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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 07:26 PM
Original message
Sugery where?
Edited on Fri Oct-12-07 08:11 PM by bliss_eternal
Surgery where?

Hoping to pump up their sex life, women are having cosmetic surgery on their most private parts. But not all of these procedures end well.

SELF investigates a disturbing beauty trend.

By Jennifer Wolff
From the October 2007 issue (page 1 of 7)

David L. Matlock, M.D., stands poised before Rosemary Staltare's vagina, preparing to inject her G-spot with a dense dollop of collagen that will plump it to the size of a small stack of quarters. Through an opening in a plastic speculum of his own design, the gynecologist navigates a needle into Staltare's frontal vaginal wall, pumping it up with his "secret" variation of the substance that for years has been used to swell women's lips. Dr. Matlock, known for his appearances on the E! channel show Dr. 90210, insists that enlarging a woman's G-spot renders it more accessible and sensitive to the touch for a period of up to four months.

Staltare, a 33-year-old restaurant publicist who has had the $1,850 procedure twice before for free—and is getting it gratis again today in exchange for letting me watch—couldn't agree more. "It's like having a mini-heartbeat in my crotch," she explains, a sensation that arouses her even during yoga and Spinning classes, or when she drives along bumpy roads. During sex, Staltare says, she has volcanic, multiple orgasms "like huge waves that keep lifting me higher and higher."

Can medical tinkering with your vagina really improve your sex life? That's the promise plastic surgeons and gynecologists are now aggressively marketing. Dr. Matlock, who practices out of his posh Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Los Angeles on Sunset Boulevard, has developed his own handheld laser and has licensed his institute's name and techniques to some 170 doctors worldwide, about 60 of them in the United States. All of these gynecologists, urologists or plastic surgeons have paid Dr. Matlock $54,500 for a three-day course that includes training not only in the G-Shot but in other so-called sexual-enhancement procedures, including vaginal tightening, labia reshaping, liposuction of the mons pubis and reduction of the skin around the clitoris in pursuit of what anyone's guess is the vision of perfection. "Women want to have the best sexual experiences possible," Dr. Matlock says. "They want to look pretty in that area and not old and haggard just because they've had kids. If they look good, they feel good, and if they feel good, sex is better."


-------------------------snip---------------------

excerpted from:
http://www.self.com/livingwell/articles/2007/09/0924surgery_1_of_7

*****************************
Just read the majority of this article while at my doctor's office. Note that two of the three women featured in the article haven't had kids, so this doesn't seem an extension of the other article shared here about "post pregnancy surgeries."

Stunned and disturbed don't even begin to describe my feelings while reading this. :(
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atommom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 08:54 PM
Response to Original message
1. "A small stack of quarters"????
:wow: That's a very sensitive area to be monkeying around with. I wish there wasn't so much pressure on women to "improve" their bodies.
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:14 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. That's what I thought of...
Edited on Fri Oct-12-07 09:18 PM by bliss_eternal
...while reading the article. I wondered why anyone would feel compelled to "improve" their genitals--for appearance or sexual pleasure.

I was also blown away by the 21 year old that felt "self conscious" about her labia. Her boyfriend at the time telling her that hers was "SO different from others."

:wtf:

How exactly? Different because he's looking at airbrushed images from pron (purposely misspelled)?
That made me angry, and sad for the girl that she would feel self-conscious about such an aspect of her anatomy. Why?

I don't understand anyone feeling the need to "improve" genitalia at all.
Unless one is going to be in a movie with a zoom lense on their crotch, no one ever really see's that area. MAYBE during certain sexual acts--but I doubt anyone is examining the area during that time.

The doctor claiming women told him they are "afraid to shower publicly or wear bathing suits at the beach" because they feel self conscious about "down there" is bullshit, in my opinion. Do you know what kind of acrobatics one would have to do for someone to show their labia while showering at the gym or while wearing a bathing suit at the beach? Puh-lease! It's not even remotely visually accessible.
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lizerdbits Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:21 PM
Response to Original message
3. That is incredibly sad
I can understand having surgery in the case of the labia being so large that sex or exercise is painful, as they mentioned the labia possibly being pulled into the vagina during sex- ouch! But 'Abby' didn't have those problems and describes her labia as 'juvenile-looking' after surgery, since we are supposed to look 19 everywhere for life.

