Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Clarity, Not Whispers: Sexual Wellness Procedures Unzipped

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

In this episode, we unzip treatments like O-Shots®, G-Shots®, and MonaLisa Touch®—procedures that often enter conversations through television, social media, friends, and word of mouth.We talk about how conversations around sexual wellness are evolving, and why many people find themselves searching for answers about options they may not hear discussed during routine healthcare visits.We talk about why qualified providers, safety, and informed decision-making matter when navigating procedures that can come with a lot of questions—and not always clear answers.Because sexual health conversations deserve clarity—not whispers.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

hey everyone welcome to unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex with dr sue and charlie we're both here to explore the questions you've always been curious about around sex sex health but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud no shame no judgment just open honest conversation maybe sometimes a little minimal to no judgment we'll say that um certainly no shame in the questions absolutely um oh but we do aim to have open honest candid conversations so zip down and let's get candid today we're gonna talk about um dare i say the phrase dr sue vaginal rejuvenation if you must if i i mean that's the that's what's out there in the zeitgeist I'll just say that so people know the phrase.

But we're going to be talking about O-Shots and G-Shots and what has been termed as the Mona Lisa touch, which is very interesting. But before we do, hi, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. How are you? I think I'm okay. I don't know. We'll see how this conversation goes.

We'll see how this conversation goes. Which it might aggravate or piss you off. Yes. Well, before we see what adventure we're choosing with Dr. Sue today, would you like to give our listeners a little bit about your background? Sure. I'm trying to think how I want to tailor this. So I have a bachelor's and master's in health education.

The goal was to be a high school health teacher. And well, yeah, that didn't happen. Because then I started focusing on sex and I just found it more comfortable to be not in a K through 12 setting, although there was good work being done there a little bit sometimes. Anyway, so I got a Ph.D. in human sexuality education, and this is where I usually say, like, I do the professor thing and I do and I love it and it's important, but a lot tied a lot to what we're doing today. um i do a lot of community presentations for folks um and sometimes these questions have come up about things like o shots and g shots um i also do this thing where people can submit anonymous sex questions to me through my website and then every sunday i answer one post it all over social media and i got two questions very back to back so like they even

showed up in the same email one was about o shot one was about g shot and then a couple weeks later something about the mona lisa and then i don't want to get too far into how we got to this conversation so but i do this doesn't this this this has been coming up um and so we're going to be talking about it um i also do work with some aging populations and sometimes it comes up there though they don't usually use those terms they use more of the vaginal rejuvenation kind of words so i think that's way off topic of me which was my goal getting craftier with it i am um but i'm not alone in this conversation or i might be who knows if this is just all a hallucination um for those of you who do and do not know charlie

our curious co-host who is always ready to have all those conversations that most people are pretty uncomfortable asking um and i know i know i joke that sometimes i love you because you sound like a five-year-old kid why but why but why but why but one of the other reasons that well there's lots of reasons but one of the other things I really appreciate about you is that the question you oftentimes bring up in places you don't expect it is who's benefiting from this because that really kind of makes us sit back and be like oh so now that I've given two of your attributes three actually because I said you were curious um you should tell just do a better intro than i just did i mean you're you're doing really well with it but i am charlie

i am someone who is curious and who likes to question and chip away at uh at some of the things that we all kind of take for granted and and move about society with the things that we were conditioned to believe uh challenging those especially when they uh when they're not equitable or when one when these notions or these societal habits tend to repress or abuse other members of our human community um and then and then really getting to that critical thinking piece of posing the question when someone says well it's always been this way you say okay Why? And who told you? And where did that start? Because a lot of times you can trace it back to a motivation to control a population or a segment of a population or a certain community

or numbers of communities. So that really is always my guiding piece of curiosity. why why did we buy into it why do we continue to buy into it sometimes we know empirically that some of the things that we do day in and day out to be a air quote functioning member of society does a lot of harm and so why why are we not questioning it why are we not why are we not challenging it and if it's something that is just broadly bad for humanity why aren't why aren't we collectively getting together to uh to dismantle break those systems that keep us in an obey state oh i know that was new and that feels especially relevant for what we're talking about today because what was the evolution

