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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Vaginal plastic surgery knows no age limit.

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.