Full Frontal Feminism_ A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters - Jessica Valenti [67]
Vaginal rejuvenation surgery can mean a labia trim, liposuction on your outer lips, vaginal tightening, or even hymen “replacement.” How many times did you just say ouch in your head? All so we can have “normal,” “attractive” genitalia. You know, like in porn, where everyone has teeny-tiny vaginas with no hair.
What really pisses me off about this surgery is that it’s being promoted using feminist language. Seriously. A press release for the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute reads, “Women now have equal sexuality rights!” It continues, “Today women are exercising their rights to sexual equality due to innovative vaginal surgeries.”2 Equality? Rights?
See, gals, it’s empowering to cut pieces of your labia off! All the self-respecting girls are doing it.
But please, ladies, seriously. I know the love-your-vagina thing is a bit of a feminist cliché. So you know what? I don’t care if you love it. But just do me a favor and don’t cut it up. What did she ever do to you?
Buying Beauty
Of course, all the plastic surgery nonsense isn’t just about enforcing beauty standards—it’s about making money. As is most everything related to making you feel shitty about your appearance. Every makeup commercial or skin cream ad (or diet pill ad, and so on) has a specific purpose: to make you spend your money.
Consumerism is at the heart of beauty standards. After all, who’s telling you what’s (and who’s) hot? Fashion mags, for example, survive by selling ads, ads that tell you your skin will be disgusting if you don’t buy the latest microderm scrubbing bubbling foamy face wash. They all depend on your feeling ugly.
Because guess what? If you think your looks are just fine and dandy as they are, you’re not going to buy face creams and makeup and diet pills. You’re just going to hang out, feeling great and doing productive things. But if you feel ugly and fat, you’re going to spend as much money as possible to make sure you’re doing all you can to be pretty.
I mean, if you really start to think about the money you spend on the way you look, it’s scary. The makeup, clothes, products (hair, body, et cetera), waxing, tanning, manicures, facials, plastic surgery—it’s never-ending.
Or maybe you don’t fall for any of that bullshit. Good for you. Me, I’ll always have an affinity for facials and vintage purses. I can admit my weaknesses. But I’m secure in knowing where the desire for these things comes from—and that I don’t need them to feel good about myself.
It’s important to remember why some folks need us to feel ugly. It serves a specific purpose: to make us spend, to distract us, and ultimately to make us disappear.
Food? Who Needs Food?
There’s something about eating disorders that is simultaneously disgusting and fascinating to the American public. We tsk-tsk about how young women are starving themselves or bingeing and purging, but at the end of the day, we’re still buying magazines with skeletal, sick-looking actresses on the covers (and you know exactly the ladies I’m talking about).
We love to hate them. We love to pity them. But when was the last time you saw an article headline that read, “Dear Lord, Someone Get This Girl a Doctor, Seriously!”? I find it more than a little disturbing that we’re watching these actresses and models literally die—we really are—and we’re not doing anything about it.
Is it because we secretly hate them? Because we don’t care? I don’t know. But it’s fucked.
You know what else is screwed up? Eating disorders have the highest death rate of any mental illness. We really are killing ourselves. Of course, eating disorders aren’t all a consequence of socially enforced beauty standards. Some say it’s genetic, some say it’s dependent on personality type, some say it’s the family you’re raised in. I’m sure it’s all of these things.
I’m also a firm believer (and I’m not a doctor, so this is just my humble opinion)