of these treatments and um and i think sometimes while there are ways that that things like the o-shot g-shot mona lisa touch are the motivations for their development could be something opposite than initially um that it the benefits weren't necessarily always intended to be the motivating factor but then the benefits start to outweigh the initial motivations so so that's me that's me in a nutshell i'm charlie insatiable why questions why why asker but why so yes on that no dr sue vaginal treatments i won't say the other that's better thank you well i think we should i think we should do a little like how we got to here because this was part of it was that i had gotten questions on it and i have gotten questions on it um and those questions aren't new um but

you also brought something up about this yeah you go first this time okay um i watch friends and neighbors which is a series some of you may know um on apple tv starring john ham and amanda pete and olivia munn among amazing um among amazing other cast members um my motivation to watch was john ham truth be told um and olivia munn um nothing against amanda pete but if you know you know anyway this they're in their second season and amanda pete's character is coming to the realization and working through accepting that she's entering perimenopause and given that it's a serialized tv series uh the timeline is whatever the timeline is non non-specific um but there's an episode where one of her friends she's talking to amanda peete's

character is talking to her friend and her friend recommends the mona lisa i think she calls it treatment in the episode um says this doctor does it it's a pretty penny but it's worth it um and the the reason why her friend brings it up is because amanda peete's character is talking about how um she can't come and she's dry she's having trouble getting aroused all those things and so that is how they wrote that part of the script and introducing the mona lisa touch so when dr sue and i were talking about our coming episodes that we wanted to record conversations we wanted to have she have she brought up the o shot and the g shot i was like oh my gosh I just watched this show that said something about the Mona Lisa treatment and

that's how you find us here today and like cheers to them for bringing it up I don't know if they handled it well I'd love to know more about it I don't have Apple TV sorry but I'm at least glad that I'm glad they brought a pairing menopause like that topic wouldn't have been brought up except as a punchline a few years ago so I do want to point out that this is not new these these conversations about like doing things to your genitals specifically for women is not new um so about five years ago when i first started doing hey dr sue which is where i respond to questions i also at the time was working with my sister um way back when we were still talking uh she would watch bravo tv all that she like all the shows i don't even know i really i never

watched bravo tv um and she's a vast universe well that was the thing like she'd be like and i saw this on this thing and i'm like i don't even know what show you're talking about that's not the same show as last time anyway she would watch these shows and inevitably something would come up about sex and she would send me a question and then i would she would write up the question i would write up the answer and it was the whole thing and it was fascinating um and this was from like real housewives of new york thank you um and apparently it was the whole and this was five years ago um it was like they were introducing themselves to each other and they just started talking about the work they had done and someone talked about getting their clit fixed um so this

isn't new and i think because i feel like people like oh you know why is this happening all of a sudden this is not an all of a sudden thing it may be talked about more and more openly now and different language more direct explicit language yeah um but this this isn't new and i know five years ago well depending on how old you are five years ago is like a quarter of your life or like yesterday but um or feels like yesterday but i i just want to make sure i'm bringing that up because i i get that a lot recently people like oh this new thing i'm like no no it's not new no no no yeah um see because the question i would ask if someone came to me because in the past i did do education for couples and for individuals and if

the character does the character have a name should we refer to the character by name do you remember um i think she does i can't remember it right now she obviously has a name um that was a stupid question for me um like if someone were to come to me and say she's really dry and she's not she's not getting excited i'd be like 15 other things i would ask before i'd say let's do a treatment of any sort like how's your stress levels are you hydrated don't laugh at that um have you started new medications um do you like your partner like the number of times i have worked with women where they're like i'm not getting wet i'm like are you mad at your partner like yeah how'd you know because when our brains aren't turned on our bodies are kind of

like what why what are we doing um so there's so many things i would have suggested like before i just want to i first i would probably never suggest a procedure one because that should be done by a qualified medical professional which i am not um and two because they should have conversations with you about the risks benefits but to me when someone says i can't get wet my thing is like does your partner know what they're doing like are they hitting the sweet spot if you're by yourself because sometimes i've worked with women who who are masturbating and still aren't getting wet it's because they're thinking about it they're like is this is it gonna happen now now what's wrong with me what's happening what about now yeah should i should i have orgasm

wait where's the like they're so in their own heads that they're literally stopping themselves from getting wet so I would have asked a lot of questions first but they don't put me on shows like that well and I and I want to qualify that because there is you have the advantage of a background in this and the conversations and questions to ask if I had a friend of mine where we're in similar age and maybe I'm a few steps ahead of her in my perimenopause menopause journey and I did this treatment and I it really helped me and my partner or just my sexual life my sex life I might jump to the solution rather than thinking of the questions to ask yeah because because I just want my friend to feel better and enjoy it because maybe I know how much she enjoys

