A good-looking vagina

Our Vaginas, Ourselves -- by DAPHNE MERKIN

These are cruel times for vaginas. Lately, as if I don't have enough to worry about, with the deadline on various unkept 2005 resolutions fast upon me, I have begun obsessing about various aspects of my genital appearance. Take my labia minora, for instance. Tucked away as those intimate folds of flesh are - hidden in the underbrush, you might say - I have never given them much thought, except as they relate to experiences of sensual pleasure. Ditto my labia majora, which dutifully served their purpose in guarding the entryway to what the Victorians would have quaintly referred to as my maidenhead. As for the much vaunted hymen (named for the Greek god of marriage), mine remained intact longer than most thanks to my slow-blooming erotic life, until such time as a boyfriend's patient late-night exertions finally parted me from it at the age of 25. Needless to say, its absence - much less the idea that I might be harboring a deep sense of nostalgia for this tiny piece of overinvested membrane, might indeed be secretly yearning to reclaim it - hasn't so much as crossed my mind in the intervening years.

Ah, but how blithely backward-looking - and how wrong, as it turns out - I was. I have seen the future, and it is denuded. Pubic hair is out; the ubiquity of so-called Brazilian waxes, once the domain of porn stars and movie actresses, has ensured that this mossy covering is deemed no more than an aesthetic hindrance to the unfettered male gaze. Which leaves the one part of the female body formerly not available to harsh scrutiny now glaringly on display, held up to culturally defined aesthetic standards undreamed of by the smut-obsessed author of "My Secret Life," borrowed as they are from centerfolds and online pornography. Sagging groin skin and limp labia are going the way of crooked noses and post-nursing breasts, courtesy of new cosmetic surgeries focused on this once-neglected hinterland of female beauty. As recently noted in an article in The Wall Street Journal, vaginal plastic surgery is one of the field's fastest growing sectors, and its high priest, one Dr. David Matlock of - where else? - Los Angeles, claims that he has a five-month waiting list for women eager to get that Playboy look.

But wait, there's more. The future as I see it is also - how to put this? - reforested. Hymen-reattachment surgery, once a desperate stratagem undertaken by young women from Muslim, Asian and Latin American cultures that demonized the loss of virginity before marriage, is now being hawked as a way to enjoy a second honeymoon. If it's unclear whom this procedure is meant for - aging women hoping to catch a flagging penis with the semblance of undeflowered innocence? - it's even more ontologically ungraspable how stitching a hymen back together vitiates the psychological experience of having already lost your virginity. But it is being advertised heavily in print as well as online, and one enterprising doctor who trained with Matlock says he performs about a dozen such operations a month and fields voluminous amounts of e-mail inquiries.

Truth be told, I always considered myself lucky to have escaped coming of age at the height of the consciousness-raising era, when anatomical self-examination took on the aspect of a collective ritual. Those were the days when women felt obliged to convene in sisterly circles with mirrors and flashlights the better to study their bodies, themselves. Never having been one to enjoy group activities of any sort, the thought of becoming more closely acquainted with my private parts in a public setting seems potentially traumatizing rather than liberating or, God knows, celebratory.

Indeed, it has always seemed to me that one of the singular advantages of being a woman lies precisely in the "dark continent" quality of our genital cartography. If we women don't get to stalk around flaunting our virile equipment the way men do, we also don't have to deal with locker-room slights or bedroom disparagements. We carry our signs of arousal - our receptivity - on the inside, as opposed to the straightforward jack-in-the-box readability of men. And although it's true that the very structural inaccessibility of the vagina may lead to difficulties with body image (how do you go about envisioning something you can't see?), it also serves as a kind of protection against the relentless judgment - the fierce critique - of every pixel of our appearance that women, far more than men, are inclined to. Men may have begun to worry a bit more about their drooping jowls than they used to and may be the target of those abject penile-enhancement ads that pop up all over the Internet, but 90 percent of all cosmetic procedures are performed on women. So having one less visual surface to commodify - to narrow our eyes at accusingly, checking out for acceptability or desirability in terms of size, shape and firmness - leads me to offer up silent thanks for small favors of chromosomal destiny.

But I am out of step; I grow old and wear the bottoms of my blue jeans rolled. Perhaps it's an inescapable consequence of living in a free-market society that choice springs eternal, that nothing is ever done with, that decisions once made can be unmade, that you can return your character to the vendor and ask for improvements. We live in a time of thong underwear, of designer sorrows and of artificially enhanced gratifications. So step right up, ladies. Your labia may not be up to snuff - they may extrude too much or lack youthful plumpness - but a quick nip/tuck or strategic injection of fat from Dr. 90210 and his colleagues will take care of that. And thanks to the wonders of hymenoplasty, you can get to be a virgin - or at least like a virgin - all over again. From where I sit, life looks to be one long Madonna-esque self-invention tour, and there's nothing to be done but to grin, tighten your Kegel muscles and bear it.

(Daphne Merkin is a contributing writer for the NY Times magazine.)