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
From what I've heard from ladies about a woman's 'first time', I don't think I know any that want to go through that again. Now that tightening thing.....................Hmmmm!
Naw, they are too but ugly to have done it in the first place...
...never said how they did it
Doogle
Is this your first day on the Internet?
LOL!
I hate to say this but I bet they already do sphincter tightening.
Sounds like it's more common elsewhere in the world.
I suspect it's not only in islamic cultures although that is where the punishment might include death. Many clinics in Greece profit by doing this procedure to well funded females from muslim countries would fly in for the "repair".
It's been very popular among European women too and has been for ages. The taboos against premarital sex will never go away...and that's probably a good thing.
40 year old virgin bump
I'd read about this operation years ago, but then it was done as a very discreet thing. Now it seems to be wide open. Gaaaaaah!
Perhaps I read "idiot" into the suggestion that we had our children for the tax benefit, because I certainly think that would be stupid, if not abusive. Don't know where you came up with that ... perhaps you have me confused with my soul-sister, TaxRelief, and her TaxDeductions? (Those handles are a joke, by the way ...)
My username comes from my former occupation.
Oh, never mind ... I should have read further, too. One of those days, I guess :-).
Now THIS is a worthy use for plastic surgery :)
Tightening it up after heavy use kinda reminds me of rebuilding engines. A serious tune up and maybe it's good to go.
Maybe I'm missing something here ... men are getting smaller?
Not creepy. Perverted. Sick and Perverted--just as much as any other cosmetic procedure. Not counting, of course, those done as a result of true tragedy (burn victims, work accidents, loss of limbs or other body parts, disfigurements from horrid disasters such as bad car accidents, etc.)
This coming from another Man.
I appreciate your comment -- I don't like to think that even remotely-normal men be excited by this.
I agree completely. Excellent Point!
Though, IMO, expect it to be common with kids my age, especially the ones from well-to-do, shop-at-Abercrombie-with-Daddy's-credit-card types.
I'm only a month shy of 20, never had a girlfriend, consider myself to be somewhat remotely-normal (being a hardcore political geek), and still can't see the sane point in all of this.
Nor do I have the hunch that I ever will, aside from chalking it up to results of the mentally-disordered Liberal agendas imposed upon us.
Alas, it just goes to show exactly how much we value honesty and fidelity these days--it's virtually worthless in our culture, and in some instances, met with at least chagrin, if not outright disdain.
It was Einstein who said, "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters." In light of this, I don't think he could be any more Right...
How about a trip to the Virgin Islands? :D~
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