WTF Wednesday -- Designer Vaginas

*The following was posted Monday, but I got this wild hair and decided to repost it under a new feature I'm going to do whenever the mood (and something freaky in the news) hits me.

Okay, I'll admit it -- I've had cosmetic surgery. When I was a freshman in college, I had a mole removed from my nose.

Oh, it wasn't a huge, hairy affair on the end or anything. In fact, it was small and in a fairly inconspicuous spot, as facial moles go, tucked down in the crease along the left side, right at the point where my nostril begins to flare out. But I was always self-conscious about it, so the first time I accidentally scratched it and it bled, I used that as an excuse to go straight to the dermatologist and have it removed as a potential health hazard.

Grammy was annoyed to hear that I'd wasted so much money in the name of vanity -- why, that mole wasn't even noticeable to anyone except me. A few years later, she was looking at my senior picture and suddenly said, "You know, now that I've gotten used to you without the mole, I really notice it in your old pictures. You look better without it."

Maybe I do and maybe I don't. You be the judge.

*BLOGGER BITES*

The photo on the left is from my sophomore year in high school. Can't see the mole, can you? I can't even see it, and I know where it is. The photo on the right is me 27 years later (yes, wearing a sweater in Dallas in July). Not a big difference, eh?

The important thing is, I think I look better without it. That one little bit of minor cosmetic surgery (and really, they had to remove the mole to biopsy it -- honestly!) made a big difference in how I felt about my appearance.

In the years since then, I've come to accept cosmetic surgery as a fact of life. It now seems normal to me for women to get breast implants, breast reductions, facelifts, eye lifts, tummy tucks, liposuction, etc. Plus, I personally know at least a half-dozen women who've had gastric bypass surgery, although that one I consider less cosmetic than life-saving. I can get behind all of these surgeries, to one degree or another. I mean, look at my eyes -- I'm hauling around more bags than a Skycap and I'd be thrilled to unload them.

However, this latest craze in cosmetic surgery absolutely floors me: Women are having surgery to improve the look of their girly parts. The look of their girly parts!

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've never cared for the look of my girly parts -- but then again, I've never cared for the look of anyone else's girly parts, either. They're just...kinda ugly. Which is why God buried them between our thighs and covered them with bushes. I think the last time I actually looked at myself down there was in...oh, maybe 1981? I got out a mirror, took a good look, wrinkled my nose, and promptly tried to forget what I'd seen. For the most part, I've been successful.

But apparently the growing popularity of personal shrubbery removal is causing women to rediscover their own wrinkly bits, and they're not liking what they find. This being the 21st century, of course, they're doing what comes naturally -- paying some surgeon big bucks to make their wrinkly bits look more like someone else's. But the thing is, no matter what kind of nipping, tucking, curving, carving, or plumping a surgeon performs on your girly parts, at the end of the day, when that surgeon has gone home to sip umbrella drinks by the pool you just bought him, they're still going to look like girly parts. You hope. And really, when was the last time you looked at some other women's girly parts and thought, "Wow, she looks just like Brooke Shields!"

Here are just a few of the procedures I've been reading about:


Liposuction of the Mount of Venus to reduce that bulky pubic area (silly me --I thought plump down there equalled girlish)

Augmentation of the Mount of Venus to build up an atrophied pubic area (okay, I don't even want to know how one's mound atrophies)

Labioplasty to correct (with lasers or scalpels, eek!) the size and shape of the inner & outer lips

Correction of the Premature aging of the vulva (WTF constitutes premature aging of the vulva, anyway?)

G-Shot, or G-spot Amplification, where either collagen or Restylane is injected into the G-spot to make it larger (and presumably easier to find with explicit directions and a roadmap)

Vaginoplasty, for the tightening (with lasers or scalpels, eek!) of vaginal muscles and support tissues, and reducing flaccid or floppy vaginal linings

Okay, I can understand why the last one might be a good thing. After all, childbirth is hard on a woman's body, and even easy labors can result in conditions that make sex less enjoyable, or even painful. To correct such a condition, I would consider undergoing some sort of surgical procedure. But for simple appearance's sake? No way. I mean, think about what's down there: nerve endings. Lots and lots of nerve endings, exquisitely sensitive nerve endings that could conceivably be replaced by lots and lots of insensitive scar tissue.

How hard would you kick your own ass if you went in to have your lips trimmed and came out with no feeling down there? It's not impossible. I've watched enough When Your Plastic Surgeon Is A Quack documentaries to know I don't want to star in one.

So what about you? Would you risk life and labia to have a prettier puss?

p.s. I'm blogging about brick shithouses over at SDoS tomorrow -- don't miss it!