The fixing of the girl
Jul. 16th, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievens"You've got a double chin. And those arms really need some work. For just $5000 extra I can fix that." That's what the American plastic surgeon answers when the female reporter asks him whether he thinks she's pretty. After having scrutinised her tummy (needs to have fat removed) and her bottom (we can make that into a Brazilian butt using the fat we removed from your tummy) and even her labia (it's surely messy down there) the female reporter wishes to know what the doctor really thinks. He only thinks about opportunities and the prices he charges for fixing the girls.
In a haunting documentary a Dutch reporter* unveils the excesses of the current Western preoccupation with beauty and youth. She starts out with amazement and wonder highlighting the fact women and men choose to shoot themselves up with poison (botox) to prevent wrinkles. The idea behind botox is that you loose control over the muscles in your forehead. When you can't frown, the wrinkles will disappear. It does work, at the cost that half of your face becomes expressionless. "No-one in Hollywood uses their forehead to act these days! Look at them! They all have completely immobile foreheads," says the American guru interviewed during a fair on beauty and to stay that way in the Netherlands. She doesn't have wrinkles. She also looks like she's made out of plastic.
The reporter shaves her legs, and wonders why her mother never had to shave her legs. Will this happen with wrinkles as well? Will they look at you strangely when you've decided to leave the wrinkles where they are, like we look funny upon women that walk around in sleaveless shirts with bushes under their armpits. It's the central question of the documentary: What does insecurity about how we look and how we should look do to us? It brings the reporter to California for her meet-up with doctor I-See-In-Every-Woman-An-Opportunity-For-Cashing-In.
Lots of people think something should be a certain way, because it's the way they see it all the time. I never noticed, because I don't buy Play-Boy – not even for the interviews – but the most beautiful pussy nowadays is a tight thing that looks like it never had a man (or woman for that matter) and where there is in fact nothing to see. Looking at seventies porn with their hairy pussies – inner labia in full view ("Messy!" screeches the Los Angeles surgeon) so you can actualy wonder if that's a trick of the light or something wet between the legs – the contrast couldn't be bigger.
A seventeen year old girl comes into view. She doesn't like to talk about what she's coming in for. Stuttering it comes out. She doesn't think she's like she should be down there. She's got a boyfriend and all and she doesn't really look like they are in the magazines he looks at. Mum approves. She's even indignated that health security doesn't refund something like this. "They should. My daughter isn't the way she ought to be."
"Did you consider something like this when you were young?" the reporter asks.
"No, but we didn't know any better then. We didn't know what it was supposed to be."
It's supposed to look like clinicaly approved female circumcision. We don't approve of cultures that remove the inner labia, outer labia, clitoris, sew her up, whatever because that's what is supposed to be done, because that's what a woman is supposed to look like. No, these women and girls won't loose the enjoyment they have in sex, what happens in (and is partly the goal of) cultural circumcision. But when viewing the pictures the surgeon showed the reporter (oh so proud he was in a job well done!) I saw all these different vaginas, most of them with inner labia showing, and right next to them they became all the same. P. couldn't help himself: "In the end you'll only have twelve models."
I'm terribly sorry I have to keep the name of the reporter from you, but Canvas chose not to update it's archives, hence I couldn't find what I had been watching last week.
In a haunting documentary a Dutch reporter* unveils the excesses of the current Western preoccupation with beauty and youth. She starts out with amazement and wonder highlighting the fact women and men choose to shoot themselves up with poison (botox) to prevent wrinkles. The idea behind botox is that you loose control over the muscles in your forehead. When you can't frown, the wrinkles will disappear. It does work, at the cost that half of your face becomes expressionless. "No-one in Hollywood uses their forehead to act these days! Look at them! They all have completely immobile foreheads," says the American guru interviewed during a fair on beauty and to stay that way in the Netherlands. She doesn't have wrinkles. She also looks like she's made out of plastic.
