Joanna Schroeder wonders if men are as much pawns in the beauty industry’s manipulation as women are.
Last night Jezebel had this story on their front page:
Your Vagina Isn’t Just Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy—It’s Also Too Brown
I laughed so hard my husband actually asked if I was okay. I answered, “I’m fine. It’s just reading about vagina bleaching”. He rolled his eyes. Just another day at the home-office with his wife…
But men… We need to talk. I think you guys are getting a bad rap here. The world is telling women that the only way men are truly going to love them is if their vulva (I’m sorry, Jezebel, but the vagina is just the actual canal, the vulva is the whole shebang) looks like a perfect little peach—sans fuzz.
Over on She Said He Said (the sex and dating advice blog I write with my writing partner, Eli) we’ve dealt with this problem before. A guy wrote in telling us that his girlfriend wanted to bleach her anus. The man was perplexed:
…My girlfriend is a high school teacher, and as far as I know, she doesn’t have a secret job as a porn-star or stripper. I don’t think she has an inordinate amount of people staring at her butt or butthole. Personally, I don’t know much about anal bleaching, and the little I do know just confuses me. Why would people go through the trouble to bleach an area that so few others see?
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Eli and I were perplexed too. As much as I want women to have complete freedom to do what they want to feel sexy, to feel pretty, to feel… I don’t know… bleached, I think we need to examine this next (seemingly excruciatingly painful) step toward reaching some weird standard of beauty and figure out exactly why we’re doing it… Because I truly believe that women suffer in the thought that their bodies are naturally just repulsive to men.
Of course, Jezebel agrees with me that all this bleaching is just a bit over-the-top:
Basically the idea is to get as far away as possible from any color that vaginas actually come in. Because that’s what’s at the heart of this type of thinking—the perfect vagina would be something that’s not a vagina at all.
Jezebel writer, Lindy West doesn’t put the blame squarely on men, but on society as a whole. And since this product Lindy West is talking about is actually from India (see the amazing video West and Jezebel found, below), marketed at Indian women, it becomes an issue of race and ethnicity as well. Though please note that while the guy in the ad is as fair-skinned as the lady, this product isn’t also being marketed to lighten his nut sack, though it would probably work just as well for that.
So that leads me to the bum rap (I just made a pun about butts) that I think you men are getting from all this bleaching-vaginoplasty-waxing thing. While some guys might like to see more skin and less hair, and while some ladies may need vaginoplasty for comfort, or prefer hairlessness for pleasure, I bet a lot of this comes down to miscommunication.
We think you don’t like our general vagine-icinity being flesh-colored, or vulva-shaped. We think you don’t want our butts to look like lady-butts, we think you want them to look like mannequin-butts. What are we basing this upon?
I know there are probably men who want their girlfriends to be bleached, maybe they think it’s cleaner? But a part of me thinks this is a big, ridiculous plot by the beauty industry to make money off women’s insecurities and the stereotype that men are shallow and obsessed with porn.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like we all—men and women—are pawns in this nasty little game being played by the beauty industry.
What do you think? Are men getting a bad rap when it comes to the beauty ideals set for women?
Photo of closeup on bottle of laundry bleach courtesy of Shutterstock.
So interesting and informative subject. I read more this post. Want more such as post.
Products like this are full on bat shit crazy. As a guy who enjoys the company of women, and having sex with women, I can say categorically that I’ve never been with a woman, undressing, about to consummate a lovely evening when I suddenly have the urge to blurt out, ” shave, and bleach your butt and vaj or this isn’t going to happen.”. Ladies, if you EVER have a man say anything remotely in this vein to you run, don’t walk away as fast as possible. Because he is a lunatic, and you clearly deserve much, MUCH better.
“But a part of me thinks this is a big, ridiculous plot by the beauty industry to make money off women’s insecurities and the stereotype that men are shallow and obsessed with porn.” The beauty industry will talk any complex into your head if that make you buy their product. The worst culprit however are those women’s magazines. If a woman really wants to get rid of insecurities, the best thing is to ban these magazines. It’ll take a week or two and you’ll feel much better about yourself. In all my life I’ve never come across a man who… Read more »
Speaking of women going a bit far for the beauty thing.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/47061726/ns/today-today_health/
Feeding tube diet to upwards of 20lbs in the 2 weeks before wedding day?
No, I don’t want her vulva bleached, nor her anus, Nor do I want her shaved/waxed/no-noed or whatever, bald as a 3 year old. I’ll shave my face, she can shave her legs and pits and we’ll can it enough.
