Thigh gaps, stomach rolls, having cellulite — the list of things women have to worry about in order to achieve society's standard of beauty is long, disheartening, and basically impossible. Oh, and it's also apparently ever-growing. Now, women have to deal with the insecurity of havingĀ "arm vaginas."
Un-furrow your eyebrows, folks. "Arm vaginas" are supposedly where your skin folds when your arm meets your torso, and it's probably due to the fact that you, you know, have a human body.
The term first came to fruition in 2014, when Jennifer Lawrence told reporters on the SAG awards red carpet: "I know I have armpit fat, it's okay. Oh, it's armpit vagina. This is awful."
More from CafeMom: 23 Female Celebrities Who Let Their Armpit Hair Grow & Flow
Embedded content: https://media.giphy.com/media/by9XXstQ2jphS/giphy.gif
Recently, celebrity stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray, who has dressed Emma Watson and Sophie Turner for the red carpet, told theĀ Times UKĀ that her clients' top complaint is this very "arm vagina" that Lawrence once spoke of.
"Sometimes it's the weirdest part of their body," Corbin-Murray said about what her clients say they feel insecure about while on the red carpet. "They say, 'Iāve got this horrible blah-blah,' and you think, 'What are they even talking about?' The one that comes up all the time is 'arm vagina.'"
Now if this isn't evidence that the standards of beauty in Hollywood are gettingĀ wayĀ out of hand, then I don't know what is.Ā
Hagen Schumacher, a plastic surgeon in the UK, toldĀ MetroĀ that there has been a "slow but steady rise" in the past few years of women surgically removing the armpit folds. The demographic of these folks is "young, active women" ranging from their 20s to 40s. But he adds that some of these patients might have also just gone through "massive weight loss."
More from CafeMom: Vagina Nails Are Here & They Are Very NSFW
In a way, the insecurity makes sense. In ads, armpits are usually Photoshopped away to look abnormally gaunt and lean, and they're associated with the societally desired slim body type, even though armpits don't measure fat. (There's actually no way to exercise off orĀ reduce armpit fat.)
If most of us look down right now, we'll probably notice that we also have folds of skin in our armpits — oops, I mean "arm vaginas" — because that's kind of what happens when one body part connects to another. Having a fold of skin is actually regarded as really common.Ā
(Also, calling our armpits after our vagina in a derogatory/mocking way is a whole other story, because vaginas are great and bring life.)
Armpits are already under such scrutiny for sweating or the fact that they grow hair, and maybe some women want to keep that hair, so can we just put the "armpit vagina" to rest?
