Expressive Surfaces: The Case of the Designer Vagina

Abstract

In this paper I set out an argument that skins and screens, once distinctly different types of surface, are merging. I show how in contemporary highly mediatised worlds skins are required to be visually expressive whilst also noting a parallel movement whereby screens are becoming more affective. Using the ‘designer vagina’—specifically labiaplasty—as a case study I show how ideal bodies exist simultaneously as screen and as skin, as image and as affect. In turn, I argue that two-dimensional images and three-dimensional ‘real life’ bodies are blending in ways that parallel skin-screen mergers.