What’s that, pray tell? Well, according to best-selling author Jennifer Weiner, it’s the latest in a long string of made up things that women are meant to feel bad about.
Never thought much about your mons pubis? The cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition featuring model Hannah Davies tugging down her togs to reveal the previously non-descript mound of flesh between the top of your knickers and the labia majora will sort you out there. Incidentally, the cover has attracted controversy with critics saying that her togs were much too tiny.
In her column entitled Great! Another thing to hate about ourselves, published in The New York Times, Weiner muses on the enormous trick that has been played on women. That is, that they are in a constant state of needing to be fixed and/or improved.
“Show me a body part, I’ll show you someone who’s making money by telling women that theirs looks wrong and they need to fix it. Tone it, work it out, tan it, bleach it, tattoo it, lipo it, remove all the hair, lose every bit of jiggle,” she writes.
As feminist author Susie Orbach (author of Fat is a Feminist Issue) wrote in her 2009 book Bodies, there’s a lot of money to be made by “the merchants of body hatred” who make money from making women feel insecure.
Think of your bathroom cupboard and all of the lotions and potions in it to target your problem areas, and your pigmentation, and your signs of ageing. Think of the fact that there exist ludicrous concepts such as the thigh gap, the bikini bridge, the fear of tuck shop arms and how that time Gwyneth Paltrow tried to make ‘side butt’ a thing. Think of the Spanx. And then try not to think that you’ve kind of been had.
Even more concerning is how women’s vaginas have become a focus point for insecurities. According to a survey of Australian women last year 1 in 5 would consider labiaplasty – cosmetic surgery.
At what point do we say enough?
As Jennifer Weiner notes in her article, there is little point worrying too much about the state of your mons pubis – there will soon enough be another bothersome or aspirational body part to take its place. There is surely a limit when it comes to things to feel bad about.
As Weiner puts it, “Do you think Eleanor Roosevelt spent a lot of time worrying about her undercarriage?”
Should you be?