And 'Beth' who's boyfriend gave her information about the surgery which was botched and cost more than the original surgery to repair at just 21 years old and now over $13,000 in debt because of it.

After thousands of years of work to attempt to be treated as human beings we have reduced ourselves to being concerned with the size of our labia. I think I'm going to cry myself to sleep.
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:48 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. Surreal isn't it?
:scared:
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jmm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:30 PM
Response to Original message
4. How many men would get collagen
injections in an area that sensitive? It might be more effective than all those pills they sell in the back of magazines and in email spam. Hawking vitamins to insecure men may be popular but we don't see the wide scale butchering and experimenting on their bodies that happens to women all the time. It would take more than a weekend course developed by some basic cable hack before injecting substances in penises became trendy.
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:57 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. If you talk about grazing their genitals...
...they get nervous. So I think you're right.

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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 09:43 PM
Response to Original message
5. Yikes--typo on my part...
:blush: Should be surgery not sugery. Duh!
Sorry.

Got it right in the op, but not in the subject line.
Ok, please continue with the discussion. :hi:
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ThomCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 10:09 PM
Response to Original message
8. Wow. I cannot believe anyone would want to mess around
with unnecessary surgery on their genitals. :wtf:

It's disgusting that doctors would cater to this, and promote this as if it was a good thing. Just because you can make money doing it doesn't mean you should.
x(
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 10:25 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Exactly.
Edited on Fri Oct-12-07 10:30 PM by bliss_eternal
I seriously question the ethics of any "physician" offering such a "service." The potential for "genital mutilation" sounds great with this procedure. I can't imagine that anything is worth possibly losing the function of one's genitalia permanently. Not mind blowing sex or a youthful looking labia.

And again, why would anyone need to restore the youthful appearance to gentials?
How do they look old? :shrug:
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noamnety Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-15-07 04:52 PM
Response to Reply #9
25. potential?
Edited on Mon Oct-15-07 04:52 PM by lwfern
Isn't kind of past "potential" for genital mutilation, once you start slicing?
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-15-07 08:50 PM
Response to Reply #25
27. Definitely.
Good point, making it that much more questionable from an ethical standpoint. :(
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Katherine Brengle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-12-07 10:34 PM
Response to Original message
10. So... surgically alter your insides so he doesn't have to make an effort surgery?
Puke.
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mrreowwr_kittty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 02:53 PM
Response to Original message
11. Well at least it purports to do something for your physical experience rather than your appearance
One small point in it's favor....Other than that, YIKES! :wow:

Now I am a big fan of orgasms, but honesttogods why would anyone want to be having them all the time?!?
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 06:39 PM
Response to Reply #11
14. See what we're missing...
Edited on Sat Oct-13-07 07:02 PM by bliss_eternal
Quote:
Staltare, a 33-year-old restaurant publicist who has had the $1,850 procedure twice before for free—and is getting it gratis again today in exchange for letting me watch—couldn't agree more. "It's like having a mini-heartbeat in my crotch," she explains, a sensation that arouses her even during yoga and Spinning classes, or when she drives along bumpy roads. During sex, Staltare says, she has volcanic, multiple orgasms "like huge waves that keep lifting me higher and higher."


I never need to experience arousal while in spinning or yoga class.

This struck me as it seems part of that whole pron(purposely misspelled) fantasy that we're one extreme or the other--raging nymphomaiacs that need to feel sexually stimulated 24/7 or frigid prudes. :shrug:
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ismnotwasm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 03:59 PM
Response to Original message
12. Are you fucking kidding me?
No I guess not.

How about care and attention paid to an individual woman's right way to orgasm? With this cookie cutter bullshit, these women are not "having the best sexual experiences possible" Well I fucking do. Every time. No surgery anywhere, just good communication and attention pain to my needs and desires. And another thing. C-L-I-T-O-R-I-S. With the goddam hood, PLEASE. Fuck. (Just the thought of a hood less clitoris--ouch) G spots just aren't that reliable.

"Old and haggard just because they had kids" For All the Gods Fucking sakes what a bunch of reprehensible assholes who even THINK up this shit.

