Jezebel's post "Your Vagina Isn't Just Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy -- It's Also Too Brown" made me laugh and want to cry, as so many of its posts do.
In trashing Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, an Indian vagina-bleaching product, Jezebel draws stinging attention again to the multi-billion dollar industry surrounding women's "imperfections." Is there nipple bleach yet? If not, I could get on that right away and make a load of cash.
Then I rewatched Lisa Rogers's 2008 documentary The Perfect Vagina about labiaplasty, a term easier to swallow -- so to speak -- than slicing off parts of your labia. One of the fastest growing cosmetic surgeries.
Both the young woman who has surgery in the documentary and the woman in the Indian ad are young and beautiful. So just in case you thought you were ahead of the game with youth and beauty, think again. You've got an ugly punani. Start worrying. Now.
When I was young, the concern was smell, and advertisements encouraged us to douche to stay fresh. Too bad if fresh came along with itchy and dry. That's the nature of vinegar-based products. Before that Lysol was marketed as the germicidal remedy for what ailed our intimate daintiness.
We sought a Febreeze-like scent wafting from down below. Now, structural changes are also required.
Lighten up, the male vag-bleaching ad exec suggests. You use lipstick, what's the difference? "If you have two beautiful girls, one of them fair and the other dark, you see the fair girl's features more clearly. This is because her complexion reflects more light," he argues. I'm trying to imagine the venues where all these shining, light, vagina-beacons are competing for attention.
Not to make you squeamish with accompanying visuals, even imagined ones, but I feel compelled to weigh in. Lisa Rogers points out that the range of normal for labia minora is between 20 -100 mm. I haven't taken a ruler to them, but let's just say I'm on the longer end of the spectrum. And indeed, I never saw my physiognomy represented in any magazines.
No one explained these things properly when I was a kid. In health class it was glossed over quickly, and we were all too embarrassed to look at the standardized, less-than-helpful diagrams anyway. As a result, while I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, I did consider myself a bit of a vaginal freak. For a while, I assumed that the flapping parts were my clitoris and didn't understand why it was broken in two, and didn't do what it was supposed to. I sorted it out.
Bleach it, tighten it, wax it, freshen it, nip and tuck it. Worry about it -- a lot. That's what the cosmetic industry wants us to do. Forget RRSPs. Invest in your labia. The returns will be worth it.
Maybe I'm thinking of men too simplistically, but aren't most of them just happy for the action? Does the sex that doesn't notice you got your hair cut give any thought to the esthetics down below? Does it take so little to make us think they do?
As a society that's quick, as we should be, to criticize female genital mutilation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation as it's practiced in countries and cultures we deem "backward" and "extreme," we certainly withhold judgment when bits are being lopped off "voluntarily" for the good of mankind, and we're being charged big bucks for the privilege.
See more controversial, uh, vaginal beauty products in our slideshow!
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Hilary Burrage: Female Genital Mutilation in Britain: The Scandal About to Break...
Michelle Brooks: Female Genital Mutilation: The Dangers of Social Currency
Dan Morrison: How White My Valley: India's Skin-Whitening Obsession Reaches the Final Frontier
Clean & Dry Intimate Wash with PH Balance Formula
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Clean and Dry Intimate Wash - YouTube
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Clean and Dry Intimate Wash Vaginal Whitner - CocoPerez TV
The fairer sex? Indian company launches an intimate wash ...
Pubic hair trimming and genital waxing has become more common for men though it has perhaps not reached the same level as for women.
Perhaps more importantly, something like 30% of male infants are circumcised in Canada. The majority of these cases are not religiously motivated. I don't want to start a flame-war here, but now that circumcision is no longer indicated as medically recommended by most medical and pediatric societies in the world, one of the most common reasons (other than religion) that is given for circumcision is that people like the aesthetics of a circumcised penis, or it looks or "is" cleaner (much like a shaved pubic region is "cleaner" for either sex - the potential crabs is not really a region to justify going bare rather than exercising regular hygiene). Men often here this from women, and the decision to circumcize a male infant is often made by the mother.
The rate of vaginoplasty is nowhere near as high as the number of essentially cosmetic foreskin removals that occur. So yes, by all means blame male marketing executives, poke some fun, and draw attention to this issue, but let's try to avoid hypocrisy and double-standards across sexes as well as across cultures when it comes to genital aesthetics.
As usual, an article like this is written by somebody that has never spoken to a woman that has had any of these procedures done. When you do speak to these women, you will learn that almost none of them are doing it for societal reasons and on the whole they are happy with the results of their surgery. http://vaginal-surgery.info/real-stories.html
Would others here deny women their right to do as they choose with their bodies? Obviously labiaplasty is an easy one to get people worked up about. But is it really any different than rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, botox or fillers? The market exists because this is what SOME women want. Just talk to them and you'll find out.
Separately, I can confidently say, that 75% of the things you obsess over, don't even register with us.
Bleaching???