I just can't envision this - in fact, words fail me! Let Laurie Penny of the New Statesman do the talking.
Just when you thought that there was nothing more you could do to make your genitals more acceptable to the opposite sex, along came "vajazzling". The term refers to the burgeoning celebrity craze for shaving, denuding and perfuming one's intimate area before applying gemstones in a variety of approved girly patterns. The end result resembles a raw chicken breast covered in glitter. As the name implies, this one is just for the girls - nobody, so far, has suggested that men's sexual equipment is unacceptable if it doesn't taste like cake and sparkle like a disco ball.
Surely it can't catch on. Surely, no matter how ludicrous, painful and expensive consumer culture's intervention in our sex lives becomes, nobody is disgusted enough by their own normal genitals that they would rather look like they've just been prepped for surgery by Dr Bling. Or are they?
. . .
What's most interesting about vajazzling is that it doesn't even pretend to have anything to do with pleasure. Most of the people I've spoken to who are attracted to women are bewildered by the idea of a vagina that looks like it's off to the Golden Globes without you. Vajazzling has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the cruel logic of identikit, production-line womanhood, in which "fun" means slavish adherence to the joyless motifs of corporate pornography and "confidence" means submission to a species of surveillance whereby your nether regions are forcibly reshaped into a smile.
It's all about making us feel that women's bodies - which are supposed to smell, leak and grow hair - are shameful and need fixing. As long as the beauty and surgery industries remain profitable, female sexual shame will remain big business.
There's more at the link. Go read the whole thing, and ponder . . .
You know, there's a lot of speculation that the Mayans may have predicted the end of the world in 2012. Personally, I reckon if human beings are dumb enough to fall for this 'fashion' - women to inflict it upon themselves, and men to encourage and/or tolerate it - the end of the world can't come soon enough for me!
Peter
P.S. - I think I've finally found something useful for the Taliban to do! Let's send all those selling this ridiculous crap over to Afghanistan. Let them market it to the wives of those Muslim fundamentalist 'warriors'. Those who survive - and they'll have to be very fast runners indeed, not to mention hurdlers and dodgers too! - can then come back and take up a more useful profession.
Peter, I am at a complete loss for words. Except to say her line about male genitals not being required to , "...taste like cake and sparkle like a disco ball." is absolutely priceless.
ReplyDeleteI find this to be a much saner take on the phenomenon, and on the author of that particular article.
ReplyDeleteThe rhinestone cowgirls aren't hurting anybody. Can't say the notion does anything for me, but of all the things to decry as a harbinger of the apocalypse, sparkly fun-bits, done voluntarily no less, doesn't even rank as high as weak tea.
(Also, if I ever release an album, I will title it "Playthings of the all-powerful vajazzling conglomerates"".)
Consenting adults, not insisting I play, no blood or bodies on the ground nor prospect thereof, and everyone actually involved seeming happy?
ReplyDeleteNot my business.
Geez.
ReplyDeleteNow I don't mind if they trim the bush, I don't like getting pubes stuck in my teeth while going down, but that's taking it a bit too far.