Vagina Beautiful

I am going to go out on a limb and make a prediction of what America's next sex organ fashion trend will be: lamination of the female genitals. I truly believe that this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds initially, given all the other procedures that our society encourages women to undergo to achieve the perfect vagina. A crotch snugly bound in lamination would be smooth, shiny, symmetrical, and tight - all of the attributes we strive for via the vaginal "improvement" services available to us today. It seems that only recently has a harsh standard of what a vagina should look like been introduced. In lieu of the fantastic performance of "The Vagina Monologues" that took place last week on campus, I think it would be very timely and appropriate to draw attention to some of the things we do to our modern vaginas that would cause vagina owners of older generations gasp in shock (and puzzlement!). 1. Pubic hair removal. This practice has gained serious ground in the past ten years or so, to the point that going bare down there has become somewhat of a norm for young women. What began as seasonal hair removal along the bikini line has been taken to new extremes. It is common today to get all but a narrow "landing strip" of pubic hair waxed off, but a landing strip just does not offer enough of a shock factor for many women today. So to take it a step further, many women shape the pubic hair that they leave on their bodies into designs, like hearts and lightning bolts, or they endure some extra pain and wax/shave every bit of pubic hair they can reach. In a 2008 poll conducted by Cosmopolitan and Men's Health magazines, a solid 28 percent of 4,000 men polled said that they preferred that women maintain completely bare vulvas. In the same year, of a random sample of 235 female college students in Australia, 60 percent claimed to remove some of their pubic hair, and a whopping 48 percent said they removed most or all of it. Female pubic hair has officially become an endangered species, with a significant portion of both men and women treating it like a yard full of leaves that needs to be raked routinely.

2. Labiaplasty. On the website of Cosmetic Surgery, P.A. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it's exclaimed that labiaplasty "will not only recreate more youthful and aesthetically pleasing external genital structures, but will also restore self-image and self-esteem!" This procedure is one of the most popular forms of vaginal cosmetic surgery. Women generally invest in labiaplasty to reduce the size of their labia and/or to make them more symmetrical, because apparently, small, matching labia are all the rage nowadays. So, does this mean that there will eventually be a procedure to make lopsided testicles more symmetrical, and therefore (according to this logic) more aesthetically pleasing? Perhaps, but I doubt that that innovation would receive any sort of warm welcome.

3. Hymenoplasty, a.k.a. hymen reconstruction surgery. Pretty self-explanatory, this surgery can cost as much as $5,000.to put your hymen back together. Want to give your vagina something nice, but don't have $5,000? There are plenty of Want to give your vagina something nice, but don't have $5,000? There are plenty of luxuries like vibrators, warming lubricants and soft underwear that run less than one hundredth of the cost of a new hymen. I'm pretty sure breaking in the latter is much easier on your vagina than the former. Just sayin'.

4. Vajazzling is a very new vaginal fad, made popular by actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, who has admitted to being an avid vajazzler in interviews and in her new book, The Day I Shot Cupid. A number of spas and bikini waxers are beginning to offer this service for about $50. To vajazzle, all pubic hair must be removed from the vulvar area, and then (brace yourself for this), using a strong adhesive, tiny swarovski crystals are applied to the area. The crotch bling is said to stay put for about five days. Not-so-surprisingly, it's become a widely discussed topic on the internet; last month, the salon Completely Bare even posted a video on YouTube, demonstrating how to vajazzle at home.

These acts of trimming, sculpting, gluing, and smoothing are reminiscent of arts and crafts time back in elementary school, and I think it's fair to say that we've become just as obsessed with the aesthetics of our pubic regions as children are with their arts and crafts. And what did we often do with our arts and crafts to preserve them? We laminated them! Still sound like a farfetched idea?