Southern Exposure

The newest lasers and radio-frequency devices promise tightness and smoothness, and they’re so not focused on crow’s-feet. But “vaginal rejuvenation” devices are as murky as they are enticing.

- Elizabeth Siegel

They have names that sound feminine and mysterious— like Goddess and FemTouch—and just hint at the kinds of results some doctors say they may deliver: vaginal tightening, better lubrication, toe-curling orgasms for the rest of your life. All you have to do is get your vagina prodded with a laser or radio-frequency probe. And pay as much as $3,000 for the privilege. Everyone says it doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think, that when you walk out, you’d never even know you’d birthed two children or had your first hot flash five years ago. Peeing when you laugh, dryness, reduced sensation—all things of the past. At least that’s the idea.

“Vaginal rejuvenation” is a catchall term often used to describe noninvasive energy-based devices that aim for a range of clock-rewinding results. “But this isn’t a medical term; it’s a marketing term,” says Lauren Streicher, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Health and Menopause. “These devices may promise all these things—they’ll lift and separate and make you happier and save your marriage—but ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ doesn’t actually mean anything, medically speaking.”