Being a nurse, I've seen all kinds of genitalia from all kinds of people. I hadn't noticed that pre child birth genitalia is any more attractive. Labia's come in all shapes and sizes. There are very large labia, which may cause a women discomfort or embarrassment, but it's not from child birth. If a women is shamed by the size of her labia, or has some other anomaly that bothers her to the point of dysfunction, that's the only circumstance I can think of for that type of cosmetic surgery.


All that surgery is NOT for the benefit of females.


And just because I'm pissed, I'd like to add that I've seen post surgical scrotum's swelled to the size of small watermelons, penises so fluid filled they are nearly completely retracted and difficult to catheterize. Those genitalia too, recover.

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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 07:17 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. Did you see this...?
Edited on Sat Oct-13-07 07:20 PM by bliss_eternal
From article--Beth(page 2):

"I can't believe I let someone do this to me," a 21-year-old college student named Beth tells me, digging into an egg-white omelet in a New York City diner. A pretty, petite woman from Long Island, New York (who asked SELF not to publish her full name), Beth is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her brunette hair in a messy ponytail. "I've never wanted my boobs done or any kind of plastic surgery," she says. "But my labia made me very uncomfortable." The self-consciousness began about two years ago, when she started having sex. She had previously noticed that her labia minora (the inner folds of the vagina) were longer than those of other girls. But lying naked with a man embarrassed her to the point where she would turn off all the lights and cover herself with blankets. Last summer, she asked the man she was dating what he thought. "Well, I've been with women whose labia are smaller," she recalls him responding. Then he referred Beth to a magazine where he had seen advertisements for labiaplasty.

---------------------------snip------------------
(from pg. 3)

Beth spoke with her regular gynecologist. "You're obsessing. Don't do it," he told her, warning her that the procedure could be dangerous. Undeterred, Beth consulted with a gynecologist she had found through the advertisement. "She told me that my labia weren't that long but that she could fix them, no big deal, and it would take 15 minutes and cost $5,000," she says. Not telling anyone—her parents, her friends or even her boyfriend—Beth dipped into her student-loan money and returned to the doctor five days later.

The procedure took 15 minutes, as promised, but left her in pain for much longer. Not only was she in agony afterward, "but I bled for days and was incredibly swollen. I couldn't walk, and I could only sit cross-legged," she remembers, adding that she was bleeding so much she had to change her sanitary pad every hour. The suffering might have been worthwhile had Beth liked the results. But she was horrified. "My right lip was completely gone, and my left lip was just hanging there, cut off at an angle," she says. As she healed during the next month, her surgical scars became "rigid, bumpy and rough; they were painful and uncomfortable." She told her boyfriend that she had a cyst and couldn't have sex, and the two of them have since split up.

------------------------------snip------------------------------------

"She was completely deformed," confirms Gary Alter, M.D., the plastic surgeon in New York City whom Beth consulted to repair the damage. "Often a physician's concept of doing a labia operation is to cut them off. As these surgeries are growing more popular, I'm seeing more disastrous results from cavalier doctors who aren't paying attention to detail and symmetry." And if someone is already self-conscious about her genitals, a botched surgery can make the problem much worse. "It can be very traumatic both physically and psychologically," Dr. Alter says. "It can really screw up someone's head."


Today, Beth is happy with her labia. Dr. Alter did his repairs by bringing together the upper and lower labia and sculpting them, a procedure Beth says was bloodless and pain-free. "They're not perfect, but they're also not mutilated," she says. Now her biggest concern is how she's going to recoup the money she spent—not only the $5,000 for the initial surgery but also another $8,700 for Dr. Alter's reconstruction. "I don't know why it mattered to me what my labia looked like; I mean, it's not like they were a huge problem in my life," she says, anger and remorse filling her light brown eyes. "If I didn't learn that this kind of surgery was available, I never would have had it done, and I would have been fine. The surgery was totally unnecessary—and a really stupid thing to do."

-----------------------------snip--------------------------------------------

excerpts from link within original post.





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ismnotwasm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 06:38 PM
Response to Reply #16
22. I think it's unnecessary
But I understand if a women was very uncomfortable, or to the point of being infection prone and she had the surgery. I think women don't know how variable labia really is. I've seen very large, long labia to the point one nurse thought it was a prolapsed vagina.

