Saturday 13 June 2009

Competition Time

There's a funny piece on PowderRoomGrafitti about the French obsession with post-natal/partum perineal health. Naturally, I have a tale to tell on the subject, which is swear-to-god true:

Last year, I went to an "event" with friends. I think it was called, "Sex, Chocolate and your Pelvic Floor". Obviously the title was intriguing enough to get me there. Now, as many women may know, it is extremely important to keep your pelvic floor muscles as strong as possible – unless you want to be peeing every time you sneeze. The organization sponsoring the event was almost entirely devoted to this medical issue, and very serious about it obviously.

With champagne glasses in hand, we sat down to listen to various speakers talking about our nether regions, surrounded by anatomically correct posters of giant vaginas. One speaker, a sex therapist, produced what I first thought was a satin hot lips pillow. When she began using is to demonstrate sex toys that also double up as vaginal muscle strengtheners, I quickly saw what the cushion really was.

Towards the end of the evening, the hosts began calling door prizes using our coat check tickets. Of course, the two friends either side of me won gift certificates to fabulous lingerie shops/stores. I never win anything, but then they called my number. "Ooh great", I thought with glee, "My undies are all gray. I could do with some new knickers/panties".

I should have been suspicious when all the gynecologists in the room were pointing at the goody bag coming my way. “What did I win?”, I excitedly asked. And yes, I had bagged the ultimate door prize – “Myself; Discover Feminine Strength”. A pelvic muscle trainer (batteries not included), complete with a complementary one-on-one Total Control session. The box includes 1 personal trainer (presumably non-human), one vaginal sensor (non-latex), one replacement vaginal sensor (don’t ask), a travel bag and toll-free helpline assistance. Can you imagine the conversations going on at that help desk? (The best suggestion in the comment box wins THE prize.)

It seems what you do is insert the “long thing”, which you are then required to squeeze several times with your internal pelvic muscles. If you have never done this, it's like stopping your pee mid-flow to hear which child is screaming at the top of his/her lungs. But that’s not the end of it. The “long thing” is attached to a monitor which registers your efforts, so you effectively receive a digital report card. Not sure if this grading system reports back to a central office somewhere, but the kit has a money-back guarantee of “daily strengthening in a short, five minute session”.

Needless to say, the box remains unopened. As I said, I'll gladly give it to the funniest comment here. The certificate for the one-on-one session expires in July thank goodness!

24 comments:

  1. I would have laughed, but I didn't have my Tenalady pads in so have remained straightfaced.

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  2. That is the sort of prize I'd win having never won anything in a raffle before - how funny. My nightmare with pelvic floor muscles was trying to tell a room full of 15 year old boys (including my own son) that they too had pelvic floor muscles they needed to engage to use their core strength - you can imagine my son nearly disowned me....ps I am not trying to win the prize btw Lxx

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  3. I wish I'd listened to those nurses who said to us ward of new mums, * You will all be back for repair jobs in your fifties if you don't do your pelvic floor exercises.*
    Had to laugh at the prize. You COULD use it, you know!

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  4. That's overdoing it. What did people do when these things didn't exist?

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  5. OMGG ROFLMAO but I might be back ;-)

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  6. You see, a vibrator a day keeps the vagina at bay. It was the one thing my mum taught me. MH

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  7. Oh I can't follow this - I think you'll have to give the prize to MH - too too funny!! Havig said that - I don't half need something to help me (thought I'd share that with you), but as I said to someone else, what's a few wet knickers when you've enjoyed a good old belly laugh??

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  8. what exactly does this one to one entail?? Maybe you should book?

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  9. I sort of get the impression that this post wasn't really aimed at me! Very funny, though.

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  10. Insert the 'long thing'... Haha. You should feel ashamed to make us all laugh so hard. Wet knickers all across the country.

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  11. Billy! Trust you to walk in on a rude post! Welcome back pet!

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  12. I think you should just keep the prize! Just imagine what a few tricks with ping pong balls will do for your blog stats... You might not want to show your children though!

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  13. I'm for once, speechless.

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  14. Youch! am squeezing like crazy here, blow up vaginas, though (you DID say that didn't you, I'm not just taking it one nasty step further ...) - could only happen in the good ole US of.
    But blimey, spare a thought for us hay fever sufferers. Exactly.

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  15. Milla - it took me a while to get the hay fever comment, but yes, do your exercises and you'll be fine. And it was a cusion rather than a blow-up va-jay-jay but had about the same impact.
    Millenium - the prize is yours if you want it. Or I can just post photos of it?

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  16. Hey, I'm kind of interested in the prize too, but only if it's optimised with Bluetooth technology. I think all my followers on Twitter would really want to follow those tweets! That's me, always looking to keep up with the latest timewasters, tech-wise.

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  17. Crikey!

    I'm so naive I thought a friend's vibrator was a tooth brush holder.

    I'd have been useless there,

    GG

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  18. speechless.
    and yet, amused.
    wonder what the nuns would've made of such devices? LOL

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  19. I have one of those probes, courtesey of when I had to visit a PT for my incontinence. I would be hooked up to a computer screen which showed a graph of my pelvic floor contractions. On the wall was a poster designed to take my attention off the graph. And it fascinated me -- it showed the different types of poo and which is good and which is bad. Pebbles are very, very bad. I think the idea of pelvic floor party is enough to make me wet myself laughing.

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  20. Goodness this post is digging deep. How low can we go? No prizes tho'.
    (Hey - I'm a poet..)

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  21. Oh my God I am laughing so hard at MH and Wake up and smell the coffee. After my second son was born my pelvic floor muscles went to mush. One day my neighbors horse got out on the road, so I ran to her house to get her, I ran the 16th of a mile to knock on her door to tell her and as I got there I looked down at my jeans. Lets just say I had to take off my sweater and tie it around my waist! Damn pelvic floor muscles.

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