Vagina dialogues: theorizing the ‘designer vagina’

Many accounts of the so-called ‘designer vagina’ have theorized its link to ‘traditional’ and regional practices of FGM (or, less pejoratively, FGC) -- which are said to reduce the sexual pleasure of women. Furthermore, many writers claim cuts to the vagina are all the more sinister since they are made to such an intimate and private part of the body. However, when comparisons are made with male circumcision, this argument has little traction, and for many women the vagina is the part of the body most likely to be cut or stitched -- as a result of childbirth. We must ask ourselves how ‘private’ the vagina now is, given the technologies available to improve its appearance -- from waxing to labiaplasty and collagen plumping. Feminists have largely correlated such practices negatively with the increasing circulation of pornography, neoliberalism, post-feminism, consumerism, and the “re-entrenchment” of sexism (Gill and Donaghue, 2013) though not with the increasing circulation of what we might call ‘vaginal diversity’ on body-positive websites -- nevertheless we might consider both to be mechanisms of visibilization. But is the ‘neoliberal vagina’ simply bad for women? Or can we identify continuities and disjunctures between feminism and neoliberalism that paint a more complex picture of the ‘designer vagina’? It was feminists, after all, who first incited us to ‘look’ at our vaginas. Under neoliberalism, however, it is not enough to look; one must also compare and evaluate, and if the evaluation is negative, one must act. In this chapter I will argue that within the context of the visible vagina, the privileging of patient autonomy (also rooted in the women’s health movement) and the moral imperative to find happiness by ‘doing something’ work to reconfigure the vagina as alterable in the pursuit of fun and pleasure.