The reporter shaves her legs, and wonders why her mother never had to shave her legs. Will this happen with wrinkles as well? Will they look at you strangely when you've decided to leave the wrinkles where they are, like we look funny upon women that walk around in sleaveless shirts with bushes under their armpits. It's the central question of the documentary: What does insecurity about how we look and how we should look do to us? It brings the reporter to California for her meet-up with doctor I-See-In-Every-Woman-An-Opportunity-For-Cashing-In.
Lots of people think something should be a certain way, because it's the way they see it all the time. I never noticed, because I don't buy Play-Boy – not even for the interviews – but the most beautiful pussy nowadays is a tight thing that looks like it never had a man (or woman for that matter) and where there is in fact nothing to see. Looking at seventies porn with their hairy pussies – inner labia in full view ("Messy!" screeches the Los Angeles surgeon) so you can actualy wonder if that's a trick of the light or something wet between the legs – the contrast couldn't be bigger.
A seventeen year old girl comes into view. She doesn't like to talk about what she's coming in for. Stuttering it comes out. She doesn't think she's like she should be down there. She's got a boyfriend and all and she doesn't really look like they are in the magazines he looks at. Mum approves. She's even indignated that health security doesn't refund something like this. "They should. My daughter isn't the way she ought to be."
"Did you consider something like this when you were young?" the reporter asks.
"No, but we didn't know any better then. We didn't know what it was supposed to be."
It's supposed to look like clinicaly approved female circumcision. We don't approve of cultures that remove the inner labia, outer labia, clitoris, sew her up, whatever because that's what is supposed to be done, because that's what a woman is supposed to look like. No, these women and girls won't loose the enjoyment they have in sex, what happens in (and is partly the goal of) cultural circumcision. But when viewing the pictures the surgeon showed the reporter (oh so proud he was in a job well done!) I saw all these different vaginas, most of them with inner labia showing, and right next to them they became all the same. P. couldn't help himself: "In the end you'll only have twelve models."
I'm terribly sorry I have to keep the name of the reporter from you, but Canvas chose not to update it's archives, hence I couldn't find what I had been watching last week.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 07:58 pm (UTC)What an awful thought. And what an awful surgeon, too!
Not that pressure doesn't exist here but I am quite glad I don't live in L.A. anymore. Can't imagine it would be worse anywhere else.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:24 pm (UTC)From my brief foray into women in my 20s, I found that young perfect, soft but tight mounds don't exist. There was an LA Times article on it last March but that article is gone now, but there is another blogger on the subject, Roonie at g e e z o h p e t e s !. Among her quotes from that LA Times article:To which Roonie noted emphatically:Go to Roonie at g e e z o h p e t e s ! and read what she quoted last from a Dr Stovall.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-16 09:43 pm (UTC)On the other hand I think it's a relief she is quoting the same somewhat demented guy with a porn complex I saw on television. That means there aren't that many of them out there. But it also means this one guy is overly visible and could pass for a couple of them.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 10:38 am (UTC)Two German links:
Number one (http://blog.zeit.de/sex/?p=32) quotes a press release from the German Society of Plastic Surgeons talking about how great it is that they're doing away with the taboo regarding the correction of labia anomalies.
This obsession with looks is crazy and yes, to a certain extent, we're all part of it. I'm going on holiday tomorrow and there will be beaches and swimming and of course, I don't to be hairy around my bikini bottoms.
Number two (http://blog.zeit.de/sex/?p=32), a magazine article from 2005, (with a picture that is absolutely SFW in most of Europe but probably not in the US) - Matlock is quoted as a pioneer, but there is also mention of a "Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute" in San Antonio.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 12:22 pm (UTC)Oh yes. Two sisters with a I presume a fidelity card chez dr. Matlock said in the documentary you really had to look like the girls in the magazines their husbands looked at, because otherwise they wouldn't look at them anymore. One wonders how what their husbands looked like.
P.S.: you quote the same thing twice, namely the press release...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 12:25 pm (UTC)Ooops, the second link can be found here (http://www.stern.de/wissenschaft/medizin/:Intimchirurgie-Delikate-Operation/551712.html).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 12:37 pm (UTC)It leaves me wondering: Is there someone who can point me to one man who decided not to have sex with a woman after having seen her pussy?