Guest post by Marley P with Melanie K.

Jennifer Love Hewitt  recently appeared on “Lopez Tonight” promoting her new dating book and simultaneously bragging about how her vagina looks like a “pink disco ball”.  Vajazzling has become not only one of the most searched terms on google but the newest below the belt “beautification” procedure in which the vagina is waxed bare and then embellished with Swarovski crystals. According to Love, she vajazzled her “precious lady” for the first time after a painful breakup and is now a proud advocate of a shiny, blinged-out crotch.

I initially heard about vajazzling from a girlfriend of mine who works at a medical spa who recently tried out the product as a way to see what all the buzz is about.  The jewels supposedly stay in tact for two weeks and are a simple way to bling out and embellish your otherwise boring lower region– just like a celebrity.  She is going strong on day five and reports feeling “accessorized”.

Personally, I don’t understand the interest in bedazzling your “lady parts”.  In fact, the cons seem to outweigh the pros in my book. I guess I could understand the appeal if the jewels somehow improved the quality of the sexual experience but the possibility of condoms tearing, the possibility of irritation or a misplaced crystal seem like an uncomfortable (not to mention unnecessary) burden to have to think about when engaging in sex.  Vajazzling poses as a seemingly benign procedure, that works to promote sexual empowerment but I can’t help but think that it is really promoting quite the opposite.  It is just the icing on the cake of “pink think” consumerism, isn’t it?   The beauty industry runs on selling women an innate insecurity and notion that self worth is implicitly tied to what we look like and simultaneously co-opts feminist ideals of empowerment as a way to sell a product.  We are not being sold empowerment; in fact, we are being dooped into believing that empowerment and liberated sexuality can be bought at a medical spa (that is, if you can afford it).

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I don’t know where to start.

Robert Pattinson, of Twilight fame, is featured in the March issue of Details Magazine fully clothed while surrounded by a slew of naked or near-naked women.

Typical (see my post from April 2009).

That, in itself, is worthy of a blog post but what riled me up even more was the asinine quote from the interview.

I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina. But I can’t say I had no idea, because it was a 12-hour shoot, so you kind of get the picture that these women are going to stay naked after, like, five or six hours. But I wasn’t exactly prepared. I had no idea what to say to these girls. Thank God I was hungover.

I hate vaginas! Really? He says this while lounging among tons of vagina. In the same week that John Mayer’s interview with Playboy revealed that his

dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock.

What is more pathetic and disheartening is the fact that these misogynistic losers will still continue to date scores of women that aren’t completely outraged by these statements and what it says about these guys.

Yes, it is true! There is a spa for your vag!  As reported in the New York Times, this spa is dedicated to the woman that seeks to “get in shape from the inside out.” “Pelvic fitness” was an idea inspired by teeth whitening. Uh, yeah.

First came the “medical spa,” or medi spa, offering dermatology services in a retail setting. The medi spa begat the dental spa, bringing tooth bleaching to storefronts nationwide. The dental spa begat the podiatry spa.

And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area. Phit — short for pelvic health integrated techniques — is to open this month on East 58th Street.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.

This makes vaginal plastic surgery seem tame. There’s just nothing off limits from the hands of the beauty industry.  They’ll make you feel insecure about anything and everything to make money.

With the ubiquity of pornography, the pelvis had already become a marketable area for modification, ranging from the Brazilian bikini wax to genital surgery referred to as vaginal “rejuvenation.” Doctors have even coined a term for such genital “beautification”: cosmetogynecology or cosmogynecology.

The advent of the pelvic spa, however, takes body fixation to a new level, furthering the idea that there is no female body part that cannot be tightened, plumped, trimmed or pruned.

“Whether the marketing is pushing the women or women are pushing the marketing, I don’t think anybody knows,” Dr. Berenson said.

I say, “Leave my pussy alone!” They are not suppossed to look the same, smell the same or feel the same, damn it. With the vag spa, or PHIT (Pelvic Health Integrated Services), the aim is clearly NOT about pelvic “health” when you consider their web address: perfectphit.com. Perfect fit, huh? It’s about making all our vags the same and, I ask, who determines this sameness?

There are no medical standards for determining what constitutes normal “fitness” or how to evaluate it, said Dr. Abbey B. Berenson, a gynecologist who directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

“If this is being recommended to women who have no symptoms, then there are no medical organizations or literature that support that that is necessary,” Dr. Berenson said.

It’s time to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and resisting imposed beauty standards that make our heads spin, our self-esteem shrink and our pussys look like they were manufactured on an assembly line.

Sarah Palin never ceases to be brilliant and put politics in perspective (cough).

Sarah Palin made an appearance in Carson, California yesterday.  In 24 minutes, Palin was able to “take the gloves off,” slam Obama, remind Californians that California is “Reagan country,” lead the audience in her favorite chant (Drill, baby, drill), and threaten female voters with hell if they don’t vote for her.  Why wouldn’t you?  She’s folksy, cute (she likes to wink) but tough (she likes to shoot wolves from helicopters but claims Barack is too “radical to lead” this country) and has the most important element of all: a vagina.

“There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t support other women,” the Alaska Governor said, claiming she was quoting former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Here we go again.  Fear tactics.  Vote for me, women with vaginas.  I have one, too!  If you don’t, you’ll burn for eternity.

Too bad she misquoted Albright. Albright refuted Palin’s misquoted statement and confirmed what we have know for quite some time: McCain/Palin distort the truth and will do anything to distract the public from the issues.

Albright: This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women.

If she had gotten it right and said, “There’s a place in Hell reserved for women that don’t help other women,” she would have revealed her final destination at the end of days and not those of that oppose Palin’s message and are planning on voting for Obama/Biden.