The Perfect Vagina

By Dr Michelle Mars

+64 21 979 373
Sex.Scoop.co.nz

TV One’s screening ‘The Perfect Vagina’ documentary exposed New Zealand to the ins and outs of vaginal augmentation.

The vagina has made its way out of the pornographic sphere and into the main stream. The more we get a look at the vagina, be it a quick flash from Britney or Paris, or a well lit and carefully rendered scene from a movie, the more standardised and unrealistic our ideas about whats normal become.

Women often take pictures of pornstar vaginas to their surgeon’s office. The real absurdity here is that porno vaginas like porno breasts tend to have been crafted by the surgeons knife in the first place.

It is hardly surprising that women take their husbands magazines to the surgeon’s office, finding pictures of the non aroused unadulterated vagina is difficult. I know because after hours of fruitless search I had to enlist a graphic designer to illustrate my paper on the designer vagina at the world sexological conference in Sydney in 2007.

So the highlight of the documentary for me was the sculptural wall composed of casts of dozens of different vagina’s. The wall beautifully illustrated what feminist sexologist Betty Dodson has been saying for the past 40 years, ‘viva la vulva’, vagina’s are ‘fascinating, unique and beautiful’.

Vagina’s are all very different from one another.No two are the same. Despite this women still want surgery to make theirs look normal. One thing that the cosmetic surgeons blurb or a magazine article is unlikely to tell you is that surgery is painful and it may result in changed or reduced sensation. In fact the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ regard it as dangerous, expensive and unwarranted.

Why change something that is perfect already.

Listen to my interview on designer vagina’s on Triple J

Dr Michelle Mars is a freelance sexologist at Sassi-Inc blogging on the subject for Scoop at Sex.scoop.co.nz. She can be contacted at michelle@sassi-inc.com