How to Have Sex Like a Virgin for Only 30 Bucks
Belief:
Atheism and Diversity: Is It Wrong For Atheists To Convert Believers?
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Don't Fear the Deficit Bogeyman
John Miller
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
White House Garden Won't Make Up for Obama's Nomination of Pesticide Lobbyist for US Chief Agriculture Negotiator
Jill Richardson
Food:
Don't Be Scared of Food: Are We Being Needlessly Hysterical About Food Safety?
David E. Gumpert
Health and Wellness:
47,000 Women Could Die As a Result of the New Mammogram Guidelines
George Lakoff
Immigration:
Republican Playbook on Immigration Debate Long on Emotions, Short on Facts
Mary Giovagnoli
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
Disney Apocalypse: Why 2012 Sucks
Alexander Zaitchik
Politics:
White House's Ties to Health Care Industry Deeper Than Visitor Records Show
Daniela Perdomo
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Whatever Happened to the CIA Black Sites?
David Corn
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Is Obama Following in the Footsteps of Bill Clinton?
Jeff Cohen
Purity has its price: it's $29.90. At least that's how much it costs to obtain the "artificial virginity hymen," a plastic baggie filled with mysterious red crap meant to resemble the chaste secretions of a recently deflowered virgin.
"No more worry about losing your virginity," reads the Web site of Gigimo, the Chinese sex-toy company that distributes the product. (Whew!) "With this product, you can have your first night back anytime."
To bring back that magic, all you have to do is:
Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable.
On the site's landing page, a very young-looking woman in a pink nighty, her bare breast partially covered by a digitally imposed pink heart, appears to be really looking forward to having her fake virginity taken.
Another enticing illustration helpfully shows the end result; unsurprisingly, it looks like someone splattered some fake blood on something. That fake blood, according to the site, is "clinically proven nontoxic to human" and has "No side effects, no pain to use, no allergic reaction." The clinical studies aren’t cited.
Another thing the movie prop has going for it is the low price, at least compared to the cost of a hymenoplasty, the hymen-reconstructive procedure brightly referred to as "revirgination." Those cost between $2,500 and $4,500 a (non)pop, according to a Web site that compiles useful hymen-related information and is sponsored, of course, by doctors who perform the procedure.
While there is no hard data on the prevalence of hymenoplasties, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2005 that plastic surgeons have noticed a sizable uptick in requests for the procedure. Most doctors don't perform the surgery, but many plastic surgeons who do are upping their advertising on billboards, magazines and on the radio.
Revirgination.net, a Web site devoted to a variety of weird things women can do to their vaginas for lots of money -- designer vagina, vaginal rejuvination -- sings the praises of surgical "revirgination" thusly:
The virginity of a woman is valued for religious, social and even economic reasons. Hymen gets disrupted after the first intercourse or even after strenuous physical activity or tampon use. Anyway, you wouldn't want your boyfriend/future husband feel ashamed because your hymen no longer existed.
Indeed!
So, shoving a pouch filled with strange chemicals in your vagina isn't the worst thing you can do to it?
Gigimo did not reply to AlterNet's queries about where and how much of the product is sold, so it's hard to know how popular the artificial hymen is in the U.S. The rise in vaginal procedures though, would point to a pretty good potential market.
See more stories tagged with: sex, sex, women, men, egypt, sex toys, virginity, purity, gigimo
Tana Ganeva is an associate editor at AlterNet.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
You've chosen to turn comments off for the entire site. Would you like to turn them back on?
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.