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A new vaginal tightening cream promises to make you feel like a virgin - but do we need virginity?
First whitening, and now tightening. Looks like our vaginas are in for a whole lot of “help”. Seriously, what’s with manufacturers suddenly waking up to a bunch of customers needing help in this area? Have there been some studies showing that Indian women are unhappy with life, and the main reason for that is the sorry state of our vaginas?
Now unlike whitening, which is just part of our “fair skin is best” mentality, tightening may not be for cosmetic reasons. There are reasons women may want a tighter vagina, for example because they feel that they don’t derive as much pleasure during sex anymore (and seriously, Kegel exercises are a better way to solve that than creams applied to your insides that may or may not have side effects yet to be discovered…)
What intrigued me was the tack the company has chosen while calling its campaign “empowering” and “women-centric”.
In a country that already places such a huge premium on virginity, where daughters are killed for daring to sleep with men of their choice – or married off in childhood to prevent them from doing that, how exactly is it “empowering” to feel like a virgin?
In a country where even urban woman rarely receive any sex education, often don’t know what to expect during sex and face major pressure to be available during a “first night” ceremony regardless of their sex drive, how exactly is it “empowering” to feel like a virgin?
When we consider that many women in general, don’t really feel pleasure during their first sexual experience and on the contrary, do feel some degree of pain, how exactly is it “empowering” to feel like a virgin?
When we consider that a woman’s bleeding (or not bleeding) during her first sexual experience after a marriage, is still considered an indicator of “purity”, and we have anxious young women writing in to agony aunts asking how they can disguise their sexual pasts, how exactly is it “empowering” to feel like a virgin?
When you think of the young men you know, who’ve had their fair share of relationships, and consider them achievements, yet will not hesitate to call a woman with the same experience a slut, cos ‘boys will be boys, you know’, how exactly is it “empowering” to feel like a virgin?
Go ahead and do what you want to make your sex life rock, but “feel like a virgin”? No, thank you! Of course, there may be individual women who have some beautiful memories associated with their first time, but I doubt those memories are to do with the state of their vagina back then.
It’s high time we dropped virginity from its pedestal and stopped romanticizing it – and how great would it be if “women-centric” companies understood that?
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
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