I see today's Guardian has cottoned on to the new (American) fad for 'vaginal rejuvenation'.
This, for the uninitiated, is what you ask for when you've already had cosmetic surgery on all public-facing parts of your body, but still feel the profound psychological emptiness that comes from believing Cosmo, Glamour, the Daily Mail etc. when they tell you (explicitly or implicitly) that men - and indeed the world at large - are only interested in how you look.
According to these women's-media tossers and their assorted plastic-surgery charlatan chums, how you look 'down there' is now just as important as what your face looks like, how skinny you are, and so on.
But what gets me about the Guardian article is the way it starts off being all horrified that women are being pressured by the media into getting their labia sculpted into alleged man-pleasing contours, but then ends up going on about how maybe we *should* be worried about the general fitness of our vaginas after all.
After all, why worry about ending up a spinster (which is probably your own fault for having unattractive labia, you negligent slattern) when you could be worrying about ending up an incontinent spinster?
This nonsense has gone too far, and gone on for too long. I'm thinking of organising a ritual burning of every women's magazine and women's supplement in the land. If only it would stop raining.
IN RELATED NEWS: Thanks to my dad for sending me this empty-headed niaiserie from the Weekly Telegraph, in which some British woman offers to reveal to other British women - for the bargain price of £2,500 - how French women stay thin. I say: spend the £2,500 on Gitanes and smoke yourself skinny. You'll feel so much better.
UPDATE: Leonie said: 'what else is wrong with me that i should really do something about already? do tell.' Well Leonie, had you considered that you might need shoulder liposuction? Come to that, maybe we ALL need shoulder liposuction, to fill (or rather, empty) the gaping black void that we all feel when we realise we don't look exactly like Keira Knightley.
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33 comments:
There's an excuse I've never head before for not carrying heavy things: "I'm sorry, I can't, it might damage my pelvic floor". Perhaps I will try it and see how I get on...
I've just read bits of that article in the guardian where they call one of the treatments a lazy susan. Isn't that the name of the spinny thing in the middle of the table in chinese restaurants, so you can all get a bit of all the dishes?
It doesn't seem like an immediately obvious connection, I wonder how that came up in the naming brainstorming session.
"State of the art wireless blue tooth pelvic toners." Dear God ...
I'm only just recovering from reading a Daily Mail article by Liz Jones about the "tragedy" of reaching the age of fifty, in which she talks about the way she's always lied about her age, along with the usual self hatred and barbed comments about her ex-husband. Hey, laydeez, if you read women's magazines and supplements you too can be a neurotic, self loathing mess!
That Telegraph article just makes me want to spit. At both the author and the idiotic woman running the 'retreat'. Why is it that women feel the need for this sort of rubbish?
And don't even get me started on 'vaginal rejuvenation'...
"...[the pelvic floor] is a "design fault" in the female body."
well, of course it is.
what else is wrong with me that i should really do something about already? do tell.
Sarah: Yes, I also scoffed at the suggestion that we're the first generation of women who have had to lift heavy things. Erm...
Matt: What's more, how lazy do you have to be to be too lazy to do pelvic floor exercises?
Betty: You'd hope that on reaching 50 Liz Jones might have learned to like and respect herself. Clearly not. And yet her neuroses are constantly held up as the sort of thing we all ought to be worrying about.
Rach: There aren't enough words to describe the amount of things that are wrong with that Telegraph article. Not least of which is the fact that Helena Frith Powell was a model before she moved to France, so she's clearly being somewhat economical with the truth when she tells her customers that she was a dowdy mumsy type before she rocked up in the Languedoc.
I'll stick to my pelvic floor exercises. All that vagina remodelling is for insecure people paranoid about their bodies. Sad twats.
Leonie: Labiaplasty seems like the nadir of pointlessness to me, but I'm sure the cosmetic surgery industry will soon come up with even more pointless things we could be getting stressed out about/paying to have 'fixed'.
Llewtrah: I've just spent 10 minutes giggling to myself at the thought that 'Sad Twats' would be a great name for a vaginal rejuvenation clinic.
i'm not even going to click through to the articles but i would be delighted to join you in the mass bonfire
perhaps we could do a UK-wide burning, with blazing hilltop beacons all over the land, just like the night before charles and di's wedding (remember?)
i can take charge of the scottish arm, if you like
:-)
(i seem incapable of leaving just one comment today)
well, how's about this: i read in the guardian last month that the french health authorities send new mothers on a six week perineal re-education course
just typing that, i had to cross my legs
yikes
I know a woman who spent three weeks in hospital learning how to wee properly. I dread to think how she was doing it before.
