fashion

"I'm so over the vagina."

Illuminating contouring makeup for your vulva that promises to “highlight”, “soften”, “illuminate” and add some “prettiness”. Vajazzling kits that “glam up” the pubic area with glitter and crystals. Vagina-lifts guaranteeing “renewed tightness”. Labia tucks for “neatness”. Whitening and brightening the vulva because who doesn’t want a vagina that resembles Tom Cruise’s teeth?

Seriously … What is going ON?

Why is the vagina being so needy? So particular? So… so … so exhausting. It’s a vagina, not a NASA treadmill.

Perhaps the most perplexing question is why are we turning the vagina into the face?

The global beauty industry is worth around $260 billion a year and this canny little juggernaut is built on creating demand and then filling it.

First create a problem. Usually that problem has something to do with not being 16 any more. But NEVER FEAR we have the solution in this sea urchin caviar tub of gold speckled moisturiser or this flaming red 24-hour lipstick or wizard burp eye cream.

We can make you look desirable and youthful and maybe even like Jennifer Aniston because we’ve worked out she’s the most accessible of celebrities and women think they have a chance of looking a little bit like her with the right eye liner.

Basically it’s marketing 101: create insecurities and then provide a solution – for a fee of course.

'Highlighting, illuminating, softening, contouring, vajazzling, labia tucks for "neatness"... Why is the vagina being so needy?' (Image: Getty)
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That's where vaginas come in. A whole new world of insecurities to mine. You must have vagina issues.

You just haven't thought about how bad your vagina (or vulva for the vulva police) is yet. Close your eyes and start thinking about your vagina. Even if you can't see it, even if you haven't got a clue what it looks like, you just know it.

It's all wrong... it's all wrong... it's all wrong.

Two of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures in New York are vaginal-lifts and re-shaping. You know tightening and brightening, tucking in bits that look messy, basically turning your vagina into Barbies because who wouldn't want a plastic, hard mound that resembles a computer mouse down there?

An advertising catch-cry for making everything loose tight again is "fix the lips below your hips".

(I know what I want to do with the person who came up with that slogan. I want to hit them over the head with something "loose" and that perhaps even looks "out of proportion".)

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It's exhausting that women now have another body part to obsess and feel deflated over. Another body part that needs fixing, or sprucing up, or just fiddling with because it just happens to be on a woman's body. I'm talking cosmetic fixing here, not intervention for medical reasons.

LISTEN: Guys, we NEED to talk about labias (post continues after audio...)

Let's make the vagina Instagram worthy even though we can never put it on Instagram.

Tighten it. Decorate it. Laser it. Clean it up. Contour it. (Contouring? Contouring for your vulva so all the right parts are highlighted and made pretty? Someone sat down and thought really hard and instead of working out what to do with all the plastic in the world, they went let's make a contouring cream for a woman's vulva.)

Here I am thinking what a bloody kick-arse, fabulous, amazing, fascinating, hard working body part the vagina/vulva is, without any zjoojing and, you know, AS IS.

Do what you want with your vagina (vulva) if it makes you feel good but please know it is perfect just the way it is.

I mean, for one, BABIES COME OUT OF IT. Little tiny human beings with tiny feet and hands and usually weird shaped heads.

And somehow this miraculous body part can be the gateway to new life over and over again.

I cannot for the life of me think of anything that we should be more proud of and need to change less.

#leavethevaginaalone

#allmylipsaregreatbits