How terrible is this?!
According to Gigimodo, "Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount."
What is the obsession with virginity in this world?!
For those women who don't want to fake it with a packaged hymen the hymenoplasty procedure recreates the bleeding (and usually, pain) that occurs when the hymen is torn. Never mind the fact that some females break their hymens in unconventional ways that have nothing to do with intercourse.
Jessica Valenti, founder of feminist website Feministing states in her book The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, "'virgin is almost always synonymous with 'woman.' Virgin sacrifices, popping cherries, white dresses, supposed vaginal tightness, you name it. Outside of the occasional reference to the male virgin in the form of a goofy movie about horny teenage boys, virginity is pretty much all about women. Even the dictionary definitions of 'virgin' cite an 'unmarried girl or woman' or a 'religious woman, esp. a saint.' No definition exists for men or boys."
Hanne Blank's book Virginity: An Untouched History dedicates a chapter to the phenomenon of hymens.
"We become aware of hymens because we are aware of something we call virginity. We found the hymen because we found reasons to search women's bodies for some bit of flesh that embodied this quality we call "virginity", some physical proof that it existed."
When I read Hanne's book years ago I was reminded of a scene in one of my favorite movies (despite some cruide points). Chasing Amy was written and directed by Kevin Smith. In the film Alyssa Jones (played by Joey Lauren Adams) is a lesbian whom Holden McNeil (played by Ben Affleck) falls in love with. In one scene the two are sitting on playground swings and having a conversation about the definition of sex.
Holdon: Virginity is lost when the hymen is broken
Alyssa: Well, then I lost my virginity at ten
Holden: Really?
Alyssa: Mmm. Cuz, see I feel on a fence post when I was ten and it broke my hymen
The hymen is often tied to a woman's virginity even though it can be broken in a variety of ways.
Blanke more accurately describes the hymen in her book to give us a clearer picture of what it is and what it is not.
"As the vaginal cord matures, it hollows out. This process is called canalization and it is exactly what it sounds like: the process in which a solid cord turns into a canal or tube. The last step of canalization is when the canal forms an opening, right through the body wall, giving the vagina it's outlet. This is what creates the hymen. At the threshold between external urogenital space the internal vagina, a small, flexible flange of what used to be body wall tissue remains around the rim of the newly formed opening. This remnant is the hymen. Although some people imagine that the hymen is like the head of a drum, a skin that is stretched across the opening of the vagina, normal hymens are anything but. The reason the hymen exists at all is that the vagina cannot function without an opening to the outside of the body. This tiny leftover of the process of genital development is the piece of flesh by which reputations, futures, and in some cases lives of millions of women have hung in the balance."
I understand that in some cultures maintaining a hymen can actually be a matter of life or death. I can understand that in that case there would be much pressure to either obtain a hymenoplasty or an artificial hymen. But there are many who have more freedom to choose and consciously choose to undergo surgery or find other methods to reinvent their hymen in some way. To those women...why? Why ladies? Why are you doing it and who are you doing it for?
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