her sex life and or is trying to get back out there after a long-term relationship and i i want to i want to give all the all the tools that i've discovered that have helped me so and in some ways it's easier to be like yeah just get a shot rather than let's teach your partner how to do this better or like let's deal with the fact that you're angry at them or i mean it's just so much easier to that's why people want a pill or a patch or cream or something yeah so so let's talk about the three four or five depending on time what are the vaginal treatment options and why do they exist dr sue so the o shot which well let's start with the g shot okay can i go out on a limb and guess that this has something to do with the g spot ding ding ding it's just a change in a

continent so basically what they're going to do is they're going to take filler like cosmetic surgery filler and they're going to inject that right into the vaginal wall and the idea is that it's going to expand that area making it easier to find or easier like more sensitive to touch um or pressure that's interesting because when i think filler i don't immediately think of increased nerve sensation i feel like it's a barrier to nerve sensations yeah and not an expert let me claim this not an expert on fillers um same yeah um the very very very little research we've done on g shots and o shots um it's been like there was one study i found i had like 12 people and and that's that's important and that's how you get some

interesting information but that is not generalizable data that's even close to being generalizable data so do i do want to make sure i'm saying that like we don't know a lot about these things in terms of long-term effectiveness or short-term effectiveness and when you've talked about these kinds of uh studies um i would i would also i would imagine that some of that is self-reporting oh yeah the sensations and the pleasure yes and so so there's no like physical necessarily way to quantify its effectiveness or efficacy yep hey interesting that's how we do penis size study too it's all self-reporting so much of what we do in this field is self-report now i'm picturing self-reporting penis size there was a great i gotta go coming in doing that i i

gotta do this on a tangent there was a study on penis size where they asked men to measure themselves as they came out of a bar like possibly drunk how close to last call i don't i don't remember there's a study i should i feel like that's a control factor they were like given a given a way to measure themselves and like told to go off and do it come back and report um so yeah there's a problem with self-reported data um and there's a theory yeah and placebo effects and so i do want i'm not saying these things don't necessarily work i'm saying that i can't say that's going to work for everybody um the shot is i think the shot's expensive i don't know where people's money price points are they usually run somewhere around like

like $1,500 to $2,500. It is not covered by insurance because this is not a medical need. And you got to kind of redo them every once in a while, every few months. Well, and then again, what I wonder about when thinking about this option is sometimes you can see

when people have had filler for years because their symmetry just kind of shifts a little and so you have to wonder you would have to consider I would you won't have you don't have to do anything friends um but one of the things that I my little brain would try and process is okay what how long one when should I start in my aging journey so that I don't have any kind of unintended physical side effects? Great question that I don't think I've ever seen in literature. Well, because to your point, it hasn't, 12 people does not a study really. It's a focus group study.

Yeah. It doesn't really help us with a long, because that focus group study I'm sure was right after or within a certain amount of time, not long-term exposure. I feel so smart sometimes. So that's the G-shot. All right. So filler into the vaginal wall? Yes.

Also meaning needle. So if you are not big on needles, this may not be the procedure for you. If you're not big on needles, none of these are procedures for you. um because i there are some people with some real needle phobias like hitting the floors um so do you want people to know it's not like it's not like a cream or something you're yeah there's needle and and it would be intravaginal right like they'd have to go in and do it mm-hmm and then

so obviously so many questions and then and then i'm imagining people at home like finally it's singing in what that looks like like yeah come along with me listeners because we're processing at the same time um so then the filler because because of where the g shot it or the g spot is does the filler go in around there or i got nauseated just imagining that sensation of getting that the g shot so for those of you who don't know and that's what the if you're not watching you're missing something on this one so pause it if you're driving stop come back to the second it's worth it yeah this is the motion i like this this two finger so it's it's about a third of the way into the vagina on the on the

front wall um so that's usually the best yeah i tell people i tell people to just walk into a party and be like what's up tell people you know where the g-spot is um so it's not like they have to go deep deep deep like i've had people ask me about this like is it like a speculum and i'm like it's not going to your cervix like there's no reason to go that far yeah a ton of nerve endings back there um so yeah all right just take a deep breath and go on to yeah i feel like i need to go take a shot of vodka or something um not intravaginally please no never never um without judgment no one should do there is this might be a different episode yeah there's a thing that that i actually get asked a lot about which is like vodka soaked tampons but

