Radical Doula

Check out this post at Feministing about the scary prospect of “vaginal rejuvenation” surgeries. Eww. Apparently the Washington Post considers it “Comestic Surgery’s New Frontier.” If this isn’t the final frontier…I don’t want to know what is.

I think the thing that scares me the most about this is how it points to the way our society is really becoming a plastic surgery society–we seem to be willing to go under the knife (even our genitals) at the drop of a hat. Not only are these procedures costly and dangerous…but they are definitely not solving the real problems at hand, which are our over-zealous standards of beauty and our intense focus on physicality.

And to make it even more interesting, there seems to be a relationship between rates of cosmetic surgery and cesarean section rates–best example: Brazil. There, the elective c-section rate is up to 80% (SCARY), even though the WHO recommends a c-section rate of around 10%. Many people speculate that rate has been contributed to by the intense culture of plastic surgery. Maybe that’s the direction in which we’re going…although I personally hope not.