The revelation came during an interview with the Guardian, where the singer responded to reports that she had undergone vaginal rejuvenation surgery. “They scraped the inside of my vagina and put new tissue in,” she clarified. “It’s almost like a rape victim would do – essentially, you want to scrub yourself clean. ”
It’s fair to say the past year has been a turbulent one for Mel B, who finalised her divorce settlement and announced that she would take part in The Spice Girls
Among the revelations that came in the wake of her separation, including allegations of physical and emotional abuse from her ex Stephen Belafonte, came an extremely personal disclosure that she had undergone a vaginal procedure to remove “all remnants” of her estranged ex husband.
When she appeared as a guest on Jessie Ware’s podcast Table Manners, the Spice Girl expanded on her comments. “What I did was a bit like, and I say this very candily but it’s actually very important, a bit like a rape victim. When you’ve been raped, you wanna scrub any remnants off your body, inside outside, of that person, so you can just erase it. ’
“I went to Dr Matlock and I said, I don’t want to feel like the last person that was inside my vagina was this monster,” se continued. “He examined me, he said “legally there’s nothing I can do about that because you don’t need anything done”. I said could he just go in there and get everything out, but then pack it with fresh tissue. ’
Since Mel B’s disclosure, many experts have spoken out about the potential risks of the treatment, including the gynaecologist, obstetrician, and author of The Vagina Bible, Dr Jen Gunter.
“Women, should never, ever have their vagina scraped,” she said in an interview with Refinery29. “Women should also not be offered untested procedures that seem to have no medical value. Any scraping of the vaginal epithelium tissue could affect the vaginal ecosystem and theoretically could spread HPV locally and would increase a women’s vulnerability to infection. ”
“Douching damages the vagina so this sounds much worse. Your vaginal epithelium completely regenerates itself every 96 hours. The surface cells are shed every four hours,” Dr Gunter continued. “If you want to remove physical residue of some horrible man’s penis, your vagina has you covered. ”
And seeing as the US Food and Drug Administration issued a health warning against laser vaginal rejuvenation in July, it seems as though there really are some gynaelogical treatments that are best left alone. Needless to say, we could all practice building a better relationship with our vaginas – which are completely fine, just as they are.