Very few heterosexual men have ever heard of this absurd practice, let alone pressured women to do it. Thus, a reasonable mind with no anti-male agenda would assign 0% responsibility on men for this. This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard of.
Yeah.
In all my years I’ve never crossed paths with a guy that wanted women to do this (in fact I wager that most of them have never heard of it). But as usual when women are met with an unfair expectation the first thought is to try to pin it on society and the second is to try to pin it on men.
True, and I’m not excusing it. But consider the fact that this is a beauty trend that is inherently tied to sex and sexual attraction, and the majority of women are heterosexual. If I read in a magazine or saw an advert for something like this, it’s not exactly illogical to assume that it exists because a demand for it exists…and who would care about a woman’s physical appearance? Well heterosexual men. It’s a bit of an advertising ploy, as someone else mentioned, where you create a “problem” that needs to be fixed with your product. Or you sell a… Read more »
So, some women are falling for a crazy, desperate ad. Still, heterosexual men don’t have even a tiny bit of culpability here, since the vast majority of us have never even thought about this, let alone knew it was possible, let alone people were actually doing it, let alone suggest that any woman we know do it.
I didn’t say they did.
It was implied. First paragraph.
No, actually, it wasn’t. I was saying it’s not illogical to jump to that conclusion, not that the conclusion is right.
Perhaps that was not the intention, but the implicaiton is there, particulary the concluding sentence, since it was in response to Danny’s comment that men are blamed. Your comment seemed to explain why men get the blame.
“Your comment seemed to explain why men get the blame.” Okay we have a communication problem, it seems. Because I was, actually, trying to explain why I think men get blamed. But just because I’m trying to explain the reason I think something happens, doesn’t mean I condone or even agree with it. A lot of what I do is about trying to understand why people do things…heck that’s why I got into anthropology in the first place. So, for example, I could explain to you why a lot of Christian conservatives don’t think gay people should be able to… Read more »
Oh, I see. Unless you state clearly what you are doing, it really does sound as if you are defending and justifying it.
Eric, the first sentence of my reply was this: “True, and I’m not excusing it.” I had agreed with Danny’s comment and also very explicitly stated that I didn’t condone it.
This sounds familiar. Didn’t we three get into this on another thread? I don’t think that she has to say prior to every post “I”M NOT CONDONING THIS” because I expect people will read thoroughly and then ask for clarification. Though, I suspect it would save she and I a lot of time to put on each of our posts a permanent disclaimer and link to a position statement where we share our beliefs about equality, human rights and our communication styles 😉 And that last statement was written with a tone of banter, as if I was kindly teasing.… Read more »
You went on to, in fact, excuse it, canceling out your intiail statement. It explained the logic behind blaming men without stating that the logic is faulty. But, I accept your explanation that it is just a misunderstanding.
So funny. I read that and assumed that the logic was faulty, that she knew the logic was faulty, and that it was simply a fame to look at the way the faulty logic was created. Words are weird.
“It explained the logic behind blaming men without stating that the logic is faulty.” I’ll sort of point to what Julie said, but also add my own thoughts here. I think the thing to remember when reading, well most of what I end up writing, is that I tend to try very hard to take a sympathetic tone when trying to understand opinions I don’t agree with. Part of this is to do with the whole cultural relativism thing…I find it is easier to truly understand something if I refrain from being judgemental about it as best I can. But… Read more »
Oh yeah it does work on men I’m aware. I just often get a feeling there is a bit of a double standard here at work where when something is aimed at women like this its a matter of trying to show that its happening to women but when its aimed at men we just created it on our own.
As I said above we are all getting hosed on this one.
Actually I think most women would acknowledge that the pressure to keep up with fashion trends largely comes from other women. But when we are talking about things like removing pubic hair, labiaplasty, and now anal/viulva bleaching, I think many women do believe that it makes them more attractive to men and that men might expect it or view them negatively otherwise.
It’s their belief that is faulty though. The belief they won’t be loved or whatever because of anal bleaching? That’s a fucked up faulty belief and any person looking at you mid lay and saying, “Um, sorry your parts aren’t the right shade.” is a manipulative shallow ass.
See my response to Heather, Submitted on 2012/04/14 at 4:59 pm | In reply to HeatherN.
for more thoughts on the advertising industry.
