Can one review Naomi Wolf's Vagina without a graphic?

When Vagina is right in the title of the book, very, very difficult to dodge that, eh!

The Economist has this:

The New York Review of Books has this in its home page, and then has a more arty full-nudity in the inner pages.

The Guardian shows that the book can, indeed, be reviewed without using any such props, and the graphics there are photos of Wolf.

Sure, the images that the Economist and the NYRB have used are arty and wonderful, but were they really needed?

In reviewing Jesse Bering's book, Why is the penis shaped like that?, will these magazines then include graphics of the penis?  (Click here for the post I did after reading the article in the Scientific American.) Or, perhaps not using any arty male nudity will be a reflection of that old and tested idea that both men and women find the nude female body to be beautiful to look at, whereas very few among both the genders find the nude male body truly an arresting view!

The Guardian's approach to review is more, for want of a better word, straightforward, while both the Economist and the NYRB want to draw the reader in by resorting to a Fox News-like sensationalism.

The NYRB opens with:

Lady, love your cunt.

The Economist's review begins thus:

FOR Shakespeare it was a “detested, dark, blood-drinking pit”; to Henry Miller, “that bushy twat”. That special place between a woman’s legs has been a “Heavenly Gate” to Chinese Taoists,

Contrast those with the opening sentences in the Guardian piece:

Naomi Wolf has been one of the world's most famous feminists for more than 20 years and she herself admits it is a very odd job. When she wrote The Beauty Myth in 1991, she was 27 years old, enrolled on a PhD course and not intending to make her career in the field of feminist criticism

Oh well.  It is not that I am going to read this book anyway; never been a fan of Wolf's work.  But, I suspect that the Economist and NYRB are intentionally using those images to minimize her book--subliminal slighting!

A very strange vaginal fixation in ... India?

Growing up in India, I was used to the advertisements for "Fair and Lovely" products that (falsely, of course) promised a lighter skin color when those products are used.  It was simply the market forces responding to the social preference for a "lighter" skin color.  Actually prized more than preferred.  As this BBC news report noted, this genre of skincare products add up to a whole lot of money--more than the sales of Coca Cola in India.

But, it seemed like the skin color issue had reached new lows, and mean "low" in the literal sense as well, when I across a news item about a product to bleach/lighten the pubic hair!  How crazy is that!  This Jezebel post, which is a must-read for its phenomenal satire, noted about the product and the ad:

In this commercial for an Indian product called Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, a (very light-skinned) couple sits down for what would have been a peaceful cup of morning coffee—if the woman's disgusting brown vagina hadn't ruined everything! The dude can't even bring himself look at her. He can't look at his coffee either, because it only reminds him of his wife's dripping, coffee-brown hole! Fortunately, the quick-thinking woman takes a shower, scrubbing her swarthy snatch with Clean and Dry Intimate Wash ("Freshness + Fairness"). And poof! Her vadge comes out blinding white like a downy baby lamb (and NOT THE GROSS BLACK KIND) and her husband—whose penis, I can only assume, is literally a light saber—is all, "Hey, lady! Cancel them divorce papers and LET'S BONE."

Hysterically funny the Jezebel post is, and laugh we should because there is nothing else we can do about this madness :(

If that product was bizarre enough, well, it turns out that there is another one that is being peddled now in India--a cream to tighten the vagina so that women can feel 18 again!  The BBC notes that the ad is:

to market a vaginal "rejuvenation and tightening" product, which was launched this month in India.
The makers of 18 Again, the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Ultratech, say it is the first of its kind in India (similar creams are already available in other parts of the world such as the USA), and fills a gap in the market.

That is right--if it can be sold in the US, then why not in India, right?  USA! USA! USA!

The music and the dance in the ad are not at all Indian, however:



The setting and the characters give it a South Indian--Tamil--feel.  I wonder if there are variations that play at different regions?

Oh Madonna!