The feminist blogosphere has been buzzing lately over all the decorations available for ladyparts. We chimed in ourselves on the labia dye, My New Pink Button. Now, via Broadsheet, we learn of “vajazzling”, or bedazzling one’s vajayjay. Actor Jennifer Love Hewitt, star of The Ghost Whisperer, recently announced to George Lopez and his talk show audience that her “precious lady” now “shines like a disco ball” because it is covered with Swarovski crystals.

Note that I used the term “vajayjay” above only because that is the term used by Love Hewitt in advocating the practice of vajazzling. (She says all women should vajazzle their vajayjays, and has an entire chapter of her new book dedicated to the topic.) Perhaps I take things too literally, but I understood vajayjay = vagina, so when I read Mary Elizabeth Williams’ Broadsheet article, I had a lot of questions. Like, WHY? why put crystals in your vagina? No one but your gynecologist will see them! And doesn’t it hurt? Aren’t crystals sharp? And what, exactly, does one use to ATTACH Swarovski crystals?

Of course, Jennifer Love Hewitt isn’t putting crystals in her vagina. She’s decorating her vulva. But cutesy terms like precious lady and vajayjay obscure women’s anatomy even more than Swarovski crystals and pink colorants. Vajayjay entered the pop culture lexicon because network censors would not approve a Grey’s Anatomy script using the word vagina too many times:

Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who brought the word into full public view, never intended to promote a euphemism or slang term for the female anatomy. Rather, she fought to use vagina in the script.

“I had written an episode during the second season of ‘Grey’s’ in which we used the word vagina a great many times (perhaps 11),” Ms. Rhimes wrote in an e-mail message. “Now, we’d once used the word penis 17 times in a single episode and no one blinked. But with vagina, the good folks at broadcast standards and practices blinked over and over and over. I think no one is comfortable experiencing the female anatomy out loud — which is a shame considering our anatomy is half the population.”

When grown men start referring to their penises as “pee-pee” or “winky”, I’ll consider vajayjay an acceptable label for my vulva. As for vajazzling, I’m with Madeleine and the other Lunapad ladies:

At the end of the day, for all the language of self-love and empowerment used in the marketing copy for these products, I still can’t get around the underlying implication that our vulvas are not in fact just fine, thanks, without smelling or looking any different than they already do. To my way of thinking, even planting a seed of doubt of this kind in a woman’s (let alone a girl’s) mind about her bodily self-esteem is to perpetuate a dangerous climate of self-loathing against which most girls and women will struggle at some point during their lives.