Well I think that could stem from the misconception that the majority of people in advertising are men. If you assume that the people putting out all of these false “problem fixing” products, or at least assume that all of the companies that do this are probably run by men, then it is perhaps easy to view it in terms of men doing it to themselves, and men doing it to women. And if you’re not even aware of the control the advertising companies have over this sort of thing…and actually believe that there’s a problem to be fixed, then… Read more »
“Well I think that could stem from the misconception that the majority of people in advertising are men. If you assume that the people putting out all of these false “problem fixing” products, or at least assume that all of the companies that do this are probably run by men, then it is perhaps easy to view it in terms of men doing it to themselves, and men doing it to women.” Only to one with some anti-male agenda, since no one knows who created a particular ad. Moreover, only a mind with a negative view of men to start… Read more »
Well I think that could stem from the misconception that the majority of people in advertising are men. If you assume that the people putting out all of these false “problem fixing” products, or at least assume that all of the companies that do this are probably run by men, then it is perhaps easy to view it in terms of men doing it to themselves, and men doing it to women. I’m sorry but for a lot of people who make that “misconception” I don’t buy that. Because if anything that line of thought calls for lumping men together… Read more »
“Actually I can understand that some folks honestly misconceive this but at the end of the day I think a lot of folks who do this are invoking guilty by gender association.” Totally, 100% agreed, because, yes, that’s exactly what’s happening. Actually, in general I think our society tends to create single monolithic entities surrounding gender (and other categories). We like simple answers to really complex questions, so when something happens we don’t like we blame men, or rich people, or poor people, or whatever. Instead, what we should be doing, is looking at the complex ways in which multiple… Read more »
Bam! Word to this whole piece.
Looking at systems takes time and energy. It takes LESS energy and time to connect two of the dots in a 500 dot system and say…well, this is it!
And easy stories get told more. Then they become truth even if they are filled with lies or flaws.
Humans are weird.
We are really bizarre, aren’t we. And I’ll be honest…I picked up the term “systems” from you…because really I think it works better than “cultural practices” or “cultural norms.” I think the term “systems” impresses the idea that they are working, moving, entities that are constantly being maintained. 🙂
Yeah, I mean we are all people who form groups and the groups become part of systems. And systems are complex and difficult. What’s that old parable about the blind men and the elephant? And they all thought that parts of the elephant were different objects altogether and argued? “They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant… Read more »
What does matter, with regards to gender, is how men seem to be getting blamed. Which is why I answered the way I did, an attempt to maybe tease out why that is. I think this (and what Julie says about the 2 dots out of 500) happens is because people want an easy target. They want something they can point to and blame. In relation to that people need an “enemy” to justify their existence. If the enemy is a broad group that will, short of a massive world changing shift, never go away then “the cause” will always… Read more »
“Does this mean that sharing gender with Random Male Advertising Exec is enough to say that Random Guy That Doesn’t Invoke It is responsible for RMAE’s actions?” And here is where I’ll…well not quite blame feminism…but critique it. A lot of the current discussions about gender roles began with feminism, and unfortunately early feminism did treat each gender as if they were homogenous, monolithic entities. Third-wave feminism moved on from that, and recognized intersectionality, but it’s not quite caught on as much as it should. So if we wanted to be all simplistic (and absolutely ridiculous), we could say that… Read more »
Third-wave feminism moved on from that, and recognized intersectionality, but it’s not quite caught on as much as it should. But even if they did recognize it there still seems to be a problem with them not seeming to want to invoke it unless its in their interests. So if we wanted to be all simplistic (and absolutely ridiculous), we could say that anal bleaching is actually the fault of feminism. Gloria Steinem has forced women to bleach their anus. lol As funny as that sounds I wouldn’t do it because. 1. Obviously not true. 2. It would just give… Read more »
Oh come on, be fair to Steinem, she did say “Women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.”
Anyway, on to the serious portion…personally I’ve found a lot of the more gynocentric and radical feminists out there are actually still using second-wave paradigms and ideas. That’s what it seems to me, anyway. Mind, the only feminism I’ve ever been taught third-wave, and well post-third-wave. I learned about first and second-wave feminism as pieces of history, the same way I learned about outdated anthropological theories.
It is WAY more than a bit of an advertising ploy. SOMEONE is pushing the service. It may not be “heterosexual men” and it may not be “heterosexual women.” But I assume it’s probably a combination of men and women who work in the beauty and advertising industries that do market research, surveys, focus groups and more to determine what trends are happening. Someone (system) is getting the impression that waxing sells. It might be women answering surveys that they’ve seen it on SATC, or other movies or heard a celebrity did it etc….It might be men who say they… Read more »
Word.
I dig.
