When it comes to the standards of beauty, we already know society asks too much.
It isn’t always society that’s asking, though. Sometimes you remember a comment made about your physical experience for years.
I’m looking at you, guy-from-my-high-school-pre-calculus-class who said I was a “solid six.”
Jenny Slate recently published a personal anecdote about her experience receiving a “vaginal facial” in Lenny Letter, a newsletter from creators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.
Slate said she voluntarily got the treatment partially because she remembered a young man in her high school lamenting that he only ate his girlfriend out because “it just needed to happen” and that he could only do it if he held his “nose and went for it.”
She feared this type of casual insult about someone else’s body meant that everyone needed to be worried about or ashamed of their private bits.
Surprise — no one needs to be, unless a medical professional has personally noted some reason for concern.
The “vajacial” was a $70 procedure and, as Slate put it, “more trouble than it’s worth.” Things like the vajacial are indeed more trouble than they are worth because the motives behind them are worth nothing. At least, they should be worth nothing.
The idea that a current romantic partner or an ignorant teen from your past should have total say in whether you get an expensive spa treatment is worthless.
I have to wonder why these types of treatments are even still around. But the answer is simple: there is still a market. It is a market made stronger by people and the media body shaming things that are completely normal, like rib cages that protect your lungs.
Should you wish to forgo your ribs in favor of a curvier physique, though, hourglassangel.com would be happy to sell you one of their hauntingly sexy waist training corsets.
Or maybe you would prefer to introduce a live parasite into your body to reduce your body mass index. There’s always the tapeworm diet. You know, because nothing is sexier than living day-by-day wondering if that creepy-crawly you swallowed will kill you this time.
So why do we do these things to ourselves? I know we get the unrealistic standards of beauty argument beaten into our heads every day by clickbait articles and guidance counselors.
Yet we still perpetuate the rigidity of these standards. We still think the number of similarities between ourselves and the image of perfection directly correlates to the amount of sex we will have in the future.
We still measure our worth by how much sex appeal we have. Sometimes we even do it numerically. I’m looking at you again, pre-calc guy.
So let me say this: a partner that encourages you to get a vajacial, lay in a tanning bed or to go on a crash diet is not a partner that deserves any part of you.
And similarly, you must never believe that your sweet beautiful self, hairy, pale or lumpy though it might be, is not worthy of affection.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
