It's hard to decide what's most offensive about "laser vaginal rejuvenation" - the very fact that vagina-tightening cosmetic surgery exists, or the way the procedure is being marketed in Winnipeg.

Let's start with the latter. An astute colleague, aware of my obsessions with gender and media, recently brought in an ad for First Glance Aesthetic Clinic, which ran in the Winnipeg Free Press. It features a slim blond woman in a white swimsuit, standing with her back to the camera. Her hands, fingers splayed, are holding the backs of her thighs, ever-so-slightly separating her ass cheeks as if to say, "Come - explore my delightful, surgically tightened vagina!"

The text proclaims that laser vaginal rejuvenation will give women "a more aesthetically pleasing vulvar region."

"For women who want to improve their love life and how they feel about themselves," it continues, "because you're worth it!"

Ugh. To imply that women are opting for LVR out of a sense of female empowerment while simultaneously exploiting women's fear of being ugly - and thus undesirable and unlovable - is repugnant.

It's bad enough that women are taught that their worth is in their looks, and it's bad enough that we voluntarily subject ourselves to a litany of costly beauty treatments in a doomed quest to measure up to unrealistic, unachievable standards of beauty.

With the arrival of LVR, things have gone from bad to worse. Now our most private body part is fair game for scrutiny and judgement.

Now we have to start worrying that our love lives will suffer because of our loose, ugly pussies.

Shortly after the ad for LVR first appeared in its pages, the Free Press ran a full-page article on the topic. Costs were examined (anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000) and medical experts were interviewed, including Dr. Anthony Lockwood, the surgeon offering LVR to any flabby-foofed women who can afford to pay him.

(FYI, Dr. Lockwood also offers a wide range of other "designer laser vaginoplasty." My personal favorite is hymenoplasty: a surgery that his website explains "can repair the hymen as if nothing ever occurred." Finally - a way to reverse accidental virginity loss and restore family honour!)

The article also included a testimonial from an anonymous 28-year-old housewife who, in addition to breast implants, has undergone two labial reduction surgeries. She says her labia are "nice and trim and prettier," and adds she now wants to get LVR.

Unfortunately, feminist analysis of the subject was almost non-existent in the article. No one asked, for example, why a 28-year-old woman feels she needs repeated surgeries, or why she's always hated her labia.

Instead, it was pointed out that women with self-image problems (um - that's kind of all of us) should be treated for mental-health issues and that fostering a healthy self-image is society's responsibility.

Right. So maybe we could start by recognizing that women's genitals aren't ugly and don't need to be fixed.

Access to a vagina is a privilege, not a right. If you're close enough to a women's vulvar region to be able to assess its esthetic merit, you should consider yourself lucky.