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

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

no I don't think you're a dupe, but I'm worried that preteen girls growing up now are going to be pressured into shaving/waxing their pubic area much in the way that I was pressured into shaving my legs starting around the 6th grade.

It wasn't even a question. All the girls on my swim team started doing it, and it was clear from TV and all the silly Nair commercials that in order to be a normal woman I had to remove the hair from my legs.

I've since rethought such things, but I wish I'd never started down the leg-shaving path. It seems that young girls are already being taught that their vaginas are dirty, smelly places that they shouldn't look at or mention. When you add the burden of hair removal to that, well it makes me nervous.

I wish the Cunt Coloring Book was part of sex education programs nationwide, and I agree about the Everyday Vulvas project.

[nonseqmenagerie.livejournal.com]

I think if we got past the "vaginas are dirty smelly places unless you use product X to make it smell like flowers," you'd probably actually find less worry about pubic hair. The general line of reasoning I've seen for that is "Vagina is smelly - hair keeps smells - no hair equals clean."

If we can get the former taken out of the equation, or at least pounded in that the scent of a healthy vagina is a good thing, you'd probably find less concern about hair.

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

That rings quite true, and the same could probably be said of armpit hair as well.