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Who Knows Emily Dickinson
Who Knows Emily Dickinson
NYT: Muslim Women and Virginity: 2 worlds collide
Related to country: France

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

PARIS — The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.

Dr. Marc Abecassis carries out hymen reconstruction surgery on a 23-year-old French woman of north-African origin.

But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that normally breaks in the first act of intercourse.

“In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”

As Europe’s Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

Gynecologists say that in the past few years, more Muslim women are seeking certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is less expensive.
~Ed Alcock for The New York Times


more, click: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/world/europe/11virgin.html?ex=1371700800&en=c45b615519347773&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

June 21, 2008 | 8:04 PM Comments  0 comments

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