Sunday, August 14, 2005

We're so weird

Rachel has a good post today on labioplasty. Yes, that's right. At the same time we criticize other cultures for mutilating the genitals of their daughters, we're willingly mutilating our own. I don't even know where to start with this. Is what we're doing somehow more "okay" than what they're doing because we're choosing for ourselves to hack up our genitals? Is it okay because it's to make us look more like sluts (Rachel reports that many women bring in pictures of porn stars they want to look like.) instead of keeping us from looking like sluts? And more importantly, if these cosmetic surgeons are willing to perform this surgery, does that mean that there are other cosmetic surgeons who are willing to perform the other kinds of genital mutilation? If not, why not? It's truly a strange to me that it's come to this, and believe me, I'm as shocked as the next person to find myself arguing against situational ethics, but really, if we can't agree that there's something wrong with hacking up a woman's labia so that she can fit some perceived societal norm--whether it happens in the U.S. or in Africa--we're really fucked in the head.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's always been my philosophy that so long as it's consensual, you do what you want. That said, ewww....

W

8/14/2005 03:33:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, well you know all that penis enlargement spam you get? I have no figures for this, but I would assume that way more people buy that shit than you would imagine. Welcome to the United States of Insecurity, where men and women of all backgrounds and classes get the opportunity to do unnatural things to their unfortunately imperfect private parts. God bless it.

8/15/2005 10:02:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Yeah, and I would love to know how something gets codified as "normal." I mean, if there's some place where we're all lining up and checking out each other's nether regions in order to scientifically prove what normal is, I missed it.

Is it really just that we all want to look like porn stars?

8/15/2005 11:32:00 AM  
Blogger Rachel said...

Thanks for the compliment, B! I'm still having trouble articulating how bizarre I find this procedure to be, and how strange it seems that women would choose to have a part hacked up that is rarely seen, comparatively. Of course, that assumes that the point of cosmetic surgery is to please an other, which makes it more complex. How many women would feel unacceptably asymmetrical if it weren't for the marketing of this procedure, though? ARgh.

8/15/2005 12:18:00 PM  

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