The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the TwentyFirst Century

Product Description In the West, a specific ideal for female genitalia has emerged: one of absence, a clean slit, attained through the removal of pubic hair and, increasingly, through female genital cosmetic surgery known as FGCS.In The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the TwentyFirst Century, Lindy McDougall provides an ethnographic account of women who choose FGCS in Australia and the physicians who perform these procedures, both in Australia and globally, while also examining the environment in which surgeons and women come together. Physicians have a vested interest in establishing this surgery as valid medical intervention, despite majority medical opinion explicitly acknowledging that a wide range of genital variation is normal. McDougall offers a nuanced picture of why and how these procedures are performed and draws parallels between FGCS and anthropological discussions of female genital circumcision (cutting). Using the neologismbiomagical, she argues that cosmetic surgery functions as both ritual and sacrifice due to its promise of transformation while simultaneously submitting the body to the risks and pain of surgery, thus exposing biomedicine as an increasingly cultural and commercial pursuit.The Perfect Vaginahighlights the complexities involved with FGCS, its role in Western beauty culture, and the creation and control of body image in countries where selfcare is valorized and medicine is increasingly harnessed for enhancement as well as health. Review The Perfect Vagina highlights the complexities involved with FGCS, its role in Western beauty culture, and the creation and control of body image in countries where selfcare is valorized and medicine is increasingly harnessed for enhancement as well as health. Jana Byars New Books Network Review Lindy McDougall exposes the creative pursuit of the invisible intimate labial reduction.In exploring the allure of the biomagical, McDougall theorizes how and why womens sexuality, desirability and happiness center on the idea of the perfect vagina. Brilliantly argued, in this compelling essay, she illustrates how the male gaze and the medical gaze converge under contemporary capitalism to promote vulval surgery as a technology of selfcare and a project of selfimprovement. The account is gripping, theoretically sophisticated, and inspired. Lenore Manderson About the Author Lindy McDougall is Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.