This Saturday activists in London led by UK Feminista will be taking to the streets, and one street in particular: Harley Street – the go-to place for cosmetic surgery. We'll be staging the first ever Muff March – a creative protest against the pornified culture driving women under the knife to get a "designer vagina". We'll also be protesting against the cosmetic surgeries ruthlessly profiting from this practice. A Muff March is also planned for Southampton.
Activists will be wearing fake "muffs" and demanding that pornography and cosmetic surgery industries "Keep their mitts off our bits".
Female genital cosmetic surgery is on the rise, with a variety of procedures available, including vaginal rejuvenation, designer vaginoplasty, G spot amplification and revirgination. Between 2007 and 2008 there was a 70% increase in the number of labiaplasty operations carried out by the NHS, and last year the Harley Medical Group received more than 5,000 inquiries about cosmetic gynaecology.
Female genital mutilation has long been detested in western culture, yet the amount of flesh removed in labiaplasty is comparable with that of types I and II female genital mutilation, and research from the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology suggests that "surgery may damage the nerve supply and is associated with impaired sexual function".
There is a growing concern among women that their genitals don't "measure up" to the ideal touted by the global pornography industry – which for the past two decades has been busy infiltrating mainstream society. In porn, removal of pubic hair is de rigueur, and so we see this norm transferred into mainstream beauty practices. With removal of pubic hair now standard, labia are more visible and open to scrutiny. Now every inch of a woman's body is objectified and subject to judgment. So on Saturday we'll be challenging the demand from pornography that grown women remove their pubic hair to appear more like pre-pubescent girls.
These porn ideals have seeped into public consciousness so much so that even Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies, which claims to soothe insecurity about common bodily issues, refers a woman to a cosmetic surgeon to have her perfectly healthy labia sliced off.
We object to the intrusion of pornified culture into our everyday lives, but we also object to the unregulated and unnecessary practice of these procedures by private surgeons and the unashamed profiteering resulting from female body hatred.
We don't buy the neoliberal rhetoric that insists this issue is not political because women "freely choose" to get procedures like this done. The cosmetic surgery industry ruthlessly stokes women's appearance insecurities and mines their bodies to extract maximum profits. Accountability, monitoring, and auditing are not words this industry is used to.
We hope our Muff March will spark a wave of activism against cosmetic surgery and the porn culture which distorts our body image. For too long they've reaped massive rewards. It's time to fight back.