“But as usual when women are met with an unfair expectation the first thought is to try to pin it on society and the second is to try to pin it on men.”
I don’t find that to be the case with women in general, only within feminism. For example, an article in Jezebel is far more likely to place the blame on men than a general women’s interest is.
All of this just seems crazy to me. I have no idea why women are doing these idiotic things to themselves. I remember “back in the day” (the 1980’s), we didn’t even trim our pubic hair. I mean, I went through high school, 4 years of college, grad school, and the rest of my 20’s being blissfully ignorant of the whole issue. And all I can say is that every single guy I slept with seemed absolutely thrilled to be anywhere in the vicinity of that part of my anatomy. I never got one complaint. I received, and gave, plenty… Read more »
So just don’t trim. I mean, if you want to wear a bikini and worry there will be exposure of hair, then trimming makes sense. But if your partner doesn’t care, don’t do it. No one else will know! I see these articles in magazines ALL over the place. Pretty much any major women’s mag (Vogue, Marie Claire, Allure, Cosmo, InStyle) will have articles on hair removal etc. It’s an expected part of the “grooming” narrative, whereas in the 80’s I recall a lot of articles about perms. Trends in grooming change. That being said, if people try the whole… Read more »
Word, Julie. On the one hand, Sarah, I get what you’re saying about not necessarily wanting to follow grooming trends. On the other hand, I don’t understand the negative outlook at people who do follow them.
I don’t care what other women do, it just bothers me if it becomes a social expectation that I’m supposed to follow or I’ll be the one who is judged negatively. If 90% of women start bleaching their vulvas I’ll be a freak if I don’t follow along…. That’s the concern. It’s like footbinding and whalebone corsets, any woman who wanted to buck the trend would have been rejected socially, so it became entrneched despite the negative health effects.
*entrenched
I guess the thing is….who will know other than your lover? Everyone could actually see corsets. They were visible to everyone.
Whereas, if your lover doesn’t give a shit, no one else will know.
Yes but you have to find a lover who doesn’t care, and refusing to follow the social norm can negatively impact your romantic options (like women who don’t want to shave their legs). My impression is that a majority of men now expect women to have shaved/waxed genitals and a significant minority (I don’t know any exact stats) may be grossed out by larger labia as a result of the porn influence. (I’ve certainly red plenty of negative comments from men on the topic although I don’t know if that’s representative of most men now)) So if a woman wants… Read more »
*she is interested in. Darn iPad
But that begs the question…why do you want to be with a man who has different aesthetic tastes than you do? Like, right personally I prefer women who are trimmed, but I actually like long labia. So do I expect my sexual partner to go out of her way to conform to this? No, but I’m glad when I find a partner who does. Theoretically everything can negatively impact your romantic options…some men prefer skinny girls, a few prefer big girls, etc…there are a million and a half different fetishes that you won’t fit into. There are a million and… Read more »
For a bit of humor:
“I’m also pretty sure there are segments of the male population that LOVE hair.” – I have the web addresses of some porn sites that would appear to back up this statement. 😉
“Austin, Eugene, Portland, Athens, San Fran, VERMONT and more” – You totally left out my favourite city ever, NYC. I don’t know if we can be friends any more, Julie. lol
NYC is a hippie city??U
Well it’s got hippies in it. The bit around NYU’s “campus” turns a bit hippie during the school year, or at least it did when I was there a few years ago. Plus, it’s certainly a ton of alternative and queer people. NYC is an everything city, really…except small. 🙂
Yeah, including NYC in your list is Serious Business. lol. 😉
Consider it smended
I hear what you are saying, Julie, I really do, and actually I tend to agree with you, but I think most people want to be mainstream, they don’t want to be outliers. That’s my point. If most men expect a certain thing, then as a woman, you have to conform or you may be limiting yourself to a rather small pool of fringe-y type men. So that’s the choice you have to make. Like not shaving your underarms; sure, you can decide not to, but it will be a huge turnoff to 99% of men. So in that sense,… Read more »
BTW, I have lived my entire life in the SF Bay Area (born and raised) and attitudes are not that different here than anywhere else for the most part. There are large subcultures of hippies and queer folk in certain areas (San Francisco itself, Santa Cruz, Sonoma County, etc) but a lot of the Bay Area is just a big suburb with nice scenery. If you have a particular kink or fetish, you can probably find it here more easily than in, IDK, Iowa.. But most people are still fairly mainstream and have mainstream tastes and expectations.
