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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Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)

Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)

Human trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has de...

11 Jan 58min

Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and...

29 Dec 202530min

Hannah Frydman, "Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Hannah Frydman, "Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Hannah Frydman reveals a space, hidden in plain sight in Third Republi...

16 Dec 202545min

Timothy Gitzen, "Unscripting the Present" (SUNY Press, 2025)

Timothy Gitzen, "Unscripting the Present" (SUNY Press, 2025)

Timothy Gitzen's Unscripting the Present (SUNY Press, 2025) interrogates contemporary sex panics in the United States, looking especially at popular culture texts to conceptualize queer youth survival...

9 Dec 202541min

Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasu...

1 Dec 202549min

Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)

Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jaco...

29 Nov 202542min

Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or ...

27 Nov 202540min

Margaret Grace Myers, "The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine" (Beacon Press, 2025)

Margaret Grace Myers, "The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine" (Beacon Press, 2025)

The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, an...

21 Nov 202539min

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