let's do that another day yeah that's a different episode let's add that hold on while i write this yeah actually this is a good call this is a good early homework assignment um i'm writing homework and i meant to write tampons um if you've heard things like that before and you're like i'd love to just hear an episode on like urban legend stuff please submit it we're always yeah we're as responsive as we can be maybe not in the timeliest fashion just because of tech issues um but if you've got stuff like that even if you're like oh that's just like a quick answer we can do just lots of little answer ones so please yeah some on it also i don't know if anyone else has heard that or if that's like outgrown itself have you heard that

i when i was when i was a younger charlie i'm not in those circles or environments as much anymore there are things that are just like died from the anyway let's get on to oh shots shall we okay so oh my god what if we resurrect these kinds of shots because of this yeah so we we so we actually tried to film this before and we had some very big tech glitches that made most most of us there are two of us here i want to like pull our hair out um but i remember we had started talking about all those shots from like the 90s the very sexual themed shots not not surgery shots like booze shots like the slippery nipple and sex on

the beach and i don't think those are as much a thing anymore yeah the blowjob shots i don't yeah i don't hear my students talking about them at all maybe that'll be their homework assignment is to make a list of them. Anyway. Anyway. All right. So G-Shot is filler into the front vaginal wall where the G-Spot is. Okay. The O-Shot, can I go out on a limb here? Is it related to orgasm? Yes. It's the idea that's going to help improve orgasm. And how is it supposed to do that, dr sue so now we've got two needles okay one is to draw blood your own blood so they're going to draw your own blood they're going to run it through a centrifuge you're going to take the protein rich plasma stuff and they're going to shoot that into the walls of your vagina

all of the walls that's a good question i want to say more on the g spot but i may have to fact check me before this episode is out or you can fact check me while we're talking yeah you talk um so there there are two needles now and if people like i could handle a needle in my vagina because i don't see it but i can't handle my blood being drawn like you you can't do no shot without the blood being drawn um the idea is that this is going to stimulate blood stem cells it's going to increase blood flow to the area it's going to improve sensitivity so theoretically this is more than just filler to the area it's like putting something in that your body is going to be like okay i'm going to send some blood there we're going to make

this more sensitive it's just the front wall isn't it i'm still trying to find i can't imagine they would do all the walls injecting it into key areas plural of the vaginal region it's packed with cell regenerating growth factors that's the plan yeah that improved the flow of blood and enhanced sensation so that's the goal doctor as dr uh dr sue was saying platelet rich plasma oh i think i said protein sorry it was platelet platelet rich plasma i think i said protein i own that one responsible for tissue repair and healing so that that could be why it became popular because a lot of these treatments are focused around um women who

should i say women people with vaginas we'll say people with vulvas vulvas okay but also and or and or vaginas um but also just to so we're going to use the term female meaning female assigned at birth but we let's just take that like five seconds to recognize that you can have a vagina and not identify as female or you can identify as female not have a vagina so we'll acknowledge that but i think for the sake of of language sometimes it's easier to just we'll own that and then we'll move on just use the term female okay so i i have a five-step outline of what happens during the procedure starting with the blood draw you ready sure so as dr sue mentioned the blood draw small sample of

blood taken from your arm like a blood test and is and it's normally minimal it shouldn't cause discomfort or dizziness but that it's not like to be yeah but it's not like giving blood where they're taking and getting no they're sitting there and they're taking a bag of blood um then they process the blood for the platelet rich um plasma right that's what i said and then and then it's time for you so you get the numbing there's a numbing cream topical anesthetic um applied to where to the inject the intended injection sites and then the injection the prp is injected to the clitoral and vaginal areas very broad terms um targeting the tissues responsible for clitoral stimulation

and function and then recovery few minutes of observation it's out it seems to be outpatient oh yeah and depending on on how reactive your skin is there might be some swelling um some sensitivity right after but they resolve within a few hours according to this outline okay cost-wise it's not going to be covered by your health insurance we're looking at about probably the same cost range i'd say i think i said 1500 to 2500 um for the g-shot i probably see somewhere in that same range um you don't necessarily have to do this the g-shot you're supposed to go back every few months this is more if you like it like an annual kind of thing um so in the long run it may cost less