Most of Julie’s comment wasn’t about your geographic location. I think she just provided those cities as positive examples. What she’s saying is this – First, most women she knows actually haven’t ever had labia surgery, and wouldn’t ever have labia surgery. Sometimes what we perceive to be mainstream, isn’t actually. More importantly, though, is the fact that no one is being forced to get the surgery, or shave their pubic hair, or have anal bleaching. People make choices about what grooming trends they follow. If someone is in a place/environment that makes them feel forced to conform to the… Read more »
Maybe the word “normal” captures it better than “mainstream.” Most people want to feel that they are normal and that their partners are normal. Of course “normal” is a very loaded word. “Normal” is based on social and cultural expectations. But it’s difficult to fight those expectations if everyone else has bought into them. Shaving one’s underarms is considered “normal” in American culture and any woman who decides to do things differently will be viewed as abnormal by most other people. In fact, many men will view her as physically repulsive. I just worry that the expectation for women to… Read more »
It really hasn’t gotten to that point with labiaplasty, though. I know of absolutely no woman who has ever considered getting a labiaplasty. Julie doesn’t know any woman who’s ever considered it either. I know plenty of women who have heard of it, and not one who has considered it. Anal bleaching is even further behind that, because most women I know haven’t even heard of it. And yeah, there is pressure to be normal. But if an adult human being is feeling so much pressure to be normal that they’re doing things to their body that they don’t want… Read more »
Sarah, it is obvious this is an extremely frustrating and worrying trend that you see. What’s wrong though, I’d ask you, with being abnormal. I see, on my college campus here, people of size, people with body mod, people with weird hair, women with preppy preppy looks, women with armpit hair and I don’t see anyone being forced off campus. I see in my job, and in my social life, a lot of very varied people. Gay. Punk. Conservative. Fat. Tall. Religiously garbed. Preppy. And most of the get along fine and I don’t see any real…ostracisms to the extent… Read more »
@Julie, I agree that’s is not just men making women this way — women do most of this to ourselves. No one is forcing us to rip out our public hair by the roots with hot wax, or to put our genitalia under the knife to meet some crazy beauty standard. But men do put pressure on women. There was an article on Askmen awhile back about how to convince your girlfriend to wax her public hair. The implication was that public hair is absolutely gross and disgusting, and no sane man would want to be with a woman with… Read more »
So, I’d advise you to stay off those comment threads, and do more action towards the editors themselves. Email them and ask them about the tone? Get your male friends to join you? If you are feeling scared, take actual action. Cause just us commenting here doesn’t do much good. Refine your arguments and take them to the places where you’ll actually see change.
And find new men to hang out with if you think the men in your love life are acting this way.
“But men do put pressure on women.” Well okay…but women put pressure on men. And men put pressure on men. And women put pressure on women. This is true about so many things, but when it comes to beauty and attractiveness, I’ve found that all genders put huge pressure on both their own gender, and the other gender. And with the huge industry that is beauty, I think we have ended up in a society where there is so much pressure on everyone to be attractive, that the gender of the origin of that pressure is mute. So for shaved… Read more »
I sense the common theme from the comments is that women’s magazines are the ones causing many of these major insecurities, are they telling women that men like x and thus women follow suit? It’s easy to blame the men but quite frankly after reading some of these magazines I find them a major source of female insecurity and infact the most harsh criticisms of fashion, beauty, the body of women I’ve heard has been from other women. To me it feels like there is heavy competition for beauty amongst some women and no shortage of judgment, insults and negative… Read more »
Nice piece Joanna.
I personally am a little conflicted here because I do agree men get a bad rap on this point but I also think men (and yes women) are problems on this issue too.
Somewhere out there is a man who is with an attractive woman who is ready and willing to have sex with him and who is perfectly sexy already in her own way, but… he just can’t bring himself to have sex with her because… her vulva is too dark. Mood ruined, can’t do it, I’ll just have to find another beautiful woman to have sex with me tomorrow, one who’s bleached. Who are these people? How often does this actually happen? Yes, those men exist. I really do not understand it, but I’m sure they exist. I can only imagine… Read more »
Thank you for distinguishing between ‘vulva’ and ‘vagina’. That’s a word usage issue that has bugged me for years.
If you want to blame anyone; blame the person(s) who mindlessly buys into the message and the hype and allows their fears and insecurity shut down the ability to think critically and ask is this really necessary – healthy or make sense i.e. who benefits or how does this benefit me?
The pitch for the commercial is quite possibly the funniest thing I have read in a long time.
Hysterical, I want to go shoot the commercial now.
