can make difficult subjects easier to approach and sometimes a little absurdity is exactly what allows someone to relax enough to participate.
It was one of those seemingly small details that told you everything you needed to know about the room: people were allowed to learn something and still have a damn good time.
Figgy Baby Changed the Temperature
Then Figgy Baby stepped onto the stage, and the atmosphere shifted almost immediately.
The Mexican rapper came armed with cultural lyricism, sickening beats and the kind of stage confidence that tells you very quickly whether somebody understands how to work a crowd. Figgy did not perform at the room; they pulled the room into the performance, and before long the audience was moving right along with them (and rightfully so!).
What stayed with me was the way cultural identity lived inside the music rather than being placed around it as decoration. The perspective felt authentic to the performance, the beats hit exactly where they needed to, and the crowd response made it clear that the connection was happening in real time.
One of my favorite parts of working through New Hollywood is encountering artists while they are still building the momentum that eventually makes everyone else pay attention. Community stages have always introduced us to voices before larger entertainment institutions decide those voices are worth noticing, and Figgy Baby gave me that feeling.
The performance was confident, culturally grounded and incredibly fun to watch, with enough charisma attached to the whole package to make sure you remembered who you had just seen.
By the time their set ended, I was not simply familiar with the name anymore.
Figgy Baby had officially made the New Hollywood radar.
Months of Work Finally Reached the Runway
The fashion presentation became another major highlight because once you understand how much work preceded those few minutes on the runway, you watch every look differently.
The designers had spent months developing their creations, working through ideas, construction, materials and countless revisions before any of us ever saw a model take that first step. Their assignment was not particularly simple either: interpret sexuality, anatomy, identity and the spirit of The Vulva Gala through fashion without everybody arriving at the exact same visual conclusion.
Thankfully, they did not.
The runway was colorful, conceptual, humorous, provocative and occasionally completely unexpected, with each designer approaching the subject through their own creative language. Anatomy became art, ideas became silhouettes and subjects that are so often treated as taboo were suddenly walking unapologetically through a room filled with people cheering them on.
That is why the designers deserve more than a passing acknowledgment.
Audiences may experience a garment for thirty seconds, but what moves across a runway often represents months of somebody believing in an idea long enough to build it. Every stitch, structural choice, strange experiment and beautiful detail belonged to an artist who decided this particular celebration was worth creating something original for, and their work helped give The Vulva Gala a visual identity that could not have been replicated by simply decorating a stage.
ChiChi Charlas Was Exactly Who This Room Needed
Then there was ChiChi Charlas, and calling them simply “the host” would dramatically undersell what their presence meant to the afternoon.
ChiChi is already a familiar and respected presence within queer and trans community spaces, which made their place at the center of The Vulva Gala feel less like a casting decision and more like an extension of the community the event was created to celebrate. This was not somebody arriving, reading a rundown, moving through a few introductions and disappearing once the microphone was turned off; ChiChi understood the people in front of them because they belong to the world the event was speaking to.
That familiarity changed the relationship between the stage and the audience.
There was a tremendous amount happening at once, from vendors and resource stations to performances, fashion, artists preparing backstage and a packed room constantly moving between experiences. ChiChi managed to give all of those elements a common heartbeat without ever making the event feel overly controlled.
As a host myself, I notice that work differently because I know how much of it happens in the moments an audience is never supposed to recognize as work. A strong host has to sense when a segment needs another beat before moving forward, recognize when the room is ready for its energy to be lifted again, protect a performer’s moment and remain comfortable enough with the unexpected that an unscripted interaction can become part of the show rather than something that derails it.
ChiChi moved through those responsibilities with humor, warmth, quick instincts and a command of the room that never required taking attention away from the people they were there to celebrate.
More importantly, the audience trusted them.
That trust cannot be manufactured by a microphone or a clever introduction. It comes from familiarity, history and the understanding that the person guiding the experience is not looking at the community from the outside.
ChiChi Charlas has poured into queer and trans spaces long before this particular afternoon, and The Vulva Gala gave us another opportunity to see why their presence continues to matter. They made room for the event to be intelligent without becoming stiff, political without losing its humor, sexy without apology and wonderfully ridiculous whenever the moment called for it.
So yes, ChiChi deserves flowers for delivering a fantastic hosting performance, but the larger recognition belongs to what they represent beyond the stage.
ChiChi Charlas did not simply hold the microphone at The Vulva Gala; they helped hold the community together inside the room.
Callie Schuttera Showed What Support Looks Like
Another familiar face I was genuinely happy to see in the room was Callie Schuttera of Weapons, whose presence provided a quiet but meaningful bridge between the entertainment industry and the community being celebrated around us.
What stood out was not a need to make her attendance into a spectacle. Callie was there showing support, sharing the afternoon with everyone else and lending her presence to an event whose mission clearly resonated beyond the confines of one industry.
That kind of participation is worth acknowledging.
Hollywood talks about community often, but some of the clearest demonstrations of support happen away from traditional carpets, premieres and press lines. They happen when people use their visibility by simply showing up for organizations, artists and causes whose work matters, particularly when there is nothing about the room demanding that the focus be placed back onto them.
Seeing Callie among the artists, educators, performers, organizers and community members reinforced something I kept noticing throughout the afternoon: entertainment and community do not need to operate in separate Los Angeles bubbles.
Some of the most interesting versions of Hollywood happen when those worlds willingly meet.
A Full House With a Thousand Different Reasons for Being There
By the end of the afternoon, the part of The Vulva Gala that stayed with me most was not limited to any single performance, runway look or activation. It was the sight of a genuinely full room and the realization that nobody inside it needed to arrive with the same relationship to sexuality, gender, education or identity in order to belong there.
Everyone had brought their own reason for supporting The School of Sexuality Project, yet somewhere between the performances, artwork, resources, conversations and laughter, those individual motivations became collective support.
That is what made the afternoon feel larger than an event.
People could obtain something they needed without having to explain why they needed it. Someone could learn without being embarrassed about what they did not already know. Designers could turn anatomy into fashion, musicians could turn cultural identity into performance and community organizations could make practical care visible without stripping the experience of joy.
By the time I left, The Vulva Gala had made its argument without needing to announce one.
Conversations about our bodies do not have to begin with fear, embarrassment or whispered language. They can begin over art, inside a song, through a ridiculous joke, across a runway or while standing at a Boyfriend Bar run by somebody’s actual boyfriend.
The School of Sexuality Project created an afternoon where education could be joyful, community could be sexy and people were given room to show up more completely as themselves.
Los Angeles showed up for it, and New Hollywood was proud to be in the room.
Photography by Kat Hanegraaf Photography
The visual story of The Vulva Gala was captured throughout the afternoon, documenting its performances, runway presentations and the community moments that gave the celebration its character.
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