FMG, American Style

While flipping through news websites last Friday afternoon, I came across a bit that some actress had quipped that she'd recently had "vaginal rejuvenation surgery" and was back on the dating market.

Intrigued, my co-workers and I discussed what this surgery would be . . . and then looked it up on the web. We found an article from the New York Times. The article explained that this surgery might include removal of parts of the labia, or tightening of vaginal muscles, or in some rare cases a reconstruction of a hymen.

The article went on to explain that some women have a labia that is slightly larger than "normal" and that having excess labia might interfere with wearing tight pants or riding a bike. (no, seriously) We aren't talking about people who have serious malformations. We are talking about normal functioning women who didn't "realize" that they had less than delicate genitals until they had an opportunity to compare themselves to women in porn.

One woman said that her labia was nearly 1/2 an inch too big and that it caused her no end of embarrassment. Other women said that they wanted the surgery to appear or be more sexually desirable to the man/men in their lives.

First of all . . . I imagine that only in the united states do we have the money and leisure to throw towards such unnecessary surgery. Second of all, as a friend of mine says from time to time, makes me sad in my heart that our society has so ingrained in women the ideal of "perfect beauty" that they would risk losing all sexual sensation (from nerve damage/loss of nerve tissue from such a surgery) in order to meet some distorted notion of "pretty." Thirdly, aren't we fighting against this exact sort of ignorance in some third world countries? Isn't the justification for FMG in those cultures that removal of labial tissues make a woman more desirable for a man? Isn't recreation of a hymen playing into exactly the justification these other cultures have for sewing women up over and over and over again?

Sad in my heart.