I suppose it had to happen. Here’s Stephanie Stahl the other night on the 11 o’clock news telling us how some women are getting new vaginas. This is one time when the cosmetic surgeons have gone too far. If I wanted a woman with a fake vagina, I could buy one of those blow-up dolls (and just think how I’d reduce my credit card bills).
The whole thing was handled the way the 11 o’clock news handles all its self-help and consumer news: Medical men in white coats saying how a vagina makeover is just another option for women who want to please their mate after child bearing has taken its toll on you-know-where. Another medical man, also in a white coat, warns this surgery is not only completely unnecessary, but life threatening as well (of all the things to die for). And, of course, it all winds up with a smiling Stephanie introducing us to adult females ecstatically happy over their new intimate body part. There were no male testimonials, which I thought was strange since the women were driven to this latest surgical mutilation in their ever-constant search to please their man. I guess body waxing isn’t enough torture.
Waiting in the supermarket checkout line, I scan the women’s magazines. It is easy to see women spend a good part of their time trying to figure out how to keep their spouses or boyfriends interested. Cosmopolitan offers new sex techniques to drive him wild, "Liquid lust" being one of the ways (don’t ask). In fact, except for Family Circle, which continues to believe a new lime gelatin dessert is the way to a man’s heart, all of the women’s magazines and tabloids offer sex secrets on what men supposedly really want in the sack. I hate to be the one to break it to my female readers, but what men really want is really simple and none of these techniques, not even a cosmetically repaired vagina, is the answer.
What men really want is variety – lots of hot women. This is the dirty little secret mothers never tell their daughters. It’s the one secret magazines like Cosmo fail to address. You won’t hear your priest discuss it during pre-marital instructions or whatever they call it these days (I don’t blame the priests; some have their own problems). Men are not monogamous by nature. It is not in our gene structure. There are only two kinds of men – those who cheat and those who think about it. The ones who think about it never stop thinking about it, no matter how old they are. Uncle Junior may be senile, but I guarantee you he thinks about shtupping his nurse. Jimmy Carter once told Playboy he had lust in his heart and that’s how I knew he was an honest man, because we all do. Every last one of us.
Did you ever see that episode of the now-defunct HBO series "The Mind of the Married Man?" This is the one where the married guys are playing poker and talking about sex. One of them says, for every beautiful woman in the world, there’s a guy too bored to make love to her (and I cleaned that up). A copy of this show ought to be given to every woman in America at birth. Stop knocking yourself out. It ain’t going to work. Even Halle Berry got dumped.
Please don’t charge me with being overly cynical. You want the truth, well, some of you can’t handle the truth, as ol’ Jack would say with a twinkle in his eye. It’s important women understand the truth before they make yet another trip to the cosmetic surgeon or, for that matter, down the aisle. As women, it is your job to distinguish between the two types of men before you give them your heart or other body parts, as the case may be. I happen to belong to the 50 percent or so of men who don’t cheat. I prefer to call this group the Noble Men. We are either too scared of our wives or confined to wheelchairs and find it impossible to cheat. In a sense, we are men in control of our hormones. But it’s a constant struggle. Ladies, this is the best you can hope for from us. If you choose from the other 50 percent – or what I like to call the Your Cheatin’ Heart group – you can be certain your mate will be staying late at the office no matter how many times you wax your po-po.
Be forewarned, even if you choose a Noble Man, his mind will still cloud at the first sight of a string bikini. When we stop looking is when we stop breathing. And remember, as Larry David once reminded his wife when she wanted them to renew their vows for all eternity: All bets are off once we’re in the hereafter. Death ends the contract. Heaven is a whole new ballgame.
We are shallow. But it’s who we are.