and that's it easy peasy there could be bruising or spot bleeding anytime you have a needle yeah this is a common side effect of any injection-based procedure yep so the goal here the goal with the o-shot seems to be enhanced sensitivity this particular site is claiming improved natural lubrication so lubrication speak keep going with the claims stronger more frequent orgasms i'd love to know how they're documenting that yeah reduced urinary incontinence

that's because okay hold on i'm writing and now i forgot the second thing uh okay yeah lubrication so enhanced sensitivity improved natural lubrication stronger more frequent orgasms but uh there's many factors that would go into that yeah um and that we've discussed as far as reaching orgasm reduced urinary incontinence rejuvenated vaginal tissue and as you said dr sue long lasting results it lasts up for up to a year before requiring a maintenance session maintenance session so so here's the thing i think we all know what a placebo effect is should we talk about it for those who may not yeah yeah the placebo effect is where you feel like you're having whatever you think you're supposed to be having

as a result of the thing, the pill, the injection, the shot, the procedure, the whatever it may be. And there's all, there's some, there's some proof that there is a placebo effect that we give people a pill and be like, okay, like you should start feeling better in like 20 minutes. Like, let me know if it works. Any of you have ever had kids and been like, I'm not giving you medicine again, but here's like something that sounds like medicine and good luck and you know it'll be really good um there's a really strong placebo effect your brain's a really ridiculously powerful thing and so for some people the idea that they're centering themselves i'm gonna go make myself feel better i'm gonna make it easier for me to reach orgasm i'm gonna i'm gonna put myself first

i'm gonna have this procedure and it's gonna be all better you could have talked yourself into some of those results if you were like oh i can't orgasm because there's something wrong with me and now we fixed please air quotes for those of you who are not watching there are lots of air quotes here i've i've been i fixed the thing that was blocking me and now you've just given yourself permission to have these incredible orgasms it's great if it works like i'm not mocking these if you can afford it and you feel comfortable and you're going to a trained professional should be a medical doctor um and it makes you feel good about yourself and there's no long lasting impact i say you do you like do whatever's going to make you feel good

lubrication comes from two things uh muscle tension in your genitals and increased blood flow to the genitals so the increased blood flow that may come from this could absolutely help with lubrication um and there could be some impact on the muscle around it i'm wondering i i'm not god i wish we had our pelvic floor pt on speed dial um i'd love to get her her input on whether or not she thinks the shots would actually help i mean if you do have increased blood flow but i would think that would be more musculature and i'm i don't unless you're having stem cells that are like rebuilding musculature i don't see where that's happening but yeah yeah i mean the orgasms may be better because you finally said i deserve this i'm gonna have this procedure and i'm gonna

have an amazing orgasm great whether it's a procedure your own brain i'm just glad or some combination thereof yeah yeah i'm just glad you're enjoying yourself yeah and and to say nothing of the incredible impact uh mental and emotional impact of one's journey back to their pleasure and owning it yeah and so hold on so so again i mean we're talking about these um and you know we're being I'm being not we I'm being a little goofy about it but that's I think that's natural as well for non-trained sex health educators and professionals but but it is important and this I think we'll we'll wind up getting there after let's talk about the third one we mentioned I think this one has the most science.

I don't love referring to procedure by a name. And I know it's a trademark. Is it a registered name? Yeah, it's registered. I don't. That always makes me a little questioned. But I think there's more science behind this. So we call it the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa Touch. Why do we both do that with our voice when we say it? Wait, here. I'll make it even better. the mona lisa touch is a type of laser therapy that helps repair the tissues of your vagina it helps with symptoms like vaginal dryness and painful sex you just missed your and they're listeners you have you have just witnessed my entry into voice acting so it is it's a laser it's a co2 laser and they're going to basically make little teeny tiny holes and and when i say

teeny tiny holes i mean like microscopic level holes because i don't want people thinking like I have holes and, like, things are going to, like, fall out. Dashes in my skin. Yeah, no, teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny little micro holes that you can't see. And so your body goes, uh-oh, something happened. Let's go repair that area. And so you're going to have blood flow running in the area. You're going to have increased collagen production.

I feel like I'm missing something. Those are the two big ones. Basically, your body says, I need. Vaginal atrophy? Well, that's not going to happen. That's what's supposed to happen. But this is what it treat, it can treat. Right. But what's going to happen is that you're going to have a lot of blood flow around the area, some collagen production, because your body's like, I don't know what happened, but let's heal it. So it's going to send all this really happy warming, not wormy, I don't know why I said warming, this happy, like, feel better stuff to your vagina. And so for that, there's a lot more science for me. I want to own that.

