This is one of those rant posts, prompted by this:
I wish I had a pretty vagina.
— Mush•Mouth (@GirrlGenius) April 24, 2013
One assumes, therefore, that this woman thinks she has an ugly vagina. What, you might very well ask, constitutes a ‘pretty’ or an ‘ugly’ vagina? Although I often say I don’t have anything against porn, that is a little bit of a lie. I do have something against porn when people use it as a measure by which to judge their own bodies or the way in which they have sex.
Let me be visual about this. This has been judged, by the purveyors of porn, to be a ‘pretty’ vagina:
For reasons that have far more to do with getting a good camera angle than anything else, visual sexual culture has determined that the perfect vagina does not have inner labia that extend beyond the outer ones. They tend to like clitoral hoods for that peak-a-boo moment (I personally don’t have one), and slimish outer labia. They also prefer it if you bleach your asshole so it looks more like a pussy, because anal sex has now become vanilla, and so the orifice, which is usually surrounded by more melanin-rich skin, needs to be bleached to look like it has never passed a stool ever, in its entire life.
This perpetuation of the image of the perfect genital region is so pervasive and so many women have decided to let pornography be the arbiter of how their cunt should look, that thousands of women a year go under the knife to cut away their ‘excess’ labia.
A study done in the UK discovered that the women who underwent labiaplasty did not have bigger or smaller inner labia than women who didn’t think they needed correcting. It turns out that their labia was well within ‘normative’ parameters. They just THOUGHT their vaginas weren’t pretty enough. And, by the way, it is not men, for the most part, encouraging women to do this. I’ve never met a man in my life who judged a woman’s sexiness by the size of her inner labia.
This has to be female self-hatred at its most vile. What on earth is any woman doing judging the look of their vagina by porn standards? Why is porn considered any kind of ‘normative’ measure of anything? It’s like watching a fucking hollywood film and wishing, wistfully, it was your life. It’s FICTION for fuck’s sake! It’s processed and edited and acted by people who get paid. What the fuck is up with this?
Well, it’s brilliant for plastic surgeons. They’re making a killing.
Jesus Christ, ladies: if it gets wet, it’s sensitive and it’s functional, then it’s perfect.
What’s next? Men undergoing penile surgery because their cock has an upward curve, or points a little to the left when erect? What the fuck have we come to?
This is what I think we’ve come to: genital pleasure – what is felt internally – is very hard to market. Yes, there is an attempt to show pleasure with come shots, and more popular these days – the squirting shots – and women’s faces caught in a moment of some purportedly felt ecstasy, but that is not the pleasure itself, only the apparent symptoms of it.
We have begun to equate pleasure with the visible symptoms of it. So much so that it no longer matters that your vagina works great, lubricates like a tap, spasms deliciously during orgasm. No one gives a shit about that. We just want it to look ‘pretty’. Because the appearance of sexuality, of pleasure, is valued higher than the pleasure itself.
I’ve watched people stop in the middle of fucking to adjust the focus of a camera that is recording their sex. Apparently enabling someone else to watch the great sex you’re having is more important than experiencing the sex yourself. We are, slowly but surely and acquiescently commodifying our bodies, our genitals and every aspect of our own pleasure so that others can consume the symptoms of it – even though we aren’t selling anything.
We are so used to experiencing everything through the transactional process of commodification – I see, I want, I buy – that even when there is nothing for sale, we still act as if there is. We have become so brainwashed into believing we must participate in the free market, we put it before our own experience of pleasure.
Don’t you wish your vagina was pretty like mine? Don’t you wish your dick was as big as mine? Don’t you wish you fucked as long as we do? Don’t you wish your girlfriend would take it up the ass as eagerly as mine does?
This is all performative. All about the spectacle.
It says ‘look, envy me!’ and ‘want what I have!’ We’re so busy making other people envious, making ‘ads’ for how fucking great we are, we have stopped valuing our own enjoyment, ourselves, each other or our private pleasures.
We’ve all successfully become marketers of ourselves. Learning how to make each other feel like we are lacking something. And, believing so deeply in the system, we are all the more vulnerable to being marketed to by others: you need a prettier pussy, bigger tits, a harder cock, a more expensive car, a slicker phone.
______
Addendum: Although personally I don’t believe in photographing or immortalizing my own cunt in a visual way (mostly because I believe its chief job is to give me a good orgasm and secondarily to feel good to whoever gets stuck into it), Molly has a really worthy project going on over at her site. If you feel visual affirmation is your thing, then please visit “The Pussy Pride Project“.
