In ‘terrible topics that just won’t die’ news, we're still talking about the thigh gap, only now things have got really depressing. Earlier this year, The Dirty jumped on the thigh gap debate bandwagon (and what a boring bandwagon that must be), with some particularly dubious scientific findings. Apparently, gaps are ‘determined by the structure of your pelvis’. I’m with you so far, The Dirty. Then their workings get weird. ‘The more outward [your vagina] faces, the farther apart your thighs are. The more inward it faces, the closer. That also determines the tightness of your vagina. The bigger the thigh gap, the looser the vagina. The smaller the thigh gap, the tighter the vagina. Girls, be happy if you don’t have a thigh gap.’
Once I stopped laughing incredulously, I had many, many questions. The first and most pressing being, where are you getting your information from, The Dirty? Can you show me data demonstrating you asked over 1,000 women for permission to analyse their gap-to-width ratio? Ah. Thought not. So this was a hoax, right? A stupid hoax that should have died a death this summer when The Dirty first made their tentative foray into pelvic engineering? Actually no, because people are still talking about it now, and this weekend hundreds of people inexplicably took to Twitter to present the thigh gap/vagina size story again as fact.
READ MORE: This Spoof Advert Reminds Us Just How Insane The Thigh Gap Thing Really Is
Whether it's true or not (spoiler alert: it's not), this is clearly mad. For starters, whether you have or don’t have a thigh gap is only a problem if you’re killing yourself by trying to cultivate one? If you would sooner throw vinegar in your eye than put it on some chips because you’re trying to attain the sort of lower body that a child could drive a tricycle through, you might need someone to gently point out the advantages of not having a gap. But the ‘you’re still sexual!’ consolation prize really isn’t the one. It’s as bad as when the Sainsbury's supervisor takes the Weight Watchers lasagne out of your hand while saying ‘Go full fat, love. Men like something to hold on to! WOOF!’
If you want to make a woman feel wildly insecure and miserable, you can always go for her fanny. Capitalist culture has provided us with all sorts of armour for dealing with the body parts we can see. We can fix bloating, weird hairs and cracked heels. Should you have the patience for it, you can contour like Kim Kardashian and draw a new, better face on top of your existing one. Demand for labiaplasty is at an all-time high, with some surgeons choosing to link this development to the amount of porn we’re watching. Personally I think that we’ve become conditioned to think so badly of our bodies that we’ll go out of our way to fix what isn’t broken – but if reconstructing your labia makes you genuinely happier, all power to your elbow (and foof). But we’re pretty much powerless over what happens internally. So when an unfamiliar website suggests that you feel bad about your ‘loose vagina’, you’re going to do a few panicky pelvic floor exercises before your brain takes over and shouts ‘Oi! What have my bits got to do with you, The Dirty?’
READ MORE: Apparently We're Still Talking About The Thigh Gap
I’m hoping this ‘news’ represents the zenith, or rather nadir, of the Thigh Gap Phenomenon. Because when a purported news outlet thinks it's OK to validate us by our vaginal width, and people are still talking about it months later, we know that the dystopian future has arrived, and we’re living in it. The way we talk about women’s bodies doesn’t do anyone any good.
I think about the women I know, and my local ‘women news’ this week. One has just finished writing a novel, another has been asked to speak at an international conference about environmental issues, another is just about to finish a PhD. When I search for women on Google news, I see women losing or gaining weight, wearing dresses, getting haircuts, and being criticised for an abundance or insufficiency of sexiness. It does feel as if owning a vagina means you have to do all your normal human things while climbing a mountain, or running an assault course of ludicrous demands, suggestions and opinions. When you explicitly say that having a tight vagina is somehow aspirational, you’re making it very clear that we will never escape our bodies, or rather, the judgement that comes with inhabiting them.
Maybe my initial instinct was right and this story was originally meant to be a hoax, a way of demonstrating how far behind we are and how much needs to change in terms of the relationship the media has with women and our bodies. Otherwise this is just a story about different women having different bodies, which is in no way news.
Like this? Then you might be interested in:
Dakota Fanning Has Lots Of Sensible Things To Say On Body Image, Hollywood And Fashion
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.