Lilith
03-09-2003, 12:18 PM
By Cara Buckley
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI - It promises to make you feel like a virgin, touched for the very first time.
Feel pain, it says, and offer proof (with fake blood). Most importantly, fool him into believing he's the first.
VirginMe, a product sold online through a Miami address, purports to restore the semblance of virginity without surgery for $199. Buyers are sent electronic instructions to download.
VirginMe's target: Women from cultures that view virginity as a symbol of a woman's purity and innocence.
The Food and Drug Administration has never heard of VirginMe. Bona fide doctors say the product is most assuredly a scam.
Yet as harebrained as VirginMe may sound, demand for the "restoration" of virginity is real.
Every year, doctors across America perform hymen repair surgery on hundreds of young women who fear stigmatization -- or worse -- if their sexual experience is uncovered.
"There are still some places in this world where, if a woman is not a virgin at the time of her marriage, she can be murdered as a matter of family honor with no repercussions whatsoever," said Dr. Pamela Loftus, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based plastic surgeon who performs roughly 100 hymen repair procedures a year.
Less drastic consequences of loss of virginity can include being disowned by one's family or a quickie divorce, she said.
Most of Loftus' hymen repair patients are Muslim and from the Middle East. Some come to the United States for college, have sex, and need to provide evidence of virginity when they return home and marry. Demand is also strong, she said, among Asian and Latina women.
"This is a very, very important situation for some women, and this operation quite honestly saves lives," she said.
The surgery involves repairing the hymenal ring inside a woman's vagina, and can only be performed on women who have had relatively little intercourse and can afford the going rate of $2,900 and up.
VirginMe's Miami address, as it turns out, is for a mail-forwarding center, and the Web site is registered to one Khan Jamil of Lahore, Pakistan.
A person who identified himself as "John Smith" replied to questions from the Miami Herald by e-mail. Smith claimed that 1,500 sales have been made since the company launched five months ago, with most sales going to the United States and the Indian subcontinent.
Smith offered the name of a doctor who apparently approved the product, but did not offer credentials. Requests for more details about the product itself went unanswered.
Neither Southeast Florida's Better Business Bureau nor the National Consumers League have received complaints about the VirginMe, but both offices urged buyers to be wary.
"It's easier for people to put aside common sense when shopping online," said Carol McKay, a spokesperson for the NCL. "We always tell people if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Doctors who perform genital repair scoffed at the product's premise outright.
"It's absolute baloney," said Dr. Bernard Stern, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based cosmetic surgeon who recently restored the hymen of a 19-year-old Colombian who was getting married back home. "Only surgery can rebuild that which is torn down, there is not magic cream that will do that. It's not even comical, and shows you can sell anything to anybody anytime."
The number of hymen repairs performed in the United States, at least those reported, are too low for the American Association of Plastic Surgeons to track or even guess at. The association is hard-pressed to name a surgeon who performs the procedure. Far more common, in the realm of the female genitalia, are surgeries such as labiaplasty, which reshapes vaginal lips, and vaginal tightening, which makes things snugger for women who've borne children.
Because of the shame and desperation that drive demand for hymen repair, doctors say, VirginMe preys on the vulnerabilities of the women who may seek it out.
Any woman considering hymen repair should research their options, and potential doctors, painstakingly, Loftus said. Every year the number of procedures she performs rises, she says, as women advise one another on where to go and Internet use proliferates.
"They're easily victimized; then at the time of marriage, what they were expecting wasn't there," said Loftus. "For every 100 women who contact me, there are probably thousands in other places in this situation."
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI - It promises to make you feel like a virgin, touched for the very first time.
Feel pain, it says, and offer proof (with fake blood). Most importantly, fool him into believing he's the first.
VirginMe, a product sold online through a Miami address, purports to restore the semblance of virginity without surgery for $199. Buyers are sent electronic instructions to download.
VirginMe's target: Women from cultures that view virginity as a symbol of a woman's purity and innocence.
The Food and Drug Administration has never heard of VirginMe. Bona fide doctors say the product is most assuredly a scam.
Yet as harebrained as VirginMe may sound, demand for the "restoration" of virginity is real.
Every year, doctors across America perform hymen repair surgery on hundreds of young women who fear stigmatization -- or worse -- if their sexual experience is uncovered.
"There are still some places in this world where, if a woman is not a virgin at the time of her marriage, she can be murdered as a matter of family honor with no repercussions whatsoever," said Dr. Pamela Loftus, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based plastic surgeon who performs roughly 100 hymen repair procedures a year.
Less drastic consequences of loss of virginity can include being disowned by one's family or a quickie divorce, she said.
Most of Loftus' hymen repair patients are Muslim and from the Middle East. Some come to the United States for college, have sex, and need to provide evidence of virginity when they return home and marry. Demand is also strong, she said, among Asian and Latina women.
"This is a very, very important situation for some women, and this operation quite honestly saves lives," she said.
The surgery involves repairing the hymenal ring inside a woman's vagina, and can only be performed on women who have had relatively little intercourse and can afford the going rate of $2,900 and up.
VirginMe's Miami address, as it turns out, is for a mail-forwarding center, and the Web site is registered to one Khan Jamil of Lahore, Pakistan.
A person who identified himself as "John Smith" replied to questions from the Miami Herald by e-mail. Smith claimed that 1,500 sales have been made since the company launched five months ago, with most sales going to the United States and the Indian subcontinent.
Smith offered the name of a doctor who apparently approved the product, but did not offer credentials. Requests for more details about the product itself went unanswered.
Neither Southeast Florida's Better Business Bureau nor the National Consumers League have received complaints about the VirginMe, but both offices urged buyers to be wary.
"It's easier for people to put aside common sense when shopping online," said Carol McKay, a spokesperson for the NCL. "We always tell people if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Doctors who perform genital repair scoffed at the product's premise outright.
"It's absolute baloney," said Dr. Bernard Stern, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based cosmetic surgeon who recently restored the hymen of a 19-year-old Colombian who was getting married back home. "Only surgery can rebuild that which is torn down, there is not magic cream that will do that. It's not even comical, and shows you can sell anything to anybody anytime."
The number of hymen repairs performed in the United States, at least those reported, are too low for the American Association of Plastic Surgeons to track or even guess at. The association is hard-pressed to name a surgeon who performs the procedure. Far more common, in the realm of the female genitalia, are surgeries such as labiaplasty, which reshapes vaginal lips, and vaginal tightening, which makes things snugger for women who've borne children.
Because of the shame and desperation that drive demand for hymen repair, doctors say, VirginMe preys on the vulnerabilities of the women who may seek it out.
Any woman considering hymen repair should research their options, and potential doctors, painstakingly, Loftus said. Every year the number of procedures she performs rises, she says, as women advise one another on where to go and Internet use proliferates.
"They're easily victimized; then at the time of marriage, what they were expecting wasn't there," said Loftus. "For every 100 women who contact me, there are probably thousands in other places in this situation."