The other day, my friend Carl sheepishly asked me a funny question while we were at the gym. I could tell he wanted a serious answer.
“What would you say if your wife told you she wanted a boob job?”
“Rachel wants to get a boob job?!” I almost yelled it. “What do you think I think? Duh!”
I was joking, but if I were to play the classic, dumb, buzz-cut bruiser at the gym, I’d say, “That’s like asking the pope how he feels about communion!” My actual answer was that Rachel looks great just as she is, but it’s certainly OK if she wants to do it.
For a guy who is not all that boob-obsessed, I’ve written quite a lot about boob jobs here. I’ll acknowledge that men sure do love breasts, big, small, perky, bodacious, ad infinitum. Women, of course, know this and act accordingly—even while they feign outrage and point their fingers and call us misogynists or chauvinists. To my testosterone-addled mind, it’s similar to the argument about makeup and sexy clothes: If you don’t wish to be “objectified,” why spend so much time making your body look its very best? This is a rhetorical question, ladies, so no need for angry letters. My point is just this: Be honest about enjoying your body. And if it’s what you really want, go ahead and modify it. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re being shallow or you’ve been brainwashed by a paternalistic, sexist society. It’s your body, you only get one. Life is an adventure, right?
Wrong. See, there’s a new plastic-surgery craze among a certain kind of woman: vaginoplasty. It’s designed to “perfect” your nether regions, from tightening perineal musles to reducing labia. Listen, girls: Your boys do not want you to do this.
I think Americans are so used to the idea of boob jobs that we don’t even think twice about them anymore, not in any serious ethical way. But when it comes to other, more radical bod-mod procedures, things get pretty weird pretty fast. I’ve always felt iffy about elective facial cosmetic surgery, especially if it’s a nose or chin job that suddenly turns you into another person. I guess I don’t have any serious ethical point to make, but on some weird level, your face is you. It’s the window of your soul, whereas your breasts are … well, the knockers on the door. (Oof. OK, you can send angry letters now. I deserve it.) And when it comes to vaginoplasty, I think this procedure, which must be almost wholly elective, points to some deep, serious (and somewhat bizarre) issues that women have about their genitals.
I’m not sure where these come from—in my view, this anxiety seems a lot more visceral and personal than any kind of cultural conditioning could ever account for. Women seem innately to feel that there is something essentially unfeminine about their most feminine parts, something unpleasant and messy and ugly.
This is no great insight, of course—other than the part about maybe not blaming men for this uneasiness. (And, in the interest of equality, I would like to add that lots of men I know, especially thirty- and forty-something liberals, have had the same feeling about their own parts, and it’s why we can be surprisingly meek, almost apologetic, under the covers.) Of all of my gen-x and boomer-aged friends, this is a universal truth: We enjoy giving oral sex to our women more than our women enjoy giving oral sex to us. This is probably just more evidence of the fallout from growing up with feminism (more men learning to enjoy giving and more women not feeling obligated to give), but that’s not my point.
My point is: Shaving! Experts say this rise in interest in vaginoplasty, particularly among more aesthetically motivated folks who are way too worried about how things look down there, reflects a broader new level of anxiety with our bodies. Women are growing comfortable enough to leave the lights on, pull out hand mirrors, and allow their husbands unlimited walk-abouts down under. They are watching and enjoying pornography, and they are emulating other women who seem to be thrilled with their Brazilian wax jobs and so on. But it seems that one person’s comfort is another’s anxiety. If you like what you’ve got, you should show it off. And if you don’t—why?
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