It is pretty disgusting, the obsession with aestheticism. It may be ranty, but you make some really important points. Thank you for writing this – I couldn’t agree more.
@remittancegirl In my long and relatively dissolute life, I have never seen an ugly vagina (or penis). Doesn’t get wet? God invented lube.
Your post on this issue is probably the best when it comes out to balancing the blame on porn. So many vagina-positive rants set up porn to be the all-encompassing evil that is driving women to hack off their lady parts. You’re 100% correct when you say that it’s stylized fiction, just as a Hollywood movie is. Thank you for not jumping on the “porn is to blame” bandwagon that so many seem to do.
No, I really don’t blame porn. I blame the way people are using it.
I tweeted this but thought I would put it here also: An Australian program discussed how porn, and specifically censorship of widely available print porn, might be influencing what women imagine to be ‘normal’ vulvas (and causing an increase in labiaplasty).
http://youtu.be/pK9GtT-khb0
Ferns
I believe it does, period. They will not admit it outright, but to meet the censorship laws they’re photoshopped, so that they’re all neat and contained. It’s a damaging misrepresentation, and not only something that should be changed but something they should answer for. The are so many people that have absolutely no idea and are completely naive to the fact that more than just a blemishes are digitally altered. This is what many young people think is normal (afterall a great deal of them get their introduction from magazines) and what others who probably should know better, idealise (although who am I to say, each to their own).
There is enough social conditioning with the other ideals that are thrust on us on a daily basis in regards to our outwards appearance, now we have to worry about what’s in our underwear?
Labiaplasty isn’t perfect either. There are women who will suffer for the rest of their life as a result.
And unfortunately, yes, there are men who cannot get past it.
It’s not magazines anymore. It’s online. And digital ‘enhancement’ is only easier and cheaper than it was. And yes, I know a woman who was numb in both labias for 2 years, and never really got all her sensitivity back.
There are very FEW men who demand ‘perfect vaginas’ and frankly, who the fuck wants anyone like that?
Yes, this. Hardcore online porn has all sorts of pussies, but anything that can be Photoshopped seems to get chopped. Stoya (major porn star) complained on her blog that a flyer of her at a porn show was photoshopped to take away her protruding inner labia, whereas in her films you can see her full delightfulness.
Brilliantly said and I couldn’t agree more. Comparison is an insidious and ugly thing. Why do we humans have such an obsession with uniformity and subscribing to a single (misguided) idea of so called ‘perfection’? I don’t want to live in a world where ‘ideal’ and samey means ‘acceptable’.
People don’t realize that this is another way to obtain others to mutilate themselves without having others do it. It is as much of a form of destruction of a female as the female circumcision practiced places. This practice will have dire consequences in the female that enjoys sex. Why try to change something that nature has taken possibly millions of years to create? The doctors used to recommend the mutilation of all male babies and are just now stopping this. Time to stop this practice in females too, even if by her own choice.
This is just like the big breast craze that has been going on. Women are getting breast enhancement to look like the models, not realizing that most of the models don’t even look like this naturally.
The human body is unique in every person. Beauty is unique and only in the eyes of the beholder for most. I can’t say that I have seen them other than on the internet but the ones I have seen each hold their own beauty and mystery for me.
Sorry for the little rant, but people should be proud they are unique and not like each other.
I guess I’d have to weigh in on the side of choice. Look, people get to mutilate their own bodies any way they like once they’re adults and can be said to be sufficiently ‘informed’. However, I just want to reiterate that this obsession with spectacle – the perfect tits, the perfect vagina, the perfect blow-job is really playing into the hands of a system that benefits from commoditization by making us feel inadequate.
I agree that it is personal choice, except when it comes from others when we are babies.
It is playing into the hands of those that wish us to feel badly about something. It is a way of splitting people into groups and making them feel as if they are inferior to others. Then those people make profit off of the very things they wish to be perfect on us. I know I’m not perfect but I wasn’t made that way either. Still, as you said, “It is a person’s choice,” and I respect that. I just don’t think all these pictures and things should be out that only show one type of anything on a person or of a body. It gives a false impression to the young of what they should look like when that may not be possible for their body type, genetics and other factors.
heartily agreed
Thank you for the mention of the Pussy Pride Project. It was actually started as predominantly a writing project, although images were encouraged if people felt comfortable with sharing them, to encourage bloggers to share their stories, thoughts and experiences about pussy’s. I think the biggest issue (as shown perfectly in the clip that Fern has linked to above) is that there is a large diet of images of the female genitalia that are not representative of the larger spectrum of different shapes and sizes etc and so if by sharing more honest pictures, thoughts experiences we can counter some of that then in my opinion that can only be a good thing.
