“I bet you’re worried. I was worried. I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don’t think about them.”
– Eve Ensler, Vagina Monologues
Priya Bose (name changed) moved from Kolkata to Mumbai at the age of 22. She knew how her life would be. Living alone gave scope for freedom and some fun, which Priya did for four years. She lived the life she wanted and dated a couple of guys. But when it came to marriage she knew she will have to marry a man from her own conservative community, so she went for a minor plastic surgery, a little nip and tuck here and there and became a virgin again.
“It was the only choice I had,” she said on condition of anonymity. “Most guys in my community expect their brides to be virgins and to find a guy who would be understanding about it is a risky process. Many may reject on those grounds and it may even have to get back to my parents, which would make things even messier. Unfortunately, while most men date today, they still want virgin brides. Surgery is a far easier option.”
Hymenoplasty is a growing trend today. Plastic surgeons speak about growing numbers every year, as a number of young unmarried women come in for a little nip and tuck to avoid difficulties in their marriages and these are women from the big cities, not rural belles. “I perform at least one hymenoplasty every month,” said Dr Kiran Naik, a plastic surgeon who runs Cosmetic Surgery Center in Bandra. “The numbers have definitely increased in the last five years, but I wouldn’t call it a dramatic increase. It’s mostly unmarried, young women, at least 60 per cent of whom are college students. We do try to tell them that this is not a necessary procedure, but they are far too worried about what the family will say, the prospective groom will say, so they insist on the procedure.”
Today’s procedures make it easy too. A 30-minute surgery and a three-month healing period, following which there is virtually no sign of a surgical scar. Some clinics even offer a blood capsule inserted during surgery to ensure the expected blood-letting on the marital bedsheets during the ‘first night’ post-wedding.
But while the sterile white high-end plastic surgery clinics are getting patients, this need for hymenoplasty has also resulted in the kind of online ads that can only be termed as spurious.
Here’s an advertisement by somebody claiming to be a doctor, who promises to perform miracles on your ..er..nether regions.
“We are not in favour of it,” says Dr Bansal, who runs Harley Street Cosmetic Clinic. “We counsel against it to patients who come to our clinic. Even if a woman never had pre-marital sex, there is no guarantee that her hymen is intact. It can break because of strenuous activity, cycling, horse-riding and she would never know. Besides there is nothing wrong in pre-marital sex. Most men are sexually active before marriage, so why shouldn’t women do the same? Times have changed. However most men expect their brides to be virgins, which is so wrong.”
Hymenoplasty is a worrisome trend because despite the supposedly progressive lives we urban women lead today, it is clear that we still haven’t been able to shake off the yokel of society’s restrictions. A 2013 survey by the India Today group indicates that even though men are three times more likely to have premarital sex than women, at least 77 per cent of men still insist on a blushing “virgin bride”.
And this in a society where dating has become common, as have physical relationships. Twenty years ago, nobody would admit to having a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but today it’s a fairly normal issue, or so it seemed until this survey came up.
Essentially, it means that despite the appearance of a certain sexual liberalism in Indian society, underneath it all the mindset towards sex and sexuality, particularly for women, hasn’t moved much. Part of it is an unhealthy fixation for the virginity that spans across all cultures and across the globe for which experts have come up with no explanation so far.
In March 2014, a 27-year-old American student, using the name ‘Elizabeth Raine’ announced she was auctioning her virginity. The proceeds would go towards charity, she said. Her inspiration was a similar auction conducted in 2008 by Natalie Dylan, who wanted the money to finance her grad school tuitions. While ‘Elizabeth’ got a tidy bid of US$801,000 for virginity, Dylan received a whopping bid of US$3.8 million for hers. In the case of Elizabeth, she had a change of heart, and in the case of Dylan, the Australian businessman who bid for her reconciled with his ex-wife, so Dylan received only part payment – still a big sum of US$250,000.
What is scary here is that there are men who are actually willing to cough up that much money for a piece of hymen. It would save everybody a lot of time, money and emotional anguish if both sexes had open talk about it, but more importantly that they accept the hymen for what it really is – a piece of skin connecting two vaginal lips, and nothing more.
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