f13.net

Women seeking new 1st time with hymen surgery (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1218hymen18.html)

Amy Chozick
Wall Street Journal
Dec. 18, 2005 12:00 AM

For her 17th wedding anniversary, Jeanette Yarborough wanted to do something special for her husband. In addition to planning a hotel getaway for the weekend, Yarborough paid a surgeon $5,000 to reattach her hymen, making her appear to be a virgin again.

"It's the ultimate gift for the man who has everything," says Yarborough, 40, a medical assistant from San Antonio.

Hymenoplasty, a controversial medical procedure known mostly for its prevalence in the Middle East and Latin America, is becoming popular in the United States. Although there are no hard data, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says vaginal surgery, including hymenoplasty, is one of the industry's fastest-growing segments. Gynecologists are marketing hymenoplasty in magazines, local newspapers and online. They report business is booming.

Restoring innocence this way has sparked criticism. Religious groups that value abstinence until marriage say hymen repair is a deception. Some feminists liken hymenoplasty to female genital mutilation. In addition, hymen repair, unlike other types of reconstructive surgery, isn't taught in medical residencies. Some medical associations worry that surgeons may be improperly trained.

"Revirgination" costs as little as $1,800 at Ridgewood Health and Beauty Center, a spa and cosmetic-surgery center in the New York City borough of Queens. To promote the procedure, the center's owner, Cuban-born Esmeralda Vanegas, has given away hymenoplasties on a Spanish-language radio station. She also promotes them in her eponymous magazine, Esmeralda.

Vanegas isn't a doctor and doesn't perform the procedure. Instead, she leases space to five plastic surgeons. Luis Palma, a doctor at Ridgewood, went to medical school in his native Argentina and was a resident at the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Mass., among other places. Palma says he performs about five hymen repairs a month at Ridgewood, almost double the number of five years ago.

Vanegas says many of her patients risk disgracing their families if they're not virgins on their wedding night. Many are Latin American immigrants. "Losing your virginity is like losing a member of your family," Vanegas says. "We can make it seem like nothing ever happened."

Dr. Marco Pelosi II, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Bayonne, N.J., has been performing hymen repair since 1975 but started marketing the procedure only a year and a half ago. He now performs up to 10 repairs a month, compared with just two annually a decade ago.

"No one used to talk about it, but that's changing," Pelosi says. "Really, it's not like a heart transplant; it's like a very simple procedure."

Pelosi says an increasing number of patients are trying to "improve their sex lives" by combining hymen repair with an operation to tighten their vaginas. He says one patient did it for a second-honeymoon cruise. Another patient, a 51-year-old Manhattan attorney and mother of three, had him reattach her hymen and tighten her vaginal walls in 2003. "I thought it would add that extra sparkle to our marriage," she says.

Named after Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, the vaginal membrane since primitive times has been a marker of virginity, even though it can be ruptured by non-sexual activity, such as athletics. At one time, a bride's intact hymen was considered the only way to be certain about the paternity of any ensuing children. A small number of traditional cultures still require brides' hymens to be examined.

The modern version of hymenoplasty requires a local anesthetic and no hospitalization. A doctor uses dissolvable stitches to reconnect the skin membrane that once partly covered the opening to the vagina. Intercourse will tear the membrane, causing pain and bleeding.

Once reserved for problems such as injuries related to childbirth, vaginal surgery is now being used for cosmetic purposes, as well as to avoid social disgrace. Women can even redesign the look of their private parts. It's part of the overall boom in the plastic-surgery business. Last year, 9.2 million cosmetic procedures were performed in the United States, 24 percent more than in 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Thomas G. Stovall, a recent president of the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons, a top professional body, says, "Hymen repair is a totally bogus procedure." In general, he says, surgery marketed to improve one's sex life rarely works. As for hymen replacement, "most importantly, it doesn't make you a virgin again."

A 26-year-old Latin American woman who lives in New York's Queens had a hymen repair in 2001 and says it took almost two months for her to feel comfortable again. It took even longer for her to enjoy sex.

The married mother of two says she is glad she had the surgery nonetheless. She says her husband wanted to experience intercourse with a virgin. Vanegas concedes her business is based on deception. But she says hymen repair is no different than other cosmetic procedures that women use to impress men.

"I'm a feminist," Vanegas says, "but there's a need for this, and someone has to provide it."

That's actually somewhat difficult for women, seeing as when they urinate, it just...goes.

While for men, there's more of an action.

High school AP Bio, whoo.

You're retarded.

If that woman really wanted to make her husband happy she'd just give him all the blow jobs he wanted. While he drinks beer and watches football.

Amateurs.

You're retarded.

Maybe I'm a mutant.

The SenSlip (http://www.viafin-atlas.com/index2.asp)

The SenSlip is worn on the penis throughout the day, protecting the glans and remaining exposed foreskin from chafing and the elements. Constructed and anatomically formed from the thinnest and finest pre -vulcanised latex and microscopic viscose rayon fibers, the SenSlip has an inner and outer rolling layer to allow natural retraction to expose the glans for urination or cleaning. Like a natural foreskin the SenSlip is specially designed to stay in place all day (it weighs as much as a tissue), and of course it is seamless.

Yes, those foreskin cosmetics are such the rage right now...

Stratatech currently has contracts with a major cosmetics company to use the skin line for consumer products testing. By using the Stratatech product, the company can prove its products are safe for humans without the need for animal testing.

...

Stratatech has plans to move quickly toward possible medical uses, with clinical trials and work with regulatory agencies leading to initial human trials by 2002. Allen-Hoffmann says a number of basic research projects at UW-Madison and elsewhere also are likely to capitalize on this newfound ability to develop realistic models of human skin disease.

Allen-Hoffmann notes that what exactly happened to create these cells remains shrouded in mystery. They arose from a 1996 project in which her research team was studying aging of human skin. The skin used for the experiment was from discarded foreskin from a circumcision. Lab manager Sandy Schlosser, co-discoverer of the NIKS cells, noticed tiny cluster of cells emerged in a petri dish of dead skin cells and ultimately "wound-healed" across the entire dish.

I guess it's easy to be smug when your sexual organ is intact.

I have no problems with the sensations I have during intercourse, *snip*

That said, I'm not buying a penis sock  :-P

I have no problems with the sensations I have during intercourse, *snip*