labial reshaping?

[merchimerch]

I've know about the rise in cosmetic vaginal surgery for a while, and every time I see an article on it I feel sad. Here's the most recent:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article4211836.ece

I find this an interesting trend from the society that got SO up in arms about vaginal cutting/excision in non-Western countries (which is, admittedly, a very different thing and serves a very different purpose). But really, why are we so concerned about knives cutting others' vaginas, but we're all to happy to cut into our own for the sake of beauty?

I'm disturbed by this trend.

I'm disturbed by the need for some women to trim their labia minora to porn-star petiteness. I wish there was a way for us to appreciate vaginal diversity as much as I wish our culture was more tolerant of diversity (instead of just giving it *lip service*).

I'm disturbed that waxing is now considered standard and that so many women either sculpt their pubic hair into odd shapes or remove it completely. The option currently seems to be between post-modern pubic hair coiffures or the pre-adolescent none-at-all approach.

Neither are acceptable to me, and now I'm afraid that vaginal cosmetic surgery is going to become some kind of accepted norm as our current treatment of pubic hair has.

It scares me that this surgery is tauted as empowering for women to enjoy better sex, since they will no longer feel ashamed of the appearance of their loose canals and flabby lips. This doesn't fall far from the "your parts are dirty" rhetoric of decades past, with the subtle difference being that now a woman with "offensive" labia can purchase herself acceptable parts.

I like the originality of my girl parts -- I don't want them to look like porn parts. How can we nudge the culture a bit more toward appreciation of women and their sexual parts, rather than homogenization and control?

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Surely the question is, what pressures do people feel? I'm male, and I don't shave anything. The second time I took a razor to my face I went, nope, this is not for me, and now the most I do is (slightly grudgingly) to use scissors every few weeks to keep my moustache out of my tea. Here in San Jose, to my pleasant surprise, this seems to be acceptable; the northern-European-looking people here don't seem to mind much, and most other people seem to range from interested to enthusiastic. But in Montreal, where I lived until recently, people would shout at me on the street. So routinely so that I've had friends comment that it makes them uncomfortable.

Well, I've had that all my adult life, and if they can't see the value in me, that's their loss and (I strongly suspect) my gain. I have my own friends. But that said, it's a degree of social pressure that I don't think anyone should need to withstand for something that does so little harm to others, and the fact that almost all men do shave their faces (whether in whole or in part) when it is such an unpleasant thing to do makes it pretty clear that the psychological effect is, well, effective.

So I don't feel it's inconsistent that I can be impressed by artistic feats of facial topiary, feel it completely acceptable if someone wants, of their own free will, to be clean-shaven, and at the same time be extremely disturbed by the clear statistical evidence that everyone is getting their minds messed with.

And as above, so below.

(And a hundred times more so for the parts with nerve endings, and the ones that won't grow back.)

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

Your penultimate paragraph seems to hit the point square on the head.

And, I'm now in San Jose at least 1ce a week visiting my Bosnian - would you like to grab a cup of tea at some point?