Riesz: Vajazzled

At an 11 a.m. lecture last week, I was approached by a friend whose mere existence I could barely comprehend so early in the morning. Bleary-eyed and slightly dysfunctional (yes, my 11 a.m. is like the rest of the world’s 6 a.m.), I could barely muster a smile in her direction. So you can imagine how my brain shifted into fifth gear when this friend of mine uttered the following statement &- “A store on Comm. Ave. is offering vajazzling! Should I do it?!”

I couldn’t even remember what flavor of coffee I’d ordered from Starbucks that morning, so the idea of discussing the particular aesthetics of my friend’s, um, lower half. . .let’s just say I couldn’t emotionally handle it. But I now think vajazzling deserves a chance. After thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a form of expression we haven’t seen since the invention of the printing press.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock, vajazzling is “the act of applying glitter and jewels to a woman’s nether regions for aesthetic purposes.” It’s like a chandelier down there, basically. Jennifer Love Hewitt expressed her fondness for the procedure and said she uses Swarovski crystals. Now that’s classy. Kathy Griffin showed hers off on national television. Her main cause for getting in the stirrups in front of millions was actually to raise awareness about cervical cancer by getting a pap smear, which incidentally was forgotten.

By the way, if you’re a guy and you’ve made it through the article to this point, congratulations. You’ve got patience.

So yes, vajazzling has become the latest trend in trimming, and I can’t help but wonder if it represents our female desires to be Lady Gaga. She took a stereotypical, boring music industry and made it shiny and new. She’s inspired us to fill every portion of our lives with individuality and superstardom, especially when it comes to fashion. So it seems inevitable with these kinds of public figures that our desire for originality would reach all the way down there. And hey, if nothing else, it’s got that special element of surprise. Particularly if the jewels are arranged in, say, the shape of a squirrel or something.

Of course, upon Googling “vajazzling,” I came across some hilarious responses to the fad. One rather extreme website said that vajazzling was a sinister new threat facing college guys because girls get it done to tempt them into fornicating and having babies. That response is expected &- anything widely publicized involving genitalia has to have a trashy connotation in some communities.

But hey, if we youth were afraid of what people thought, then that girl I saw fall down the stairs at a party last weekend wouldn’t have laughed at herself and gotten up to have another drink. I say we embrace our offensive nature and thus embrace vajazzling, because even though you look like a mermaid, it’s the kind of stuff that exemplifies the springtide of life.