It's one of those things women don't talk about. I catheterized one young woman who was difficult because of larger labia and general structure she told me "I guess I'm a bit different down there" and I told her that she wasn't different, it was just a natural variation because that's what it was, a natural variation. She had quite charming genitalia as far as anybody does.

Another reason why this type of surgery is so wrong is these surgeons are telling women what is natural, and women tend to not talk to each other about this kind of thing. Men talk SHIT to each other about it, taking women apart piece by piece, breasts, butt, vaginal size. But do they know the difference between labia and a clitoris?

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Ellen Forradalom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 04:26 PM
Response to Original message
13. GUH??
:wtf: :banghead: :scared: :nuke: :grr: :wow:
:wtf: :banghead: :scared: :nuke: :grr: :wow:
:wtf: :banghead: :scared: :nuke: :grr: :wow:
:wtf: :banghead: :scared: :nuke: :grr: :wow:

GET THAT THING AWAY FROM MY HOO-HOO, YOU QUACK!

P.S. Note that all this nasty-ass surgery is centered in LOS ANGELES. They don't call it La-La Land for nothing.
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-13-07 06:58 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. Los Angeles is sick.
Edited on Sat Oct-13-07 07:23 PM by bliss_eternal
Seriously. The guy you spoke of here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x11172#11326

was in Marina Del Rey.

The Hollywood, (wealthy) Beverly Hills and San Fernando pron (purposely misspelled) cultures bleed into the rest of the Los Angeles--and this is what we get from it all. Surgeons preying on people's insecurity, people willing to do something because it's "trendy" or sounds "life changing."

I had to admit that there are some (too many actually) that are willing to do things because celebrities also participate in such activities. Watching Schwarzenegger win the recall election by a wide margin showed me the ugly truth, that some were more than willing to vote in a guy based solely on his "celebrity status." I wanted to believe society wasn't that gullible, but apparently it is. It seems much worse in southern California, unfortunately. :(

There's a salon in/near the san fernando valley that is noted as being the one that gave Pam Anderson her barely there bikini wax. I understand they are now selling a kit for "anal bleaching."

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Ellen Forradalom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 05:44 AM
Response to Reply #15
18. Ok. NOW I have heard everything.
Anal bleaching. I am speechless.
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 04:03 PM
Response to Reply #18
19. Just in case...
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lizerdbits Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 05:13 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. WHY?
Why might my anus supposedly need bleaching? I'm at a loss. Is it supposed to be "feminine" like not having a single dark hair other than your head and 9 pubic hairs?
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bliss_eternal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 05:24 PM
Response to Reply #20
21. I'm still trying to figure out the how...?
...how anyone would deem this necessary, then get in position to do it...and expose such a delicate and sensitive part of the anatomy to bleaching. (Can you say,"YOWCH!")

...if I start thinking about why, my head will explode. :(
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Ellen Forradalom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 11:24 PM
Response to Reply #21
23. This sounds Lounge-worthy.
Let me post that link over there and suggest Matcom get it done.
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Katherine Brengle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-15-07 10:12 AM
Response to Reply #20
24. Um, so you can look like a porn star. Duh.
Seriously - ever seen Hustler? (Sad to say I have, in my younger days.)

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lizerdbits Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-15-07 08:02 PM
Response to Reply #24
26. I figured it was something along those lines
But not being a porn viewer I wasn't really sure.
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Ellen Forradalom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-16-07 12:32 PM
Response to Reply #24
29. Not coincidentally, the salon is in the Valley
Edited on Tue Oct-16-07 12:33 PM by Ellen Forradalom
like the major pr0n houses.

On edit: There was a day when the women of Playboy and other mags were natural. Some of the Playmates from PB's heyday were quite beautiful.
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wicket Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-16-07 08:43 AM
Response to Reply #15
28. My friends who went to LA...
...to work in the biz, it's like I don't even know them anymore.
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BlueIris Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-14-07 01:22 AM
Response to Original message
17. I've been getting horrified by these stories for years.
Unnecessary. Traumatic. And obviously misogynist.
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