Saturday, September 01, 2012

Inside the strange, fascinating world of vaginoplasty...

Why are some women spending upwards of $10,000 for complete "vaginal rejuvenation"? 

Dr. Ronald Blatt squats on the stool between the fuzzy pink stirrups propping up my legs. As I brace for the gynecologist to start poking around with his lubricated, latex encased paws, my eyes dart from a garage sale castaway of a seascape painting to an anatomy chart then back to the sole odd aspect of this setup: a mirror positioned so I can see my lady parts alongside Blatt's pink necktie-adorned head. Thank goodness I remembered to trim.

But the doctor I'm straddling isn't about to inspect my ovaries or administer a routine pap smear test. Blatt runs the Manhattan Center for Vaginal Surgery, and he's preparing to assess my vaginal tightness and to demonstrate how he might alter my labia.

I scheduled this complimentary consultation under the guise of wanting "to understand my options." Secretly, I want to explore why a growing number of women are modifying a body part so few can see by undergoing the elective surgeries in which Blatt specializes: vaginoplasty (removal of excess lining and tightening of surrounding tissue and muscles) and labiaplasty (reshaping of the labia minora, and sometimes the labia majora and/or clitoral hood). The former is often pursued by women who believe their capacity to enjoy sex is compromised by a loose vagina, which can be the result of a congenital condition -- as it was for Lucy Mancini in a Godfather plot point neglected by Francis Ford Coppola for the screen -- or childbirth. I'm especially interested in the latter, which is typically endured for purely cosmetic reasons. Although statistics on these operations are difficult to come by since most are performed by OB/GYN's rather than plastic surgeons, it is believed that the number of women having them is increasing rapidly -- some estimate by fivefold over the last decade. Perhaps most interestingly, an August 2011 study in the British Journal of Medicine showed that 40 percent of women who inquired about genital reconstruction reported the desire to go through with it even after being informed that their labia were normal. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Labiaplasty, deforming the vagina... (Graphic)
  2. Why more and more women are using internet porn...
  3. The rise in women seeking a perfect vagina...
  4. "Whiter vagina" commercial creates outrage in India...
  5. The virginity test in South Africa...
  6. Cosmetic surgery gets cheaper, faster, scarier...
  7. Girls as young as 11 seeking designer vagina surgeries in Britain... 
  8. Plastic surgery boom as Asians seek 'western' look...
  9. I hate my large breasts... 

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