Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Provocative Photos

Laying on the table for a bikini wax this afternoon I was struck by the oddity of having a job that involves staring at genitalia all day, a distinction held by a limited portion of the population, including certain medical professionals, some aestheticians, and most members of the adult entertainment community.
One thought lead to another, as thoughts tend to do, and I was transported back in time to the day several weeks ago when Sara e-mailed me a copy of the first ultrasound.  The foetuses, Johnny Depp and Joan of Arc, didn’t look like very much to me –television static but without the hypnotic undulating patterns.  What I could see with complete clarity was the outline of the uterus.  Hanging around at work on an otherwise normal Tuesday, I open an e-mail attachment, and oh look at that.  My friend’s womb.
I realize that such images are passed around mainly to satisfy scientific interest, but it feels a little intimate to be sitting there eyeballing someone’s uterus – just as it would if one were to make a pictorial study of anything else in that general vicinity.  Like if this afternoon I had used my phone to take some snapshots of my vagina and forwarded them to select people from my contacts list, in satisfaction of any interest there may be in what to expect following a really well executed Brazilian. 

4 comments:

  1. Really? Uterus akin to picture of Brazilian? I'll even take 10 pictures of those creepy 3D ultrasounds over a picture of a friend's freshly waxed Beaver!

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  2. hmmm... i hope i didn't suggest that one must choose one or the other... though in the end I suppose it's a matter of where one's interests lie. personally could go without visuals on uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, labia, clitoris (vulva in general)...

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  3. Does this mean that you don't want a copy of the ultrasound in three weeks?...if you want i can photo shop it to blur anything that would give away that the babies are inside me....

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  4. not creepy unborn that threw me off about ultrasound. all uterus. which doesn't mean I don't want to see ultrasound in 3 weeks. it's sort of like driving by a car crash

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