Thankful for every imperfection

Image by the delightful photographer, Many rivers to cross.

Reading over the latest news about cosmetic vaginal surgery on the increase in the UK, I kept thinking about last Saturday when I was at the Femina Potens gallery. I remembered the final scene of the night’s performances, where beautiful model Madison Young (and gallery owner) was tied to a wooden pole, and started calling out things to be grateful for, a la Thanksgiving. Because the really neat thing about this weird American holiday is that it makes those of us who think it’s a weird holiday — it makes us really think about what we’re thankful for. I remember the moment Madison smiled and joyously shouted out as loud as she could, “THE CLITORIS!” The room was a riot of shouts, applause and cheers.

I thought a lot about being thankful for the gift of sexual imperfection, and how according to most fundamentalist religions, that sex(uality) is typically the thing that makes us imperfect. On the contrary: our imperfect sex, in all its guises, is what makes us perfectly human. It gives us the capacity for pleasure. With that, empathy, the drive to give of ourselves, the ability to love and be loved. Every human’s genitalia is as unique to each of us as a fingerprint. It is truly lovely that we are imperfect. And for many, genital difference is the make or break for attraction, and variations are hot. Especially when a girl does not look like Malibu Porn Barbie. Being human is perfect, because it can’t be.

I’m really happy with this week’s Chron column, even though I never categorically wanted to enter the labiaplasty debate. Neither did my spellcheck, BTW.

Here’s a snip from Designer Vaginas Hit the UK Runways – Violet Blue: Why we should all be thankful our sex lives are imperfect:

The way it reads on vaginal plastic surgery Web sites — and there are far more of them than we ladies have legs to cross in phantom agony — is that around the world, women are walking around with full-size elephant ears dangling between their legs. No woman in America can sit on a barstool, let alone wear shorts or skip freely to the corner store for a forty, without tripping face-first over what surely must be her horrifyingly misshapen labia. We might as well be playing double-Dutch with our gear. And most of all, we should be utterly mortified at the age of 13 if we don’t have private parts that look like a plastic-fantastic replica of Barbie’s flattened vulva.

I am trying to exaggerate, but I don’t think I am, really. Not by much. The sites soothe the fears of concerned labia-owners, and disturbingly, the parents of the underage labia-owners. Labiaplasty has long been a subject of raging debate and the cosmetic procedures became a fad (along with so-called “vaginal rejuvenation” surgeries and the freaky “G-shot” trend) here in the US years ago. Outraged feminists decried the procedures, most of us sex educators just winced and prepped for questions about sexual function, and a significant number of women went all nip tuck on their bits.

Now that the designer vag trend has officially hit the UK, are we starting to hear about the concerning lack of data around nose jobs for your… other nose. According to the Guardian UK, a study published recently in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology revealed that over the last year there’s been an increase of almost 70 percent in the number of women having labiaplasty through their National Health Service. In the article they quote Alison Henry about her labiaplasty, and while her circumstances were unusual, she wrote that the operation was so “brutal” she’d rather get her teeth pulled out than do it again. Now that women’s stories are starting to come out about life after the procedure, you probably won’t want a new hoo-ha for the holidays. Sorry about that. Hope you keep the receipt.

Now I’m not anti-plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons; I have a number of friends who feel (and function) a lot better now that they look and feel the way they want to — though I am a critic of bad boob jobs. It’s not like you can say to someone who gets a nose job, hey, you look great the way you are and I’m worried your nose won’t feel as much pleasure when I touch it after you get a bunch of it cut off and reshaped. You may not even care about your nose’s feelings. You just care about how your nose looks and that air can go in and out of it, and that’s that. Which is fine if all you want to do is breathe and look pretty at the same time.

Some of us girls want a little more than that. (…read more, sfgate.com)

* I just noticed that someone at SF Gate, whoever they are, decided to put their own take on my column’s title on the front page. Personally, I think “Designer Vaginas a Disturbing Trend” is a really dated title for an article that notes the ‘trend’ is several years old in the US. That is not the title of my article. I mean, I just don’t see how distorting my intentions as a writer helps a writers’ institution get clickthroughs. Let me pass or fail on my own merits, plz. (And I do notice that other columnists do not get their columns renamed. Mark is a great example. I did get another column job offer last week. Actually I got two. Hrm…)