What makes me think that there's even more science for it is that while your insurance may not cover it outright, you may be able to use your HSA, which is your health savings account, and your FSA, your flexible spending account benefits, because they are starting to recognize that it can address some real medical issues. And not that I let health insurance companies dictate when something is like legit or not, but when you start to see that change in how your insurance monies can be used for this, you start to realize there may be some real purposes. it can be used for vaginal atrophy um we do sometimes recommend not we i don't again not a medical doctor not that kind of doctor um if there's problems with lubrication this can be helpful um if there's increased pain during sex it can be really helpful though a lot of times it's also tied into the lack of lubrication and we're starting to have these conversations more around perimenopause because that vaginal dryness oh this will be perfect because i think our next episode it's going to be on perimenopause and menopause it is there we go if we if we do things

as planned and the world doesn't anyway um so so for things like that i can back it can be really helpful again your insurance may or may not cover it you have to do three sessions before it's it's not like a go and do it it's you have to do three sessions before it's considered complete six weeks apart six weeks apart um each session will probably run you and i'm just ballparking these from what i was looking up in different areas of the country i found somewhere between like 600 and 1800 per session so it is more expensive at the output but then you don't really need to go back if it's working for you and you want to and you want to like i almost said do a touch-up and that is so not the language sorry maintenance maintenance thank you we'll do that you only have to go back

like every 12 or 18 months as it works for you um but again you may have your hsa or your fsa that can help you pay for it so for me there's a little bit there's a lot bit more science to this um in how it's going to work so as dr sue said it is a laser that uh and to quote the cleveland clinic oh no no now i'm thinking pew pew laser i'm sorry pew pew sorry i'm i'm sorry i'm a little punchy so it is a co2 fractional laser that delivered that delivers thousands of tiny beams of light into a specific area and what the laser to reiterate what dr sue said what the lasers do is um to again quote it destroys the vaginal tissue but not like holistically right you gotta

do it in the voice oh okay you ready we're gonna get a whole different set of listeners now how does mona lisa touch treatment work the mona lisa touch is a co2 fractional laser a fractional laser delivers thousands of tiny beams of light into a specific area the laser beams destroy vaginal tissue and stimulate stimulate your vaginal tissue to generate new blood vessels and produce more collagen and elastin. This essentially causes the tissue lining to regenerate and repair itself. Very well done. Thank you.

I think we have launched your new career. I think we have. And in reading this, it seems no, it likens the episode, or the episode, it likens the appointment to the same things you would do for a pap smear or a pelvic exam um and that it might cause some discomfort because you've got a bunch of tiny micro micro tears right um but beyond that not a whole lot of down time but it is three treatments yes and feel free to take as much downtime as you like if you're the one having the procedure don't you know your partner may be like let's try that sucker out

and you may be like yeah so i want to be clear what i meant by downtime a minute which was like you know sometimes when you do outpatient procedures it knocks you out for a day or two and um you should absolutely in my opinion be careful in between treatments with sex play intravaginal sex play because you do have these tiny micro tears that and it could be very um uncomfortable so so i meant downtime as like you might want you might be doing recreational sports you could theoretically go out and do that the same day you might have a little just discomfort you know but nothing that's that seems to be detrimental yeah i want the majority of part yeah that's weird is that like your career or something

okay all right so these three treatments oh wait there's a fourth there's what so so there is vaginoplasty which is a term that's been used for a really long time um is that what um us laymans would call vaginal rejuvenation sometimes yeah a lot of times when i'm talking about it i'm talking more about it for folks who are having gender firming surgery to have their genitals shaped more to be more congruent with how they identify um there is surgery that they can do to reshape things and i want to be really careful about this usually we do it after a major trauma because i don't want people being like oh my labia don't look oh my vulva doesn't look normal there is no normal when it comes to what your genitals should

look like um you've got outer lips and inner lips labia majora labia minora sometimes one is bigger than the other sometimes some are darker than like there is no normal let me get those words those air quotes going um so i was a little worried about talking about it because i don't want people being like i want it to look more normal i don't know you're comparing it to yeah and if you're comparing it to porn don't and if someone's making you feel bad about your sorry we're gonna say well and i would also say in the post-epstein revelatory world we're in what what is the normal you're being pressured to look like yeah yeah because that was going to be my next point thank you for like sharing my brain that makes my life easier you're welcome if someone

