Let’s talk about atrophy.  It’s a word that typically describes a limb, not of a tree, but of your body, such as an arm or a leg.  A limb that once moved, flexed, and functioned, but now hangs stiffly, drained of life and usefulness, still hanging from your body but doomed to be dragged around as a shriveled reminder of the life you use to have. An atrophied limb is one that has withered because it was unused or neglected, such as an arm in cast for too long, legs that have been bed or chair ridden -  all of the life force has withdrawn, leaving you with a dangling piece of meat.  Atrophy is a word close to death, the next step down is called rigor mortis. It’s a piece of death tacked on to your still-living body.  In short, it is a word that belongs no where near a vagina.

But that’s just what I saw the other day, sitting in the car mechanics waiting room, leafing through a glossy magazine constructed just for my demographic, the middle aged middle class female. There on a two page spread were the words writ large — they are now selling a cure for Vaginal Atrophy, a terrible turn of events I didn’t even know was possible.  A healthy, beautiful woman with streaks of grey and elegant lines looked out from the page, serious, sexy and desirable, looking right at me to say, Yes, your crotch is going to atrophy, and I’m here to help you.  

My first response was to drop the magazine as if it had burned me, drop it to the ground and watch it flare into a pile of ashes, fanning the flames higher and higher with back issues of Car and Driver.  The second response was to look around at the polite and patient folks in the waiting area, all middle aged and beyond, show them the ad and say, Can you believe this crap, do you see what they are trying to do to us, scare us into buying more pills?  I didn’t do either of those things, but I did tell my friend about what I had seen, asking “Guess what I learned today?”  When I said the words Atrophy and Vagina in the same sentence she had the perfect response:   “Oh nonononononono ….No. Don’t be saying those words around me, you keep that shit over there, way over there.” 

First off, sure, the internal muscles of the vaginal canal move, they move like a kelp forest moves in the deepest ocean currents, but there is no comparison to a limb.  The muscles in that region are round, designed to gently draw in the life force, and then get out of the way when it’s time for the life to come back out.  Round muscles, otherwise known as sphincters,  do their work when they are relaxed - the mouth, your entire digestive system, especially the exit portal, the cervix and the uterus  — all huge round muscle systems whose purpose is to gently hold and easily release.  These systems are placid and serene, waving in the currents with movements so minute they hardly measure.  

I know there are women out there who do their kegel exercises with a Zumba-like enthusiasm, training their bands of kelp in mini-dance routines that can apparently do miraculous things. A friend once confided that she had seen the video of a woman picking up an object, perhaps a baseball, with her you-know-what. This is an image just as horrifying as atrophy, but I’m sure if we have any choice in the matter we’ll all be clenching, flexing and counting with our cha-cha’s at the next stoplight and through the next commercial, in the hopes of having anything but atrophy in our underpants. 

So apparently some people are able to exercise a robust set of round muscles in their private parts, and others suffer a dwindling ability to move at all.  My point here is that while there are muscles and subtle movements in that region, atrophy is the wrong word on every level, a word chosen for dramatic effect, a word chosen to get my attention and to put a fear of the future deep in my soul.  A word chosen to drive me into the doctors office and beg for a cure to make it all go away.

The woman in the magazine ad is clearly so full of life, she’s a hot item, yet she’s got a dry, stiffened crotch and can’t get it on in the boudoir. Her labia tinkles like a wind chime every time she walks.  And they have a pill to fix it. 

I can see the pencil-necked medical marketing team at work now, deep into brainstorming and research sessions, searching for the female version of limp dick, looking for the juggernaut that will bring the women into the offices with demands to write that scrip.  And I’m happy they want to help, really, I’m glad to know that there are folks out there whose job it is to keep people grooving long after the fertility shop closes down and certain problems arise. I’m not a fan of big pharma, but I’m a big fan of getting it on, so I can appreciate the effort. But then they had to use a word like atrophy, which frankly showed their manipulative hand way too clearly. 

They don’t know it yet, but they want me on that marketing team.  I’ll help them come up with a more subtle term, one that a kick-ass sexy smart woman can say out loud - anything except a dangling piece of death where the fountain of life used to be. 

But they’ve gone ahead and named it, they got my attention, so what are we supposed to say now  - Um, Hi, I’m really into you, don’t mind the dust in my underpants, it’s just that I’ve got atrophic crotch syndrome. Or, Sorry honey, I’m feeling atrophic tonight, and all I’ve got is cardboard.

And what happens when a guy with Erectile Dysfunction meets a hot chick with Vaginal Atrophy?  He’s limp and she’s stiff, so they’ve pretty much swapped things around from how it use to be. It takes them a little while to get their groove on but eventually they find their way, and they called this new thing they do together the Vagatile Atrophunction.  Vagina+Erectile and Atrophy+Disfunction = Vagatile Atrophunction, which sounds lovely, actually, may we all be so lucky. 

Back to the terrible word, atrophy - remember how it comes to be? Lack of use. So use it ladies, use it and groove it, do the cha-cha and the two-step and train it up to be a vise-grip for your next home improvement project.  Put on some cranking atrophunction tunes, grab your favorite stiff partner, loosen up and get down tonight, all night and every night. 

I learned a lot from that magazine in the waiting room, but the next time I’m at the mechanics I’ll be sticking with the Car and Driver, squeezing and counting to ten while gazing at the pictures, humming a phunky tune and doing my best to keep the ol’ atrophy way, way, way over there. 

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An excerpt from Five By Fifty