Right!? And it scares me because I swear in less than ten years that will be a real thing.
And all my friends will buy it!
Joanna,
Thanks for the mention, though it sounds like my blog is, like, devoted to anal bleaching. I only wrote about it..okay, maybe like 3 times, but I write about other stuff too! Like, vaginal “rejuvenation”.
Here’s a link: http://inbedwithmarriedwomen.blogspot.com/2012/02/diagnosis-case-of-femaleness.html
Warning (or possible selling point?): contains before and after photo of supposed “rejuvenation.”
Back to Peter’s question: How did this procedure get started? Who determined that this was a good idea? It’s certainly not self-evident. The Cosmo article doesn’t completely answer the question, stating only that “as Brazilians became more popular, women noticed that their anuses were darker.” What does that mean? How could someone notice something like that? Ah well. This is probably leading to “jobs creation” of some sort.
Oliver, I imagine that the Brazilian wax removed the butt crack hair and therefore exposed the brownness of the anus. So I assume we blame Brazil, right? And their bikinis? Also, I wouldn’t exactly expect Cosmo to have done a whole ton of historical research into the origins of anal bleaching. This blog about anal bleaching is AMAZING and everyone should read it, just for laughs: http://inbedwithmarriedwomen.blogspot.com/2010/07/is-your-anus-looking-its-whitest.html Here’s a quote that made me almost choke I laughed so hard, referring to a conversation she had with her girlfriends about this exact topic: “Anyway, we came up with a fine entrepreneurial… Read more »
To Mike L, there’s skin bleaching in America.
The vulva is the exterior part of the female genitals, not the whole shebang; it does not include the vagina. Just F.Y.I.
Good point, Gabby! Thanks for the clarification. I did always operate under the understanding that the exterior opening to the vagina was considered part of the vulva, however.
I guess I should’ve specified that I don’t think anyone’s actually bleaching the vagina itself, more like the whole exterior shebang… Though I wouldn’t be shocked if people started bleaching INSIDE the vagina next. And then their eyeballs.
Interestingly, I always thought “shebang” was spelled “shabang” until I was autocorrected.
You’re correct, Joanna, that “vulva” does include the exterior opening of the vagina, or if you want to get even more medical about it, the “vestibule” of the vagina.
While “vulva” does not include the entire vagina, it definitely includes more of the shebang than just “vagina”, which is even more frequently used by people to describe the whole shebang, despite being anatomically incorrect.
Correct. So maybe we need a name that does cover all of it. Would “shebang” be too flippant? It’s fairly descriptive.
If “shebang” didn’t already have a more general meaning, it would be perfect, and then the male counterparts could be the “hebang”.
Anatomically speaking, I can’t think of a single word that captures both vulva and vagina, because even “genitals” refers to external genitalia, not the parts hidden inside the body. In everyday slang, I can think of many words that I think of as referring the whole shebang, starting with my favorite: “pussy”. I would be careful of any word that’s too flippant, because then there’s the risk of shaming women into getting shebangectomies for flipping around too much.
I remember about 20 years ago, one of the alternative weekly papers ran a contest to come up with a name for a women’s ladybits. The winner was the Sanskrit word “yoni,” and one of the runners-up (which I personally liked) was “kit” as in “kit & caboodle.” 🙂
Oh believe me we are all getting hosed on this one. And the messed up part is we are hosing each other when we hold people to silly standards like this. So that leads me to the bum rap (I just made a pun about butts) that I think you men are getting from all this bleaching-vaginoplasty-waxing thing. While some guys might like to see more skin and less hair, and while some ladies may need vaginoplasty for comfort, or prefer hairlessness for pleasure, I bet a lot of this comes down to miscommunication. Yes. We think you don’t like… Read more »
I have to wonder how much this is actually linked to porn (as suggested above). The idea that women need to be smooth, hairless and evenly toned wasn’t dreamed up by some pornographer. Look at pictures of naked (or near naked) women from the 1930s or before. You’ll notice they all have hairy underarms and crotches, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that leg shaving was less common then too. As skirt hems went north and bikinis became popular underarm shaving was a must. Now that women are thinking about their vulvas (rather than just calling it “down there” and… Read more »
Wait a minute, are you suggesting porn didn’t cause the problem? Don’t you know that porn causes all problems? 😉
Good thing porn can also be a solution to problems. 😉
That was a nice Homer Simpson moment.
Beer: the cause and the solution to all the worlds problems.