is giving you pressure and telling you they don't like the way they look my answer is don't fucking look like if my genitals don't get to have sex with me yeah um if you're getting pressure so that would be my one thing is if you're getting pressure from a partner to change the way the bits the palms and bits look whether that's your breasts and now if it's for you and you've always struggled with your identity and how that works or like what it looks like and shape and size that's one thing but if you're getting pressure from a partner because they wanted to look different i would i would strongly encourage you to think about that relationship i know leaving may not be an option for you yeah um so that's my only fear like when when we usually talk about

vaginoplasty and surgeries around that it's usually around injuries or to fix things um or with things like gender affirming care so yeah that's the last one i want to talk about i'm sure there's other ones but that's right well and to that point i think this segues a bit into the other part of what we wanted to talk about here is the motivations for these treatments that are not just the motivations for these treatments let me back that up the motivation for the development of these treatments you know going back to the who did this benefit who originated this what and and this is not i do want to put out there this is not to demonize doctors and researchers and scientists at all at all because the i can i can acknowledge that scientists and doctors

and researchers their motivation is just curiosity into physiology a lot of the time and then if you are fine if you are looking for research dollars there could be motivations behind those dollars that you that you may not be aware of a lot of the motivation from the dollars for research are usually big pharma trying to figure out something that's going to work um or it's to fix a disease that a lot of people have or a condition because making a pill for one percent of the population is not going to be the same as making a pill for something that affects 80 of the population and so when you talk about women not being able to not being able to orgasm i just want to i just want to put like this whole piece in

quotes um i've had women i don't know if we've talked about this somewhere else i've had women who've taken me aside after presentations and they're like I'm not orgasming the right way I'm like what's the right way that's what I was like or is it like what do you mean she's like well I could I I don't orgasm with my partner but I I'm really good when I when I masturbate I'm like okay so that's not a you issue unless you're in your own brain that's not a you issue that sounds like you and a partner issue um but we're constantly telling women that like messaging around their pleasure and how they're experiencing it and if there's a correct way of doing it or an incorrect way of doing it oh i got a video that's gonna piss you off um sorry total aside maybe i'll

have her watch that video and then we can talk about it um i gotta write it down though so i think that when we're trying to correct women's bodies or to make them feel bad about their sex lives i think that's a really big market i so yes yeah yeah and i i mean again not to make this about that monster, but learning what we've learned, so much of our young adulthood was framed by people who were working for a certain aesthetic and expectation on children, girls, and women.

And so that's, to go back to my introduction, There could have been motivations for normalizing these treatments for nefarious reasons. But what we find is that for those who are experiencing vaginal atrophy and going through perimenopause, there are real benefits. If it's something you, one, have access to, have the means to explore which journey is best for you and your body and your experience, but there should be no societal pressure or partner pressure. If you don't want to do it, you don't want to do it. And fuck the rest. Yeah. I just got a big yeah with that.

i don't know that's a strong statement i got nothing to add there yeah well because i i think a lot of it from my just anecdotally the conversations around this in the late 90s early 2000s was punchline and i mean i can remember an episode of the graham norton show years ago years and years ago um maybe mid mid 2010s and Sharon Osbourne was on there and she talks about having a vaginoplasty and my default judgment assumption is she did it cosmetically and the fascination that Colin Farrell had about her sharing that i mean it was like a little kid like did you really you know it was it i don't know what was going on in his brain but the external reaction was was endearing i suppose because

it was it was like a little kid like like what what did what did that take what how to hurry doing it wasn't more like i want to experience it wasn't creepy let me at all yeah it wasn't it didn't seem creepy again don't can't read minds but um but it was always it's always been a punch line yeah almost always has been a punch line and I think that's the thing that I appreciate about where we are around women's health now um and I I will credit the generations behind us for pushing the envelope to talk about things in a way that we weren't conditioned to do yep and it has emboldened, emboldened our generation to do so. And so I think that's why we have perimenopause is more of a mainstream term. Now people don't flinch as much. Um, when they hear

the term perimenopause or menopause, um, it mean you might flinch because of your own like readiness and where you are in your aging, which is totally, which is totally normal. But then I would also challenge like did you flinch because you think you're supposed to stay young forever because of what you've been conditioned to to believe as a woman and what is beautiful and what is valued and that absolutely exists but there's a part where we get to own our reactions and and settling into our skins and ourselves the generations right before us actually did more for sex than i think sometimes we give them credit for um i don't know if i want to wander down this path sorry i'm gonna keep you all in suspense