Yes focusing on whether it works should be the most important thing but along side that also showing a true and honest representation of woman’s bodies is also a positive thing in my opinion
Mollyxxx
I agree. It is a positive thing.
Yup.
I still feel pissed off twenty years later at an English comedian who talked about not liking when a woman had an ‘asymetrical vagina’. I can only assume he meant vulva, more specifically labia the same size as each other, but the moronics of it anooy me til this day. Fuck off, David Badiel, with your pubescent ignorant crap.
Very well stated and thought provoking. I agree that it is really a sad state of affairs. From a male perspective I have actually always found it rather enchanting how every pussy I’ve been privileged to see has been unique. I can honestly say I haven’t seen one that I didn’t regard as beautiful and have never found myself wishing one looked different. Women are subjected to so much in the way of unrealistic models of what their bodies and parts should look like. It is little wonder that so many have negative body images and end up feeling dissatisfied or under a plastic surgeon’s knife. This is yet another example.
“I’ve never met a man in my life who judged a woman’s sexiness by the size of her inner labia.”
You say that, but if most guys read the Wikipedia articles on labia stretching and labia elongation and go look at pictures of sites that celebrate this practice, I think the majority would be somewhat unsettled by it.
But that is modification. Not everyone likes tattoos or piercings, either.
And, yes, I get to say that because… I never HAVE met a man did.
My gf has large labias and I hate it and find it very unattractive. I know it’s not her fault and I don’t mind large labias if they are not destroyed and hanging around like a liver. What did you girls do in the past to destroy the forms of your labias?
Wow. Destroyed? I think that’s probably just the way they were made, buddy. I wonder how she feels about your balls? Testicles are never particularly neat or pretty and, lord knows, they’re of absolutely NO use sexually to women. Perhaps you could strike a bargain? She could get her labia reduced and you could get your wobbly, dangling balls cut off? Deal?
Actually, in all seriousness… Step back and look at the language you have used: ‘destroyed’ and ‘hanging around like liver’ and ‘What did you girls do in the past to destroy…’
At a guess I’d say there is nothing wrong with your GF’s labia, but you have a morbid fear of her earlier sexual experiences and you have settled your own neurosis on the site of her labia. They have become the symbol of your own insecurity. Get some therapy.
i suspect this might also have something to do with age. i think the labia enlarge with age and/or childbirth. and of course we know the (ridiculous) societal consensus on the sexual desirability of older women.
If the comment had been worded differently, I would agree with you. I’m looking at the subjectivity of the language and that last question, apparently addressed to all women: ‘What did you girls do in the past to destroy…’
Bodies change with age, even nuns! And I assume this person is not actually mentally sub-normal. It could be that he has little or no exposure to the reality of what time does to bodies. But my guess is that his comment illuminates his discomfort with his girlfriend’s imagined prior sexual experiences, not just the effects of life in general.
oh, i was commenting on the actual blog post, not on the comment. speculating on why large labia are considered unattractive by the pussy gestapo. the photo you used looked like the vulva of a young girl–probably too young to be legally fuckable, at least in my country, but thats a whole ‘nother ball of wax. (speaking of wax, that gets into the whole no-more-pubic hair thing, another symptom of the eroticizing-of-the-prepubescent trend).
Good point.
I got a labiaplasty and love my vagina now. it’s so beautiful. It’s closed and all you see is a line. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. My labia started getting longer a couple years ago…one day I noticed it and was horrified and I didn’t even watch porn so that’s not why I did it. I cut that shit off! There’s no way I would have let a guy see me like that. I’m embarrassed to say I bleached the whole thing too from front all way to the back! Oh well, that’s just the way it is nowadays.
How do you know ‘how it is’ these days if you haven’t seen what other women’s vaginas look like? And why is your name Mike?
I just ‘d like to say…Congratts wonderfull sweet and clean Vagina & Labia! I love they anyway! That’s iT! ‘)