December 16, 2005

By Maurizio Molinari

Translated By Enrico Del Sero

Original Article (Italian)

Doctors Perform Laser Vaginal Rejuvination.

Doctors call it hymenoplasty while marketing experts prefer "revirgination," but whatever one calls it, it is the newest trend in American plastic surgery, and it allows women to regain their virginity. It's as though nothing had happened until then. Clinics offering the plastic hymens (price ranges from $1,800 to $5,000) from New England to the Midwest to California, register an increasing number of women wanting to give their partners a new "first time" after years of cohabitation or marriage. Sometimes they do so to get their relationships out of trouble.

But according to "Esmeralda" - a magazine edited by Cuban-American Esmeralda Vanegas that promotes hymenoplasty in her clinic in Queens [NY] – there are many cases of women who, in order to win over a new partner and demonstrate to him that they really want to leave the past behind, gamble on presenting themselves as absolutely immaculate when the time for the full sexual act arrives. Then there are underage girls of Hispanic or Muslim origin who regret losing their virginity with the wrong person, and so opt for plastic surgery to convince their relatives and future husbands that nothing ever happened.

Older women often ask for specific operations: some want more than just a brand new hymen, and ask for additional attention, such as a narrowing of the vagina for their partners to enjoy deeper pleasure. Dr. Edward Jacobson of Greenwich, one of the exclusive cities in Connecticut, not only benefits from his local popularity, but looks outside of the domestic market, offering through his Web site "vaginal makeover" packages to non American patients, that includes airfare, limousine service and hotel accommodation. [Listen to Dr. Jacobson ]

American women seeking to regain their virginity are so numerous that the Ethics Committee of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology last year tried to get a handle on the procedure by sending a letter to each of its members to warning them of the sanitary risks involved with a technique "ignored by medical literature," since the procedure is not mentioned in medicine literature of taught at American medical schools.

The Ultimate 'Triumph of Chauvinism?'

Being an unofficial medical practice, it represents a risk for patients, whose actual number cannot be worked out. It is basically a commercial phenomenon sought out by women and performed by an increasing number of plastic surgeons.

The discontent over this phenomenon has affected feminists and traditional Catholic and Muslim women alike, who are finally fighting together on the same front.

Ultraliberal women regret the triumph of greatest myth of chauvinist culture, while ultraconservatives fear a further weakening of the institution of virginity, and believe that this must be kept until a woman is married. Both the Democratic myth of an emancipated woman and the Republican hope of a revival of family values appear jeopardized by long lines of women booking revirgination operations.