Month: July 2016

FFS Vaginal Contouring

by helenscott

It started with this tweet this morning:

IMG_6644

Suddenly everything else I planned on doing today was put on hold while I became consumed by the thought of vaginal contouring. What is it exactly? Judging by the photo it has something to do with applying make-up? To your vagina?

Let’s assume for a second that this is true. Don’t apply make-up to your vagina. First of all, your vagina is inside of you so no one will see it and it’s a huge waste of time and good make-up. And your external lady parts don’t need make-up, either. It assumes you take the time to be hairless down there. If you do, that’s fine, and if you don’t, that’s fine, too.

For me, the thought of one more point of grooming, for exactly whose satisfaction I’m not even sure, is just one more chore. I’d rather be having sex than doing chores. No partner of mine has ever mentioned he’d be more into me if I had more make-up on. Anywhere.

After I thought through the make-up scenario, I Googled “vaginal contouring” to see for sure what it is and I watched the first few minutes of the Ann Summers video. (This was not the easiest thing to do while sharing a house with my father and my child. But I triumphed. For you.)

It’s not about make-up. (False advertising click bait!) But it is one more point for women to feel insecure about. Vaginal contouring, or vontouring, is the insertion of a little device that stimulates collagen production in the vagina and labia, to make things plumper and thus tighter.

This article in Bustle claims it’s not about “a whole boatload of unnecessary vanity,” then goes on to say actually it is about vanity:

[I]t may be the solution for those looking give their vagina new look after childbirth. According to Dr. Giese, childbirth can mess with the plumpness of the vagina, as well as distorting its features a bit. And that’s not even including what it does to the actual opening. You push something the size of a watermelon out of your vagina, and things can be a little different afterward.

But vontouring isn’t only for women who have had children. It’s also for women who maybe aren’t so thrilled about the look of their vaginas in general.

And it’s so convenient that you can do it on your lunch hour or while your nails dry after a mani-pedi!

I read through several articles that all quoted the same statistic, that about 40% of the women who have had this treatment say it increases sexual pleasure. I’m suspicious of that stat. It seems to me that it’s impossible to say that the increase in pleasure is due to the physical outcome of the procedure, a placebo effect caused by a woman assuming there will be an increase in pleasure, or an increase in a woman’s confidence that actually has nothing to do with the physical outcome of the procedure. If it’s the placebo or the increase in confidence, that means the procedure itself is baloney.

Really, beauty industry? We do our hair and our nails and apply make-up to our faces. We pluck, wax, and shave all over. We stuff ourselves into Spanx and high heels. And I get it. We want to feel pretty and we all have different standards for what makes us feel confident and beautiful.

I draw the line at worrying about a part of the body that relatively few people actually see, compared to, say, a face. Believe me, I have my fair share of insecurities but it never once occurred to me to worry about how my vaginal area looks. Even after childbirth.

Men I’ve known both as sexual partners and otherwise have never once mentioned the way labia look as a deal-breaker. They’ve actually never mentioned the way it looks at all. They are pretty much pleased to see a cunt that is happy to welcome them in.

Women, I implore you, if you meet a man that you want to have sex with and he criticizes your vagina, kick him to the curb. Chances are he’s a selfish lover and the problem is him, not your vagina. Love your vagina and labia for the themselves and find a lover who will treat them right.