So this year women have marched as sluts and fannies. You know, I don't think we're sending out the right message. While I entirely agree with the principles behind these marches, they seem to be reducing women to the same kind of stereotypes we're fighting against: that we're defined by our vaginas. We seem to have compromised a lot in a race to get headlines, to get trending on Twitter, and to get our witty placards on newspaper slideshows.
This weekend's Muff March was about the very real issue of cosmetic genital surgery. Some women are feeling so ashamed of their nether regions that they're willing to take a knife to it. Lady gardens are not just undergoing topiary, they're having invasive re-landscaping. Labiaplasty (cutting off bits of the labia), vaginal tightening, and hymen reconstruction are all on the increase. And while women, importantly, are consenting to these procedures, the context in which they're doing so is the problem. A context of lady-bits of shame. Women and girls have to live with accusations of smelling like fish, smelling during our periods, having vaginas that are too slack, having labia that is not neat enough, growing too much hair (as though it's a choice), or not decorating a minge like a Christmas tree with some ghastly vajazzle. They're reacting to these accusations with razors, wax and a surgeon's scalpel.
There has been far more activism against "designer vaginas" in the US, where the phenomenon has been more prevalent for longer. But there is an interesting difference in approach. US activism is far more concerned about the risk of such untested, unregulated, and unnecessary procedures to women's health. The Muff March in London became undeniably and inevitably about porn. That will certainly help it get press coverage for a couple of days and get the commentators apoplectic. But it will also alienate a lot of women who do not believe all their personal choices about their body are porn-based; that bush trimming is treachery; or who certainly don't want the focus of women's rights to be muff-centric.
Making the march about porn obscures the very real health risks of this surgery – experimental procedures carried out to demand that surgeons aren't trained to do – and, more widely, the quack "remedies" for non-existent sexual problems peddled by immoral fluff pieces in newspapers and magazines.
As Dr Petra Boynton, sex researcher and educator, commented: "The focus of the Muff March on porn is, I think, limiting. While porn has undoubtedly had an impact on how we view our bodies I don't think it is accurate to simply see it as the main factor driving women to have cosmetic genital surgery or remove their pubic hair. In fact I'd say the mainstream media has a far greater role to play here but is not held accountable."
Don't get me wrong, I'm a massive muff fan. Happily, in my experience, many men agree with Louis de Bernières: there's nothing better than to "burrow and disappear into a good, abundant, honest muff". But I don't see how this protest addresses the very real issues of the health risk of this surgery and other quack medicines being touted in the press to men and women about their arbitrarily-defined "sexual dysfunction".
It doesn't make the link to all the "Penis Enlargement! Viagra Sale!" emails currently pounding my spam folder, nor the wider medicalisation of sex. It draws parallels to female genital mutilation which is monumentally insensitive to the women and girls living with that across the world. These are women who would not be donning a tinselled merkin in the centre of London.
It's remarkable that all women have to do to make a political statement, it seems, is not shave. So much is done to make us feel ashamed about our fulsome beavers that a full-on muff is seen as "courageous", "brave", or even "Don King in a leglock".
Organising a march with women parading as quims and condemning pornography is, ironically, sexy for the media – as proven by the large number of photographers at Saturday's march. But being pro-muff doesn't mean I feel the need to shove my growler in your face.
Its great that people are getting off their laptops and doing something to change the world. But that has to be followed by logical and sensible discussion of the core issues: pleasing the media to get a picture of a bunch of stunts is not enough.
