Designer Vagina’s

Nope, no picture.

Now that you’ve picked your jaws off the floor after reading a title like that…please let me warn you that this blog post is something I feel particularly passionate about.  Not, vagina’s per se, but the whole subject of body image,  self perception and self worth.
I make no apologies for such a candid post because it’s something I feel strongly about, and I’m doing it partly because I think it’s SUCH an important issue and worth the potential embarrassment of speaking publicly about.

I have struggled with self acceptance all my life.  I also think I have a warped perception of myself, as a whole, and I believe a lot of it stems from my early childhood sexual abuse.  (And how many of us out there have the same story?  I don’t need to ask. Nearly every woman I have met has had a similar childhood “event.” )

The truth is there is so much tied up with our perceptions of who we are, how we appear – as women.
A lot of blame can be placed on media and how women are portrayed – are STILL portrayed as sexual objects.
Compounded by the fact that now we live in an era where plastic surgery is more or less becoming commonplace.
It’s mind boggling just how many women are going under the knife, and for some the addiction to plastic surgery is more than evident.

Just the other night I was greatly saddened to see yet another plastic surgery victim – Dolly Parton.
Oh MY!  When I saw her I just could not believe what she has done to herself.
THAT is not “beauty”.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s not “beautiful”.
Why oh why can’t these stars just allow themselves to age gracefully?
I’m not saying let themselves go to rack and ruin, but with all their money….can’t they afford better plastic surgeons, or at least ones with some kind of morals that say “enough is enough!”.

Is it self esteem gone horribly horribly wrong?
Is it somehow the way that women are trying to cover up whatever “ugliness” that they feel inside?
Or is it simply the youth trap?
And I just don’t get that – the whole age-ist thing.
These days, with modern medicine we are likely to spend more years being “older” and “old” than we are fresh faced, dewy eyed and YOUNG.
Why the emphasis on such a short period of a human beings lifespan?

To my eyes, it’s putting ugliness on the OUTSIDE, because the warped, almost burns victim facial features of these women in NO way makes them appear more attractive.  On the contrary, we have a new “old age” look now.   It’s the fixed, taught stretch of surgical intervention and botox paralysis.

Look, I know….there is plastic surgery, and there is PLASTIC SURGERY.   Look at Michael Jackson.
A little can go a long way, but the problem I think in a lot of cases is that the underlying feelings about ones self are never truly addressed, therefore people just keep going back for more and more trying to fix something physically, that no surgeon’s scalpel can ever reach.

Then,when I watched a documentary some time ago discussing the whole idea of “designer vagina’s”  I thought  “Has the whole WORLD gone mad?”
It’s one thing having a nose job but for Gods sakes….having your vagina spliced and diced?
Not only that, when I realised that girls as young as FOURTEEN were unhappy with how their genitals looked, I felt outraged.

I ended up writing a song about it – taking the mickey out of the whole notion.
You can hear it here –
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=12378&songID=11464265

Oh and I realise, really we are talking about vulva’s but that doesn’t have quite the same ring now does it?
(Be warned, this song could get stuck in your head, as it did my daughters and she found herself humming it during an exam.)

Today, I was looking online to see if I could find the exact documentary that I’d watched some time ago  which inspired that song ,but found another one called “The perfect Vagina.”
It’s a very frank look at the whole subject, and be warned if you choose to watch it, it gets graphic.

As I watched it I had some mixed feelings.
I was quite horrified at the comments which indicate that a lot of WOMEN are trying to sculpt their vulva’s in order to look more “child like”.
It’s abhorrent to me that THAT is becoming the fixed ideal – that grown women should somehow aspire to be more like children.

Of course, I am still, and forever will be, against the idea of anyone having plastic surgery because of a warped perception of themselves.
We cannot ever look like the photoshopped, airbrushed, “illusions” of women we see in magazines.
We are not surgically enhanced porn stars either – with child like vagina’s!

We are human beings and the delight is that we all come in different packages, sizes, shapes, and hell….we all have different nether regions of doom – that DO change during every phase and stage of life. That is NORMAL – ladies, girls, (even men) please hear that! NORMAL!

I find it extremely sad that women are resorting to these measures in order to try and fix what seems to be their own inner demons.
In the documentary a young woman has surgery done and it begs the question from me – what next for her?
When really young girls are having this sort of surgery done, lets face it, in a part of the body that hardly anyone besides your family doctor, and a possible future lover SEE’S, then to me it seems logical that the more obvious parts of these womens bodies are going to be come targets too, especially with the mounting pressure coming from society to look “perfect”.

Of course there is the flip side.
In no way am I against any sort of surgery that can TRULY improve ones quality of life, so if there is a real physical problem, a measurable discomfort, or some complication, say following child birth….Heck yeah, of course that is understandable.

Some may say the psychological torture of being unhappy with some part of themselves physically is enough to warrant surgery. 
Is it?
Will it TRULY fix it in the long term?

What I AM against though, as I’ve said, is the unwarranted, unnecessary risk of having surgery done when women are trying to live up to perceived societal “ideals”.

I did find the end of the documentary particularly uncomfortable.  I’m not sure why.
The notion of a group of women sitting around showing each other their fannies was just a little bit…..WEIRD to me, lol….but hey, if it helps?
I’m just not so sure I’d like to have a visual in my head of what all my friends “lady gardens” look like when I’m having a cuppa with them.

lol!  I love that….”lady garden.”

I can imagine telling the doctor “Um….there’s a problem with my, er…lady garden.”

So, if you’re up for it, watch the documentary.  It does, I think, give some insights into the whole concept of self acceptance.
It also made me wonder about how we approach the subject of sex education with our children.
Maybe acceptance of all our BITS is something worth talking about too.

Here is the link.

http://documentary.net/the-perfect-vagina/