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Health Lover

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/73266/

Designer Vaginas, Anyone?

By Cath Elliott, Comment Is Free. Posted January 11, 2008.

Hymenoplasty, vaginal tightening, revirgination, G-spot amplification
and labial reduction are the latest craze for women with more money
than sense.

Once you've had your breasts enhanced, your thighs sucked thin, your
skin stretched taught over your cheekbones, and your lips pumped full
of cow's tissue, what better way to finish off that perfect Barbie
doll look than to have your genitals surgically remodeled and your
pubic area waxed smooth? And if you're worried that your partner might
be tempted to stray because you've had a couple of kids and things
have started to sag a bit, what better way to guarantee his fidelity
than to transform yourself into a porn queen lookalike with the fanny
of a pre-pubescent girl?

Hymenoplasty, vaginal tightening, revirgination, G-spot amplification
and labial reduction are the latest craze in cosmetic surgeries for
women with more money than sense. Surgeries that were originally
designed to help overcome some of the more debilitating side effects
of childbirth have now been appropriated by an industry whose sole
purpose is to convince women that they're imperfect and to profit from
the plummeting self-esteem they promote.

In last week's Observer, Cristina Odone lauded hymenoplasty as
"brilliantly subversive" and as "good news" for women. "After all,"
she chortled, "nowadays you don't have to be a virgin -- you just
pretend to be one."

Well, sorry to burst your bubble Cristina, but having your hymen
repaired to meet with societal expectations of a new bride's
virginity, or having your vagina tightened as a gift to your husband
so he can re-live that first night experience, is not "good news for
women," not by any stretch of the imagination. Something's surely gone
amiss if we're now celebrating voluntary mutilation as some kind of
benchmark for women's progress.

We rightly condemn female genital mutilation (FGM) when it's forced on
women and girls in the name of culture and tradition, yet we're quick
to embrace it when it's sold to us packaged in the language of choice.
There's a glaring inconsistency in the western notion of female
empowerment, when enshrined within that is the right of women to go
under the surgeon's knife in pursuit of a socially imposed model of
physical perfection. It's no wonder we face accusations of hypocrisy
and cultural imperialism, when glossy magazines carry worthy articles
about the horrors of FGM in the developing world on the one page, and
advertisements offering the latest in designer vaginas in the
classified section at the back.

Of course there's an enormous difference between a young girl being
forced to undergo FGM without anaesthetic, where the purpose is to
reduce the desire for sex, and a grown woman choosing surgery under
the misapprehension that it's going to improve her sex life (doctors
have now warned that the potential risks, which include infection,
scarring, nerve damage and loss of sensation outweigh the potential
benefits). While the procedures and motivations are different, both
come firmly under the banner of harmful cultural practices.

In 1915 the Chinese government finally declared foot binding illegal;
for centuries Chinese girls had been forced to endure agony for the
sake of a pair of tiny feet. Ironically, podiatrists in America are
now performing toe shortening surgery, to help women fit into the
latest designer shoes. And while a quarter of young girls in Cameroon
are being subjected to breast ironing, where their breasts are pounded
and massaged with a variety of heated implements to try and stop them
developing, in the west, teenage girls as young as 14 are being
treated to breast implants.

From one generation to the next, and from one society to another,
women's bodies are being continually sculpted to fit in with cultural
norms and orthodoxies; but it's not just women who are falling prey to
the myth that the body beautiful is within everyone's reach. While we
might wince at the thought of the subincision practised by some
Aboriginal Australian tribes, increasing numbers of men are seeking
out penis enlargement surgeons, or inserting splints attached to
weights into their members in a bid to make them longer. And while
breast enhancement surgery has become an almost routine procedure for
women, men too can now have their chests reshaped with pectoral
implants.

There's a scene in the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club
where the two main protagonists steal discarded bags of liposuctioned
fat from waste bins; the fat is a vital ingredient for the designer
soap out of which they make their living. As we watch the bags being
dragged out of the bins, the narrator intones:

Tyler sold his soap to department stores at $20 a bar. Lord knows what
they charged. It was beautiful. We were selling rich women their own
fat a.ses back to them.

Cosmetic surgeons now offer injectable fillers, containing human fat
harvested from the patient's own body to pack facial creases and build
up shallow contours. Palahniuk got it right. We're selling rich women
their own fat a.ses, and someone's laughing all the way to the bank.