Giving a 40- or 50-year-old woman a 20-year-old vagina is not all that Matlock has in his bag of genital tricks. He can also restore her virginity through a technique called hymenalplasty. Essentially the reconstruction of the hymen, this procedure has brought to Matlock's office a steady clientele of Middle Eastern women. "You can't believe how hysterical some of these women are. They come in here and say they're going to get killed unless they get this done. They're telling us that back home their brother will kill them, that their father will kill them. It's terrible. The majority of these Middle Eastern women are coming in to have hymenalplasty because they're getting ready to get married in their home country. All of them tell me that the groom's side of the family can pick whatever doctor they want to determine whether or not she's a virgin, to determine whether she's worth it or not to be married to their son. So there are religious implications, there are social implications."

That Matlock could become the Salman Rushdie of the Islamic vagina doesn't seem to unhinge him. On the contrary. "If I can help a woman in this unfair world," he says with a certain characteristic zeal, "then I'm going to go ahead and do it. I have no problems about doing it whatsoever. The man, he gets to do whatever he wants to do. Is he held accountable for anything? Absolutely not. But the woman is held accountable like this [he brings his hand to his throat like a knife]. It's serious."

Serious perhaps, but not always a question of life or death. Matlock cites the occasional flurry of Japanese women who come in for hymenalplasty. "At one point it became a regular thing. They'd come to the States, do a little school, go on vacation, then come here, have hymenalplasty and go home."

As for Americans, while Matlock concedes that virginity before marriage is essentially a nonissue, a growing population of American women is seeking the "virgin experience" to share with their husbands. "I'm seeing quite a bit more of that happening," says Matlock. "Women coming in because they want the experience."

Take Helena. A financial analyst, Helena first went to Matlock for Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation. "It was the best thing I ever did. My husband was ecstatic," she said. With her new vagina in place, Helena was drawn to the option of getting a new hymen. "My husband and I would have loved it if he had been my first. Our anniversary is coming up; we're renewing our wedding vows. We want to have the virgin experience."

Helena paid for her new hymen with a credit card. When we spoke she was still waiting for the healing process to end (a process she described as "full of lots of pain and crying, but that I'd go through again if I had to") before setting up the special one-time conjugal event with her new vestal vagina.

Hymenalplasty and its bizarre implications aside, there is nothing new about LVR and DLV. Vaginal tightening has been done for decades to help women with extremely compromised vaginal integrity. For the even fewer women out there with true genital "deformities" -- extraordinarily long or protruding labia, for example, or excessive vaginal flesh -- surgery has also been an option for years. "Labial surgery?" says ob/gyn Dr. Cornelia Daly. "There's nothing to it. It's been around for 30 years. Lasers have even fallen out of favor. We have more sophisticated tools that do the same thing these days." According to the ob/gyn community, Matlock has simply put a new spin (sex sells) on an old procedure.

And yet in his hype he offers an appealing line. "There are over 25 medications for male impotence," he says. "It takes $500 to $600 million to bring one drug into research and development. Those are facts. Is there anything remotely similar there for women? No. Not at all. There are over 200 prosthetic devices for men on the market. Anything similar for women? Not at all. If men had problems like that -- if men had babies, and we had certain body parts stretched out as a result -- they would have been looked at, researched and solved a long time ago." And who would disagree? Adds Lucy, "If men had these problems they would have been solved in a petri dish long ago."

The irony here (which seems lost to the doctor himself) is that Matlock wants to liberate women from the shackles of a man's world while selling them what could be the ultimate and most oppressive form of sex/beauty fascism. And as cosmetic surgery becomes more widespread, designer vaginas may become as common as the silicon breast -- a sinister prospect that has many women's advocates up in arms. "Women's genitals are fascinating, unique and beautiful," says pioneering sex therapist Betty Dodson, whose Web site includes a "genital forum" featuring a panoply of different vaginas in all their diversity. Dodson -- who for decades has helped women discover their genitals, and particularly their clitoris, which she describes as women's "little phallic symbol that terrifies the status quo" -- considers LVR and DVR as truly odious procedures except for very extreme cases.

"Now we want little doll-like genitals and vaginal orgasms and Viagra for women!" she laments, reemphasizing the need for women to assert their "clit power" as the only true road to enhanced sexual gratification. "If men can get close enough to lick and diddle, they don't give a rat's ass about the size of your genitals or the shape of your labias," she says. Dismissing the link between vaginal tightness and sexual gratification as a way for men to cash in on women's insecurities and for women to appease the male ego, she practically yells into the phone: "We have catered to men's desires forever! We have lied to them and fooled them for centuries! Enough!"

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