Women in pornos all end up looking the same, from what I can tell. They probably hear the same volume of detailed insults about their appearance as models do, but somehow the models still manage to all look mostly different (at least their faces) while the porn women all end up looking the same (whole body, face included). At this point, the younger women entering the field probably just see the more successful women and think that to be successful they need to replicate that look. It’s hard to say if men actually want to look at women who all… Read more »
No, women in porn don’t all look the same. That’s part of the fun of looking and watching. Are you sure you’re not watching penguin porn?
How much porn have you watched?
To be honest, not much. I’ve tried watching it at various times, but I generally find it quite boring. But the women who are quite well-known seem to have a plastic surgery look, bleached hair (and assholes apparently), orange tan, a bit too skinny, lips too big for the face, too much mascara, fake breasts. Jenna Jamieson comes to mind (she was on reddit with a pre-surgery picture in which she was much better looking than she is after surgery). I know that there’s quite a bit more variety in amature porn, but I meant specifically the ones who market… Read more »
But it’s good to see that people disagree with that ‘same look’ characterisation, and do want and look for variety.
I boycott it in a sense, I go for amateur porn which has variety. If I followed popular opinions I’d never look at freckled redheads in porn yet I think they’re beautiful. Not everyone has the same tastes and even the pro porn industry knows this, there is a very diverse range of porn of all shapes, sizes, colours.
If you haven’t seen Faye Reagan yet, you should.
Thanks. I saw her a while ago, she is quite lovely. I just hope redheads and those with freckles realize they too are beautiful. 😀
It’s hard to say if men actually want to look at women who all have that one look, but I suspect there have never been any boycotts by porn-watchers to demand more variety in the leading ladies. Its because a lot of us porn watchers are able to find the stuff we like by going off the main path. And since (for a lot of us) our tastes are not mainstream to the point that we can be shamed for them sometimes we prefer to just stay outside the mainstream. Maybe if folks that watch porn weren’t shamed about it… Read more »
I’m not offended by this “bad rap,” because holding me responsible for this is so completely absurd. If you voluntarily put caustic chemicals on or in your own sensitive skin, that is YOU doing that to yourself. Take some responsibility for your own insecurities and your own ideas about what men want. Yes, I know, the patriarchal beauty industry and the inhuman pressures of physical appearance that women face, yada yada. At some point common sense and individual accountability need to kick in. For feck’s sake, people….
FYI, anal bleaching comes from porn. That’s where it got it’s beginning in the 90’s or so. Now it’s mainstream. Porn leads the way again. That said, most normal males have absolutely no expectation of their women anal bleaching. Men have absolutely nothing to do with anal bleaching other than consuming porn. Which they would have consumed sans anal bleaching. Screwed up world isn’t it? Thank god orcs aren’t fetishized in porn. 10 years later you’d walk out your door and be surrounded by the army of Mordor on the elavator at work with all the other guys saying in… Read more »
“Men have absolutely nothing to do with anal bleaching other than consuming porn.”
Well, except for the men that also do anal bleaching…
But presumably porn got the idea from somewhere?
I looked at several you tube videos. Don’t look for “bleaching”, you won’t find anything. Advertisers call it “whitening”. There are several testimonials about effectiveness. I could not find any clue about why people do this. There are several women who share their feelings about other aspects of genital looks, both for men and for women. I could find no male who talks about any aspect of male or female genital attractiveness. I conclude that (i) virtually no man cares about female genital looks, (ii) very few women care about male genital looks. This seems like commercial exploitation of an… Read more »
I see further commercialization down the road: Hallmark will fabricate a “Happy Anal Bleach Day!” movement, necessitating more cards men will forget to buy.
Don’t worry, Jamie, I’ll be sure to send you a “Don’t forget Anal Bleach Day” memo via email so you don’t forget to buy a card for the special someone in your life. That’s what co-workers are for.
You both just made me laugh out loud.
I don’t understand any form of skin bleaching.
But that’s because I grew up in America.
This seems to be about a product that is not aimed at American women. It is aimed at women from a culture that also sells other “fairness” products.
Why are men from not-this-culture being dragged into this?
