Lindy McDougall, "The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century" (Indiana UP, 2021)

Lindy McDougall, "The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century" (Indiana UP, 2021)

Today on New Books in Gender Studies Jana Byars talks with Lindy McDougall, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia about her new book, The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century, out this year, 2021, with Indiana University Press. In The Perfect Vagina, Lindy McDougall provides an ethnographic account of women who choose FGCS in Australia and the physicians who perform these procedures, both in Australia and globally, while also examining the environment in which surgeons and women come together. Physicians have a vested interest in establishing this surgery as valid medical intervention, despite majority medical opinion explicitly acknowledging that a wide range of genital variation is normal. McDougall offers a nuanced picture of why and how these procedures are performed and draws parallels between FGCS and anthropological discussions of female genital circumcision (cutting). Using the neologism biomagical, she argues that cosmetic surgery functions as both ritual and sacrifice due to its promise of transformation while simultaneously submitting the body to the risks and pain of surgery, thus exposing biomedicine as an increasingly cultural and commercial pursuit. The Perfect Vagina highlights the complexities involved with FGCS, its role in Western beauty culture, and the creation and control of body image in countries where self-care is valorized and medicine is increasingly harnessed for enhancement as well as health. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies" (Duke UP, 2026)

Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies" (Duke UP, 2026)

Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter do...

3 Apr 52min

Satya Shikha Chakraborty, "Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Satya Shikha Chakraborty, "Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India (Cambridge UP, 2025) offers a compelling cultural and social history of ayahs (nannies/maids), by exploring domes...

25 Mars 1h 3min

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked...

9 Mars 1h 11min

Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)

Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)

Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Mattie Armstrong-Price offers a social and cultural history of railway ...

7 Mars 43min

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he's been largely forgotten. In The Ein...

5 Mars 50min

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice, and advocacy for Black women’s pursuit of bodily au...

28 Feb 1h 6min

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Mark D. Steinbe...

21 Feb 1h 3min

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each countr...

30 Jan 55min

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