it's gonna come up later are you thinking about like the sexual revolution and stuff no okay no i just sorry i shouldn't have brought it up i didn't want to be that person um it's going to be a much longer conversation i think if it's better than something else we have queued up in the future um but i do think that sometimes we're like oh this generation's you know this generation has done more to advance the conversation about gender and the number of genders that that that that exist and how we support those people although we're a little going backwards right now but that's not the next generations after us i do think sometimes we're like oh the generations

before us were so stodgy they're the ones who started breaking down the barriers and i think sometimes you forget to give them a little bit of credit for that so i'm glad you brought that up yeah uh thank you and i think that's the other important thing i so i kind of i will own that i have judgment for any conversation that goes you know this generation blah blah blah we've all been that generation we have all been there and we build off of each other and we bring those before us with us um if they want to and if they don't then you get the current administration um i feel like sometimes well that's a whole nother conversation but that's the that there it's it's it's step by step it's to use a fucking corporate jargon buzzword iterative

um it's not change isn't all at once no there's you've got a it's all it just happens incrementally based off of what was done before the current generation trying to find themselves and their way in the life. And, I mean, every generation has been, this generation doesn't, blah, blah, blah. Boomers were even. I mean, I'm sure the silent generation was saying that about the boomers. Yep.

And I know the boomers said it about Gen X, and I know Gen X really doesn't give a shit. We don't care what anyone else does. we just want to continue to play in like in our own yard um but but there's always been that discourse and then that goes back to like what who benefits from us focusing on that discourse and keeping us in our little columns i mean and we'll go back to kind of where we started the fact that this was even brought up on a tv show that wouldn't happen if you're like oh that wouldn't happen a million years ago the fact that we fought like wouldn't have happened 10 years ago

Yeah. So we have to realize that we're moving forward. But just to bring it back to the things again, because I just want to sum up before you take us out. Unless you had something else you wanted to do. No. There are new options. There are new options that didn't exist for people 15, 20 years ago. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the right option for you. So I would encourage you to, if you're struggling with orgasm, I actually think you should talk to a sex educator or a sex therapist first before you talk to your doctor. But if your doctor is your entree into information, then so be it. I think more OBGYN should have a sex educator on staff. but yeah um there are more options for you it may or may not be the right option for you i would encourage you to do your own research i would encourage you to have conversations i would encourage you to make sure you're working with trained professionals because it is always my concern when i hear things about fillers because i have heard some horror stories yes um the one thing i would really encourage you to do is is really think about what you want for you and if you are getting a lot of outside pressure then then i i think you should deal with that pressure

instead of trying to fix your body I just want to echo that this journey is your journey it's your body it's your choice and and if you want to great but if you are feeling pressured or or for whatever reason I hope that you you can you know you can I hope you know you can reach out to us um via via the links that we'll provide but that there is a way for you to find a support community around yourself somewhere where you can say i you know my partner really wants me to do this but it's just i don't i don't like needles i don't want to be down i don't want any of it i just don't i'm okay or i don't think this is a me problem i think i mean or us problem yeah Yeah. Getting a treatment is not going to make your relationship problem go away if it's based off underlying stuff. Like if you're mad at your partner, that's not going to go away because you got a shot. It's just not. It'd be nice. Maybe a booze shot would make it go away for a little bit, but not one of these shots.

That's a different episode, Dr. Sue. so yeah if you want to go for it if you don't you don't have to yep and it is normal to experience the things that these treatments are meant to help because if you're aging it's some version of it it's gonna happen it'll happen differently for many of us but some version of it will happen and that's okay yep and so on that note i want to thank you all for joining us on today's episode of unzipping taboos we hope that today's episode sparked maybe some new thoughts some new ways of thinking about yourself or you know new ways to support your partner if your partner is going through aging and some of these sex health

issues and that it'll open up a conversation worth having and the other thing that i want to say is to you know your curiosity is the key to breaking down these barriers and these you know, and conditioned understandings around the topics that we talk about. So stay curious. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who you think might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic you want us to unzip, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. As always, I want to give a very special shout out to composer and best friend of the show, Allie O'Brien, for our incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going,

keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care.