The Perfect Vagina

I saw a little bit of the show that was on Channel 4, but not very much of it. This review, on the F Word, is really good. And this is the part that particularly rang true with me:

Those small pieces of pink, wrinkly skin lying on the operating table were probably two of the most sensitive areas in Rosie’s body, and she had just had them cut off because she thought they didn’t look nice.

This is key. Our bodies don’t exist for the viewing pleasure of men. This is true of our entire bodies. They are just the way they are: largely functional. This is the way the human body has evolved. But I can kind of understand the way women have been convinced that they need to look ‘good’, by dieting, wearing clothes to ‘flatter’, and so forth. I don’t support it, but I can vaguely understand it. I really don’t like the way it is now expected that women will shave their pubic hair. These are our bodies – what the hell is wrong with them? But, you know, pubic hair grows back. It’s not the end of the world.

But our genitals exist for out pleasure. And women are making permanent changes to parts of their bodies which solely exist for pleasure. How is it that we criticise the practise of female genital mutilation in other cultures, but we are doing exactly that? It is exactly the same – we are mutilating women’s genitals in order to please men, despite the fact that it’s reducing the pleasure that these women will experience – admittedly to a lesser degree.

We talk about how sexually liberated we are, and yet we still do this. Is this not an indication of how, actually, even in this sexually liberated society, sex is something women do for men? Women’s pleasure is secondary to men’s.