[wpvideo fKzxRoHw]
Are your labia feeling their age? Do they need a bit more pink? There’s an application for that. Literally.
‘My New Pink Button’ , a genital cosmetic colorant, will help restore your labia to their naturally ‘youthful’ pink color! Feeling a bit more daring? There’s a color for that too! Purple, bright red, amber, you name it. Any shade that you’ve ever dreamt of. Any hue that your partner desires. After all, if you’re going to dye your hair, why not dye down there?
While you’re at it, you can also reshape your labia to insure that they are more desirable in appearance. Vaginal rejuvenation, writes journalist Angel Bonvoglia for the Women’s Media Center Blog, is a procedure where cosmetic surgeons (mostly men), “carve, burn, cauterize, and stitch the female labia, clitoral environs, vaginal canal, and other points south… in order to create supposedly longed for “designer” vaginas and thereby “enhance sexual gratification.”” Ironically, Bonovoglia discovers that labiaplasty, the most popular procedure (which entails either leaving just the edge of the inner labia or cutting it off entirely) actually impairs sexual desire. Still, even a top surgeon is quoted as claiming that a tight vagina will keep any man around.
Granted, we live in a visual culture, where middle age is synonymous with invisibility and where older women reach a point where they virtually cease to exist. Women poke, pull, botox, dye, suck, lift and pout in an attempt to hold on to their visibility. Now they have the option to make sure that all is well down below as well, which when taken to extremes, also insures that they rob themselves of the very thing that they are trying to regain: their sexuality.
Why do we need to be worried about or spare our partners from discovering discolored or loose labia? (Really, if he or she is down there, are their eyes open?) Better yet, have our attempts to regain our sexuality insured that we have lost our sanity at the same time?
What do you think? What flava would you like your labia?
9 Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Round-up: March news and tidbits « Flashfree - [...] What’s your flava? – Boy, I got slammed for this post but I’ll leave it to you to decide…
- Designer muffs: cosmetic surgery below the belt – Guest Post by Jesse Mendes « Flashfree - [...] below the belt – Guest Post by Jesse Mendes A few months ago, I stirred the pot a bit by…
Leave a Comment
Archives
Tags
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I just don’t even know what to say. Wow.
Crazy stuff right? But seriously, I want women to know about this. I am shocked that this goes on. Shocked that there is a market for it. And disappointed at the levels that some will stoop to keep their man. Terrible.
Sick women in a sick society. Thanks for the eye opener Liz, I just hope I can erase the mental images. Who could do this kind if ‘butchery’ and proclaim its virtues?
Thanks for you comment Sue. Totally agree. Which is why I want women to know about this. We should all be up in arms!
Not sure where to begin, whether to address the fact that none of the people referenced here are actually patients or the tone of this blog tends to minimize and ridicule the nature of procedures. And without sounding elitist or even adversarial, I would simply like to say that I have worked for one of the most experienced Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation trained female surgeons in the world and actually had the opportunity to work with many of these women (before and after surgery). And though this may be hard to believe due to the lack of information or ill supported data, the majority of these women were not having these surgeries for their partner. Do those ladies exist? Sure, but they are definitely not the norm. In fact, 90% of the ladies I worked with were either dealing with health issues like vaginal laxity, uterine or vaginal prolapse, Stress Urinary Incontinence, hygiene issues caused by labia hypertrophy, pain and discomfort. Were there some that only wanted to look or feel prettier, absolutely. But again, they were not the majority. If you are truly attempting to be proactive in the subject matter, my advice is to educate yourself on the many other facets involved in these procedures. Talk to real women with the aforementioned issues and learn what they have lived with. After all they have already been living in shame for such a long time, why should they continue to be badgered and their issues trivialized by their fellow “sisters”? We as women should seek to educate ourselves and empower each other, not belittle and judge.
The tone of this blog overall is never to ridicule. Undoubtedly, there are some very legitimate uses for this procedure, as you point you. However, if you took the time to read the article that I refer to, there seems to be just as many unnecessary procedures. By highlighting these issues, regardless of tone, women then have an opportunity to do some research for themselves. My intent here was not to badger a woman who needs the procedure, but rather the hundreds of plastic surgeons who are preying on women who are not. Clearly, your boss is the exception. Apologies if you were offended.
This trend is very disturbing, to say the least. Girls as young as 15 are becoming so brainwashed by narrow aesthetic ideals of sexuality that they are doing in to get their labia amputated or the hood of their clitorus removed. REMOVED. (Ladies, it is there for a reason).
The irony of all of this: I just interviewed a Somalian woman (an outspoken advocate against female genital mutilation who has acted as a consultant to the World Health Organization) who knows all about the history of genital surgeries around the world: what motivates different cultures to do it (religion, oppression of women, aesthetic appeal, sexual subjugation, etc). Her name is Kowser Omer, and she told me that in some cultures, the labia are actually STRETCHED (because large labia are considered more beautiful).
Both women and men in North America have wildly distorted impressions of so-called “normal” genitalia – we are as diverse down there as we are in our faces or finger prints. Research has repeatedly shown that women especially are grossly unfamiliar with genital diversity.
A woman who recognized this began a web site that showcases the diversity of genitals from across the globe. Both men and women alike volunteered to have photographs of their genitals taken, and this art gallery lasted for some time before the story took a tragic twist. Visit this link for more information:
https://dodsonandross.com/gallery/genital-art
This web site was introduced to me by the head of a campaign in the business of challenging distorted messages about sexuality, and the pharmaceutical industry’s growing influence into sex research:
Leonore Tiefer
http://www.newviewcampaign.org
They are based in New York, and still going strong. Dr. Tiefer is a sexologist and psychologist with New York University, as well as the author of A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems.
I wrote about their organization and this issue in general in my blog with a post called Designer Vaginas and I welcome your feedback:
http://tinyurl.com/27j3fb7
OR
http://septembermay.blogspot.com/
Jesse (SeptemberMay on Twitter)
I have over ten years of experience performing labiaplasty surgery. Many women choose to have this procedure done out of physical discomfort. Their over-sized labia cause them pain or extreme discomfort when wearing tight jeans or riding a bike. I had one patient tell me she choose to have labiaplasty because she was at a party and her labia actually “fell out” of her bathing suit.
You know what, Dr. Rajagopal, I have little interest in engaging you on a debate on this, because I’m not sure how constructive it would be, but I will say this: as a woman with large labia myself, the idea that they can cause “pain” is ridiculous. It is flesh, and skin. Yes, it is inconvenient and you have to be careful about what you wear but anyone who experiences pain would be in the (vast) minority, I dare say — and the only reason I can acknowledge that is because I believe anything is possible. I can’t even imagine how, but I’m willing to stretch.
Most of the “discomfort” women experience with large labia comes from the way they have been conditioned to think about large labia: as something that is unattractive or unsightly. They have no idea that there are men out there (and yes, I have met them) who love large labia, and as I point out in my post Designer Muffs (on this site), there are also entire cultures who value them as beautiful. If you are a woman with large labia, you shouldn’t be wearing tight jeans — of course that would make you uncomfortable. It would be like a large breasted woman forcing herself into a bra that is two sizes too small. You have to work with your body type, and come to accept and celebrate it, and that includes wearing bathing suits that will protect and hold your privates.
You make your living doing this, and I can’t say anything about women who come to you willingly to have these procedures done. What I speak to is the kind of conditioning that brings them into these offices in the first place.
Jesse