Inside and Out

There are a couple of movies out there that, no matter how many times I've seen them, I will always stick with when I'm channel surfing. I am this way about all the Ocean's movies, Notting Hill (a bit embarrassing to admit, but true), Good Will Hunting, and The Devil Wears Prada. Are they the greatest films ever made? Not really, but they make me smile, and between Bravo and TBS, I'm pretty sure to land on one of them at least once per week. 

Another movie I feel this way about is Bridget Jones's Diary. I don't love la Zellweger, nor am I a huge Hugh Grant fan - despite the previous Notting Hill reference. I stick with this one for Colin Firth. More specifically, for the moment when he, as Mark Darcy, speaks that simple little line all women dream of hearing: "I like you. Very much. Just the way you are." Sigh.

I couldn't help but think of Mr. Darcy and his heart-go-pitter-pat line as I stumbled upon a string of other programming this week. 

First stop: the BBC's documentary Perfect Private Parts. This fascinating, disturbing, and sad film is about labiaplasty  - plastic surgery in which women have their labia reduced, reshaped, and generally revamped to make their vaginas, um, prettier. 

The film-maker interviewed several women who had either undergone the operation or were considering it. Their reasons varied, but most were centered on having had their privates criticized (and in some cases ridiculed) by men. I'm not a big believer in plastic surgery to begin with, but this struck me as just so bizarre. To go through the risks and pain of surgery to alter a part of you that is so inherently private. It's not like your nose - seen by everyone all day long - this is your vagina, for god's sake. 

And who really knows what one's supposed to look like, anyway? 

Well, apparently some men think they do...

I could not believe that the men they interviewed had such specific opinions as to what an acceptably-attractive vagina looks like. I blame porn. It's all waxed and out there in the movies, so now the general population thinks they gotta look like that too. Isn't it fabulous how porn gets to influence how college-educated, gainfully-employed, and generally-not-crazy women feel about their bodies? Ah, yes, just as it should be. Right-o.

Among the women who chose not to go under the knife, several were shown at gatherings with other women, where they sat around spread-eagled and discussed their relationships with their vaginas. Really? This is necessary for some people? It was all very solemn and empowering as they sat around in little robes on piles of silk pillows in a dimly-lit room. Each woman took her turn to talk about what she liked and disliked (mostly disliked) about her vagina, and the other women would say reassuring things like, "I don't think it looks like a cauliflower at all." 

When the woman who organizes these things started speaking with great earnestness about how the vagina remembers things, my first impulse was to giggle (as did the film-maker). Then I thought how that might come in handy, picturing myself scrambling around the house getting ready for work in the morning and glancing down to say, "YOU didn't happen to notice where I set my keys, did ya?"

I had barely recovered from Perfect Private Parts when I got a gander at an infomercial for Waterworks Natural Vaginal Therapy. It's a metal (reusable!) vaginal cleansing system invented by a gynecologist named Dr. Dave David. (I'm not making a word of this up, by the way.) Think of it as a tiny, interior shower. Or, better yet, don't think of it at all. 

The premise of this ad is that vaginas are super stinky, and plain old bathing just isn't enough to cut through these noxious fumes of womanliness. We must rinse ourselves out with this little gizmo, or else men will run from us in utter disgust. Seriously, they interviewed a slew of women who deeply believe in the power of Waterworks Natural Vaginal Therapy and would attest to the fact that it has changed their lives for the better. 

Now, I always figured that things of a life-changing magnitude were a bit bigger in scale: becoming a parent, losing someone you love, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, etc. Turns out it's actually as simple as squirting tap water into your vagina. And paying $29.95 + shipping and handling, of course. Who knew?

The third and final chapter in my inadvertent, gynocentric trilogy of sorts is a bit more reassuring. It comes in the form of the Discovery Channel's The Science of Sex Appeal. The section I saw focused on the power of scent. It was revealed that, when a woman nears ovulation, she takes on an odor that cognitively impairs men. Literally. When a woman produces this smell, men are drawn to her. He is the moth, and her scent is the flame. 

Take that, Waterworks Natural Vaginal Therapy!

Men's brains are, it turns out, programmed to like us, as Mr. Darcy would say, just the way we are.