"Seventy per cent of young girls who trampoline wet themselves."
I hope the springs don't rust.
The heavy lifting thing sounds dangerously akin to the dire warnings in the late 19th century about women being too delicate for bicycling.
I really want to make a comment here using the word "cunt", but I can't fathom out one that sounds convincing and is funny.
It's worse than reading the Vagina Monologues.
the only reason you really need to do pelvic floor exercises after having kids is that you're so busy, you only have time to go to the loo once a day. and even then the little perishers come banging on the door wanting attention.
instead of attempting to regain 'honeymoon freshness' (bleeuuurgh), why not attend to the lady garden with a little creative topiary?
for £2,500, i'll invent a system for pruning it which i can pass on to gullible idiots everywhere!
i see new career possibilities ...
rivergirlie - a) these are already available for £13.99 at Superdrug and b) if you aren't already having it all ripped off by a sadist wielding hot wax then you quite clearly deserve never to have sex again. Apparently.
No of corse you musn't do any heavy lifting. No no no. But of course, as you know only too well, you can squeeze and actual person out of you. That's fine.
Madness...
Some of us, for reasons to do with moving, have to use the public library for internet access at the moment. Could you use a row of **** rather than rude words in blog titles in future please. People round here know me.
Dave: 'Vagina' is not a rude word. Or did you mean 'business'?
I'm coming back later to reply to everyone else - but first I must write spam emails in a desperate bid to keep our fragile economy alive.
Having seen some pretty ropey-lookin' vaginas in my time, this sounds like a great idea to me. It's about time they were sculpted to look like the ones in the porno mags - doctors should offer a two for one special where they have at the tits at the same time.
No doubt this'll be an unpopular view with you wimmin, but that's because your mob does nothing but moan when you should, in fact, be in the kitchen getting my bloody tea ready.
Foo-Foo! Tee hee!
There was a Channel 4 series called Am I Normal? one of which focussed on plastic surgery, they interviewed a doctor and some of his patients about this. He would ask them "How 'old' do you want to be?" One woman ended up with a foo-foo 'younger' than her daughter's actual age. All kinds of wrong...
And hi, BPP - you'd make a nice friend for LC. (Liars and Lunatics)
superdrug!? no way! (and how do you know so much about this anyway?)
you have a superdrug yet no caffe nero? what's wrong with everybody?
I love you. S x
I love you too xx
"Could you use a row of **** rather than rude words in blog titles in future please."
Sorry, just seen this comment — it's cracking me up.
VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA
Ooh, I turn my back for a moment to resuscitate the economy (interspersed with a certain amount of viewing of Mad Men and Bonekickers) and when I come back there are so many comments I don't know where to start!
But welcome to BPP and his special brand of feminism, and to S. and Annie R, I love you both too, and Rivergirlie: there is indeed Superdrug in Falmouth but no Caffe Nero, although it's actually GSE who purports to have availed herself of Superdrug's finest pubic topiary kits - I lost sight of my own, erm, lady-garden (I really hope my dad isn't reading) somewhere around the sixth month of pregnancy and hence am now actually considering visiting the hot wax-wielding sadists, which I can tell you is not something I've ever contemplated before. And Annie R - I changed 'vagina' to 'foo-foo' especially for Dave; it doesn't do to upset the clergy. To everyone else, thank you for your enlightening comments (although I think Smat really needs to elaborate further on this unfortunate woman's predicament), and may this be the last time that the phrase 'perineal re-education' appears on this blog...
You're still watching Bonekickers? Did it get any better, then? Have I once again missed the zeitgeist boat and am standing lonely and forlorn on a crumbling pier, clutching a damp ticket to Uncools Ville?
Boz: It got much, much worse. I am going to write a post about it soon. In the meantime you will not be surprised to hear that in next week's season finale (or 'final episode' as we self-effacing Brits call it), the team discover an ancient stone table that is round in shape mm hmmm stroky chin I wonder what that could be use your archaeological imagination etc. etc. chiz chiz.
'Feminism'? I'm not familiar with that term. Anyway, thanks for the hello, sweetcheeks.
Now where's my damned dinner?
ooh boz - i read it as 'boneknickers' which, given the present topic seems oddly appropriate
Sorry, coming in rather late on all this, but I think D***'s p*********s *** f******* s**** b* r******** b* e******* i* t** w**** w*** w****, d**'* y** - especially as he's moving house?
Nature does it best.
All of this, though, horrible though it may be and undoubtedly is, simply pales, simply pales, in comparison to the most dreadful thing of all.
Hymen restoration surgery.
Think about it. I mean, think about it.
Euuuuuuuwchhhh!
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