THE UNKINDEST CUT..

Call me cynical, but would last night's documentary about female genital mutilation have even got off the drawing-board had its protagonist not been young, attractive, extremely middle-class and more than a little bit ditzy. "The Perfect Vagina" examined in rather unnecessary detail why more and more women are having their sex organs trimmed to suit society's apparent need for women who look like Barbie dolls.
Lisa Rogers should be applauded for bringing to light a disturbing trend -one which beggars belief some 50 years after the first stirrings of "women's lib." The footage of a young girl screaming in pain as her vagina was injected before surgery is not something one forgets in a hurry. But some of the film was, frankly, a little too prurient. And Rogers was so worried about the (hardly necessary) prospect of splaying her legs for the plastic surgeon making thousands out of this criminal practice that she completely forgot to give him the excoriation he so richly deserved.
Surgeons who make money out of young girls' insecurities are frankly scum and one wonders if the result of this programme will be raised consciousness or more customers ? The sight of Rogers "having a Brazilian" was frankly also unnecessary. The assumption this is commonplace practice was extraordinary. I don't know any women who go in for it but maybe it/'s a generational thing.
Other criticisms? The documentary was also appallingly snobbish. Rogers's cool middle-class male mates had of course the right attitudes towards women and their "bits." Her working-class builders, by way of contrast, were sexist oiks. A representative study? Hardly. And finally the "dippy hippy" she made fun of was actually employing a technique I read of years ago in feminist Bible "Our Bodies Our Selves" - namely women's self-help groups examining each other's genitalia for reassurance. Not my cup of tea either - but hardly a new phenomenon. In conclusion, this is an issue which needed to be taken seriously. This documentary was just froth.