Plastic surgery has been used for years to "enhance" women's and men's looks. You know the usual surgeries; rhinoplasties, boob jobs, etc.
But, recently, new surgeries have become available to women. On their vaginas.

Now, obviously this is seriously messed. I don't think anyone can argue that. But, the interesting thing is how these surgeries prove our society's fixation with virginity.

One type of surgery available to women is vaginal rejuvenation. This surgery tightens the vagina and returns it to the "pre-pregnancy state".

Just googling "vaginal rejuvenation" will get you 122,000 hits, many of which are websites for medical offices who perform the surgery. Some of these sites offer before and after pictures; showing normal women's vaginas becoming pornified after the surgery. BUST magazine even ran an article about cosmetic vaginal surgeries, and found that many women who opt to have the surgery infact oftentimes bring pictures of porn star's vaginas as models. Not only does this prove the pornification of our society, but it also pushes the idea that women should look like prepubescent girls. Women are told constantly that to be attractive to men they must have perfectly waxed/shaved vaginas; now they can even make them tighter.

But it doesn't end there. Women can have an artificial hymen inserted. Yeah. I think that kind of speaks for itself.



And there's even more! Women can get a "labiaplasty", a surgery that cuts off excess labia. Again, proving that women should look like young girls.

But the interesting thing is how a contradiction is also present. Women get these surgeries to, essentially, seem more virginal. The tighetened, trimmed, hymen-present vagina is that of a young girl and, interestingly, of a porn star. When watching porn it's not unusual to hear a woman exclaim how "tight" it is, nor is it uncommon to find porn showcasing a girl "losing it" for the first time. Porn stars are even getting these surgeries now, one being the very famous Jenna Jameson.

It's interesting how our society can melt such different concepts together into one. As Jessica Valenti would say, it's abstinence only sex ed during the day and Girls Gone Wild at night.

In a perfect world women would say "no thanks" to these surgeries, pick their sagging labia up and throw them over their shoulders (okay, yeah, a little gross) and walk into the sunset (and, of course, at nighfall having awesome sex with whomever they choose). But alas, this is not the case, and all we can hope is that this fad dies out with the hipsters.