Actually, Anal Bleaching in particular is kind of shockingly popular in the United States… Especially in the major metropolitan areas…
Here’s an article about it in Cosmo:
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/advice/health/anal-bleaching-trend
Joanna, I know all about anal bleaching because I live in San Francisco and it was a big hit with the gay community here a few years back (I’ve lost touch with how popular it is in ongoing culture at this point). I think that anal bleaching doesn’t really compare to vaginal bleaching because of the prevalence in the gay community. The purpose of the Jezebel article is to argue that this is something *being done to women*, and that somehow men bear some amount of responsibility to this. (In fairness, this is also the basic premise of 90% of… Read more »
Mike L Skin bleaching and or lightening is not just for other countries. America does not want to admit this but it is quite prevalent in the good old US of A. It is colorism or shade-ism also known as the shade wars. Skin lightening products are routinely marketed to darker skinned ethnicities within the USA and traditionally paler/fairer skinned women in would always wear hats and carry parasols to shield them from the sun so they would maintain the paler fairer skin and use lemon and buttermilk to “bleach” their skin and maintain that fairer/lighter skin shade. People do… Read more »
Sweetsue, I appreciate your acknowledgement that men are getting bum rap, but I’m still not really clear that this is a real problem within the culture of the US. Whether or not it happens in the US seems like it would be immaterial. What would be material is if it is a part of mainstream American culture. It seems like it’s not, and so I don’t really see the issue. The ads aren’t on mainstream American television: if you look at mainstream American culture, this product doesn’t seem to exist. If this is a big problem, shouldn’t the target be… Read more »
Mike L, I am the third person to tell you that anal bleaching is a big deal in the US. Just because it’s not on cable TV doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because no woman has told you personally that she’s thinking of doing or has done anal bleaching doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Women are having it done in greater numbers in the US, and it’s definitely becoming mainstream. The US public discourse on sex is not particularly healthy or open, so I wouldn’t expect something like anal bleaching to get any real discussion. But ‘Cosmo’ is not… Read more »
Donna,
You will please forgive me if I don’t feel that anonymous strangers on the internet, who are looking to advance an agenda, can tell me what is “mainstream” in my own culture.
If you can cite me something with hard numbers that demonstrates what words like “big deal” and “becoming mainstream” mean.
‘Cosmo’ might not be known for “quirky, off-beat indie articles” but it’s also not known for accurate investigative reporting either.
Mike L, and everybody else,
I’m not American, I’m European, but honestly, bleaching is a serious issue in the US, I’ve studied there for one year, and maybe not everyone talks about it, but it exists, it’s popular, and you can buy bleaching products in any drugstore. If you don’t know about it, I can only suppose that you’re white (nothing wrong with that, of course) and not much interested in other people – because bleaching is something very popular among black people. So check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZGWknrOjic
Maggie
yea I gotta say, you may very well be right about it “becoming main stream” even tho many of us have never had anybody talk to us about actually wanting or doing it but if your going to claim it as a fact you gotta give us somthin more than “well it was in cosmo so it must be mainstream”, some sales figures from beauty stores? early usage statistics? give us somethin here?!
Mike L, Most people rarely pay attention to advertisement unless it is directed at them. How often do you as a man pay attention to feminine products skincare, hair care, face cream etc. it may be in plain sight but hidden because it is not a product you “need”. Advertisers target a given market and that markets sweet spot in order to make a sale. Women make up a large segment of the market demographics and so there is a great profit to be made targeting that demographic and playing on their fears and insecurities. The advertisements for these types… Read more »
“This is about pushing the product – creating a need then filling it to make a profit.”
It really does bring to mind the creation of halitosis by Listerine.
Hmm…that sounded fishy, so I googled it. It looks like Listerine can be credited (or exposed) as having created their own market by giving people a scary word for bad breath to make them want to buy their product, but the word was not coined by Listerine, and whether people were calling it halitosis or not, they don’t get the credit or blame for having invented bad breath. Still a cool bit of trivia that I’d never heard of before, though. 🙂 Apparently, Listerine started as a surgical antiseptic without much of a market for it; if the market were… Read more »
My understanding is that Listerine did not invent the word “halitosis,” but they expanded the existing definition. It originally was a medical term for extremely bad breath, like the horrible smell that comes from a rampant infection in the throat or very acute tonsilitis, something on the order of the smell of gangrene. A very distinct, extreme, specific medical condition, and NOT “everyday bad breath.” Listerine started using the word to mean “everyday bad breath” or just common “morning breath.”
It would be like referring to the common cold as “bubonic plague.”
Ladies, leave your perfect parts alone. Why mess with something so amazing? We men often hear size doesn’t matter…well same goes for you… color, shape, size, none of that matters. It is nice when a woman is well groomed, shows she takes good care of herself, but don’t go overboard. You are great just the way you are, and we like it! Sure, there will be some who say that stuff DOES matter to them, just as some women say size DOES matter, but does somebody like that deserve your attention and your…ahem…”gifts?”