Bitter Salty Sour Sweet: Fresh-Cut Flowers...

Bitter Salty Sour Sweet: Fresh-Cut Flowers...

Fresh-Cut Flowers...

Living in L.A., you quickly learn to accept the ridiculousness that bombards you on an almost daily basis. For instance, I recently learned that a friend of a friend (who happens to live in a massive beach house) employs a full-time seaweed-raker. Yes, this man’s sole job is ensure the homeowner never has see his ocean view cluttered by seaweed. My wife recently told me that the next big thing in Malibu is animal fitness trainers. My first thought: Let’s train the dogs to rake beaches. Yes, I’m a genius.

But neither of these is as ridiculous as the increasingly popular practice currently gripping Los Angeles: vaginoplasty. For those of you who can’t put together the context clues, vaginoplasty, and its equally absurd sibling, labiaplasty, are procedures where a woman enlists the services of a plastic surgeon to ‘repair’ her presumably unsightly nether region. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the eighth sign of the apocalypse.

Given the uber-image consciousness of L.A., this shouldn’t come as such a shock. For years we’ve slowly acknowledged as acceptable things like fake boobs, facelifts, calf-implants, botox injections, dermabrasion, butt implants, etc. I just think this most recent obsession might be taking things a bit too far.

Why? Because I think -- and maybe I’m alone -- that the male and female genitalia are inherently uninviting. And that’s okay. There is no Darwinian reason for a penis or a vagina to be ‘attractive.’ Oh sure, objectors will lob concerns of a healthy self esteem or a positive self image, but the fact is that these are just the tried-and-true excuses of someone who’s determined to do what they want to do.

How does someone know if their vagina is unattractive in the first place? I don’t ever recall hearing any of my buddies retelling a sex story that started: “Man, the girl I was with last night was smoking hot, but her vagina was un-a-ttractive.” Never happened. No, when it comes to the vagina, most guys are just happy to be there. Very few of us are there to sketch a drawing of it to hang above the bed.

No, men aren’t to blame. At least not directly. I actually think the real fault at least starts with porn. Stay with me. Flip through any adult magazine or website and you’ll see that women’s pubic hair is simply disappearing. Like a glacier on the south pole, the female pubic hairline is receding at a shockingly alarming rate. In many cases, ‘bald’ is the new ‘landing strip.’ This revealing trend gives all of us a very clinical look at that which was previously unknown territory. (Pull out an issue of Playboy from anytime before 1990 and you’ll know what I mean.)

With this veil of secrecy lifted, it allows women to more easily compare the appearance of their area to that of their friends’. Believe it or not, I think there are some women who, while dressing in the locker room after a workout, sneak a peak at a stranger across the room and think: “I've always liked the look of Sally’s labia. I wonder if it’s all the time she clocks in on the treadmill.”
Let me put your mind at ease, ladies. It doesn’t matter what ‘Sally’ is sporting. Your most private of parts shouldn’t all look alike. Your noses look different, your toes look different, and probably most of all of your other parts look different too. Different is good. And if you can’t find a guy who can appreciate your ‘different-ness,’ move on. Someone will. Just please, for the love of God, leave your… flowers alone.

So get the word out. If you tell a friend, who tells a friend, who tells a friend, maybe we can stop this insane practice. Sure, it might cost plastic surgeons a few bucks in lost business, but they’ll manage. Maybe they’ll be forced to fire their seaweed-raker. Sacrifices must be made.