Well, I must admit I blushed a bit when I found out about this…

A friend on Facebook shared this item: it’s My New Pink Button: a cosmetic temporary dye for your lady parts, to give them that perky shade of pink they had when you were, you know, younger/sexier/happier/healthier/less self conscious/pinker than you are now.

For real?

Maybe you know someone who’s dyed their pubic hair, or bleached it, or maybe you’ve done that yourself. So it’s no surprise there’s a product like this, for restoring the appearance of a strawberry-colored happy zone.

Your Vagina is Exactly the Color It Should Be
“Holly Golightly… Audrey GoRaspberry, more like.”

The product comes in different colors; the newest shade, Audrey, promises to transform your nether regions into a “bold burgundy pink color.” Audrey, hmmm… does that refer to Audrey Hepburn? Did someone get a vintage photo of her lady parts taken behind the scenes (and under the table) on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Holly Golightly indeed. Audrey GoRaspberry, more like.

Now, it looks as though Amazon has run out of this item and does not know when (OR IF) it will be back in stock. Which suggests it is very popular, or is only made in small batches (the company promises its products are never tested on animals, but will “bring out the Animal in you!”), or maybe too much sharing across social media has caused a run on this particular shade of My New Pink Button.

So, if you’re looking to purchase another product to spruce things up down there, there appears to be plenty of these available: The Kitty Carpet, a “reusable downstairs toupee.”

Um… reusable? Okay.

Your Vagina is Exactly the Color It Should Be

These are also known as “merkins” and it makes me happy to see the company that sells these has a sense of humor: “For the prodigal hippie, the French-web-footed-prostitute-in-another-life, and the woman who wants to bring some spice into the bedroom, the wait is over! Long gone are the days of picking up hairs from the bathroom floor and saving them to make your own merkin.” And we are also reassured that no actual kitty (or pussy, if you prefer) has been harmed in the making of this product: the Kitty Carpet is 100% fake fur. Whew! Glad

Your Vagina is Exactly the Color It Should Be
A proper “pink wink”

Speaking of prettying up your pussy, here is a product known as “My Pink Wink Cream” which pretty much promises to do what it says: make your wink pink. The product description promises “3Xs more skin-brightening peptides” but doesn’t say what other product this comparison refers to (kinda like how “new and improved” doesn’t always tell us much when we see it on a label). Then again, this is the Advanced Formula, so maybe it is merely 3Xs better than earlier formulas. This is for “intimate skin bleaching” or whitening, which sounds a bit more ominous than the pinkening promised by Audrey.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the comments sections and customer reviews following these product listings certainly are worth reading. This one, for example:

“Guys – nothing says I love you like when you give your special girl the gift of a freshly colored labia! Show her that you care enough about her to have the hard conversation about her dingey lips. That you love her enough to say “Hey babe, I love you more than anything but your junk needs a touch up and instead of hearing it from some uncaring stranger, I want you to hear it from me. Oh and by the way, yes your ass looks huge in those pants.”

She’ll know you really care.”

Your Vagina is Exactly the Color It Should Be

In case you were wondering, I find the whole concept of products like these ridiculous. Vaginal bleaching (and its close neighbor, anal bleaching) are procedures one can have done in a spa setting, and even the usually open-minded Cosmopolitan magazine finds it to be a questionable trend. They speculate upon the origin of this unusual practice: the removal of pubic hair and the ubiquity of porn have made women more self conscious about the (naturally) dark skin in their pleasure zones.

“As Brazilians grew in popularity, more and more women began noticing that their anuses were darker than the rest of their skin. (This is totally common and normal, by the way, explains women’s health expert, Jennifer Wider, MD.) An employee at one Colorado spa said, “[Our technicians] do a lot of Brazilian waxes and sometimes the clients are surprised to see dark skin underneath. They are more self-conscious about the skin discoloration, so they want [it] lightened.”

Repeat after me: pink, umber, tan, beige, burnt sienna, cocoa, ebony, caramel, ivory, blush or champagne: you are exactly the color Mother Nature intended. Save the bleach for your man’s grungy tube socks.

Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com, where she often waxes eloquent about sex, porn, sex toys, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.

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One Comment

  1. Is there no end to the attempts of manufacturers to foster insecurities about our bodies?