Posted on 01/11/2006 6:32:06 AM PST by NYer
WASHINGTON — Forget Botox, liposuction or breast enlargement. The newest trend in plastic surgery for women in the United States is vaginal reconstruction, including hymenoplasty, which offers patients new virginity.
The procedure has become so popular that it has topped the other more conventional surgeries such as face-lifts and breast enlargement.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says that vaginal surgery is one of the fastest growing trends in plastic surgery. In fact, as many as 30,000 women are said to opt for vaginal reconstruction yearly.
The procedure, also known as "revirgination", is being hawked in magazines, the Internet or on radio stations as a way for women to improve their sex life or enjoy a second honeymoon.
Ms Jeanette Yarborough, a medical assistant from San Antonio, Texas, said she decided to undergo hymenoplasty, which involves reattaching the hymen, as a special gift for her husband.
"I wasn't a virgin when we got married and I thought: What better gift to give my husband than revirgination?" the 40-year-old mother of four told AFP. "It was a real sentimental gift, it was something I could recreate for him and he was thrilled. He was like, 'Yeah, it was worth every penny'," she said.
Though long popular among women in the Middle East and Latin America, where being chaste is important on one's wedding night, hymenoplasty is experiencing new-found popularity among women in the US.
One clinic boasts on its Internet site that its practitioners "can repair the hymen as if nothing occurred". Many who undergo the procedure, which costs between US$1,800 ($2,900) and US$5,000, also ask that their vaginas be tightened, doctors say.
Ms Esmeralda Vanegas, owner of the Ridgewood Health and Beauty Center in New York, said business was booming with about five hymenoplasties performed every month.
"Hymenoplasty is for women who want to please their husband or their lover and they know that he wants to experience intercourse with a virgin," she said.
Ms Mary Blum, author of Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, expressed concern at the fact that such surgery was becoming part of mainstream America and was being marketed as a way to gain self-esteem or as part of the country's obsession with self-improvement.
"With hymenoplasty, one of the obvious problems is you're pretending nothing happened before," she told AFP. "It falls under the heading of rejuvenation, pretending your body has no history, so now it has no sexual history."
She added that such procedures were gaining in popularity in part because they were made affordable for the masses and were being touted as a consumer product rather than as invasive — and potentially dangerous — surgery.
"It's in the domain of 'Will I take a trip, buy a new car or get a hymenoplasty?'" she said.
Ms Blum said women like Ms Yarborough could probably make their husbands just as happy with a much cheaper and less medically-intrusive option. "She could have gotten him an inflatable doll," she said. — AGENCIES
Sorry ---even though this shows up in a "legitimate" website it seems bogus. I never heard of it before today, but this article makes it sound like it's something everyone ALREADY knows about, in that same way we have all heard of Botox or Viagra, or whatever.. I am going to Google this and see if it appears anywhere else besides TODAY online.
Yick - I don't want to think about it!
Even worse, I bet delivery would have to be c section....but how about carrying? I bet damage is done to the cervix from the 'reconstruction' (what ever that is!).
Why fix something if its only gonna get broken again
Amen!
Well, I was wrong,, it's all over the internet. BUT---it seems that the inspiration and original use of the procedure was predictably in Middle Eastern societies where pre marital sex was considered a stigma if ever discovered. So it's nice the West is slowly integrating what is essentially Muslim practice, even if for the "wrong" reasons. Sick.
I fill them with Coca Cola: a Cola Piñata.
I would think that any surgery mucking about with the plumbing, as it were, would make it harder to carry a baby to term, as well as to deliver. Obviously, sometimes surgery is necessary to correct a real problem, and you weigh what's fixed against greater difficulties in childbearing (if you're planning on that :-).
Potential infection seems like a real problem with this type of surgery.
I love your pictures, but to have ten kids for tax relief is crazy. I think you spend more money on the kids than you do on taxes, but it takes all kinds. Still, congrats on the pregnancy and hope it goes well.
Never underestimate the power of good cooking to keep a man.
The tax relief is a pun. She didn't have children for tax write offs. She loves her kids. And I'm 100% jealous because I would like 10 also.
I personally had mine for cheap labor. I constantly tell them that If I knew I could have gotten this much work out of them, I would have had them sooner.
Exactly. We have children because we want them, of course. We are not idiots.
So lemme see... hmmm... wait, first I have to get a wife.... so ummmm... yeah this article means zilch to me. Still freaky stuff though.
LOL - that was awful, wasn't it?
Der Prinz is a better cook than I am. He married me for my financial acumen, I think.
The mythological Medusa is less offensive for viewing.
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