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
Reassination?
"'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."
Anyone else totally creeped out by this? *Shiver* Makes husbands look like dirty old men at the least and pedophiles at the worst.
I can see if you have a medical problem, like a prolapsed uterus or something, and a little tightening up of the muscles would be in order, but puh-leeze!
Don't these women do their Kegel exercises? Those are free, you can do them anywhere, no special equipment required, they're fun, they solve a number of problems we aging women have...and they work. *Wink*
Yes. Need to reassess the assthetics
I know, these people either have too much money to play with, or are just completely out of their minds, or maybe both. Either way it is ridiculous...
PS....I take it the FR cat is not with us anymore? He looked cute---lived a short life.
I hope the New York Times hasn't leaked this information to the terrorists!
I'm glad to hear that. I expect that men who are into this would be a small minority.
Isn't that like rolling back your car's odometer to zero before selling it?
I guess no told her that being a virgin has nothing to do with the flesh that she may, or may not have. Ultimately, I think this will just become a way for women to fool second husbands (or new boyfriends).
Only if you have Peyronie's Disease.
This is the dumbest thing I think I have ever heard of.
Thanks! I stay sane by FReeping (immoderately) and drinking wine (moderately) :-).
Yes, the cat passed away last summer ... but she was almost 20, 1986 (more or less) to 2005.
A man walks into an adult novelty store and tells the clerk he wants to buy an inflatable sex doll.
"Male or female?" asks the clerk.
"Female, of course" answers the man.
"What ethnicity do you like?" asked the clerk. "We have the Saucy Swede, the Naughty Nigerian and the Asian Venus for $29.95, and there's the Palestinian Princess for $59.95."
"How come the Palestinian Princess costs so much more?" asked the man.
"She's the only one who blows herself up."
So basically, an abortion with hymenoplasty can make silk out of a sow's ear.
What's wrong with her current hobby?????
Haha...I understand.
Hope you get another cat/dog....they are so good for kids to be around.....
Please post a pic of the new baby when (s)he comes! Got a name yet?
Hollywood: Still trying to convince themselves and the world that...what happened didn't happen.
I just do NOT get the point.
Ewww.
It sounds so...well....fake.
Another deceptive illusion. Like other surgical "enhancements."
Night Court was hilarious. I wonder if it's on DVD.
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