Set Yourself Free by Telling Your Truth

It breaks my heart that Sex and The City ended. For nearly a decade, I could pretend that women really do gather together over Cosmos, talking about sex, career, relationships, and the meaning of life according to Carrie Bradshaw, all while decked out in Manolo Blahniks and sporting styling haircuts, both cranial and pubic.

As a gynecologist, my whole life changed when Sex and the City showed up. Suddenly, I had to sign up for HBO just to keep up with my patients. They would show up at my office saying, “Is my vagina depressed like Charlotte’s?” or “How can I turn myself into a Samantha in the bedroom?” Suddenly, for the first time in my medical career, women were actually talking about vaginas!

Then it ended. And just like that, an era was over. I find myself mourning the weekly chatter that got women talking. When it ended, I cancelled HBO.

But Sex and the City lit a pilot light within me. It got me so jazzed about the sparkle that emanates from empowered women that I started to do things I might never do. I started a blog about being authentic. I wrote a book called What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend. I decided to strip off my white coat, get down off my doctor pedestal, and tell it like it is.

Take bikini waxing, for example. For most of my life, such topics would be completely taboo. But Sex and the City inspired me. What if I told the truth, just like I was sitting there with Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte? Surely, they wouldn’t judge me if I told the authentic story about my own bikini waxing experience. Surely, Samantha would tell me about how she just purses her lips and sucks it up for the sake of pubic beauty. Surely, Charlotte would blush and confess to how she cleans up her own landing strip. Surely, Miranda would admit that her red bush is perfect au natural, thank you very much. And of course, Carrie would write her column about how we all must express ourselves authentically, regardless of how we look when we strip off our La Perla lingerie.

Surely, we are the same kind of community. It can’t be an accident that Sex and the City resonated with so many women. I know we’re out there, in the flesh, dying to talk about this stuff in a place where we feel safe. So here goes. Let’s get this party started.

A story from my personal archives (and a preview from What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend):

Most of my life, waxing held no appeal for me. Going to the gynecologist once a year was mortifying enough. (Yes, even gynecologists get uncomfortable in the stirrups.) So baring it all for the waxing gurus to strip away layers of skin cells, stripes of hair, and my remaining modesty for the sake of pubic beauty just wasn’t my bag.

But one hot summer day, I decided to try it by myself at home. After all, I’m a gynecologist, I reasoned. How hard could it be? With no one around and bikini season upon me, I pulled out the home waxing kit a friend gave me as a gag gift and plugged in the wax. One simple step, and I’d be bikini-ready.

Or so I thought.

Hours later, I found myself sitting on one of the blow-up donut pillows we send home with women after they give birth, slathered in aloe vera and numbing myself with an ice pack. Needless to say, I learned a few things.

Lesson #1 DO NOT apply hot wax without testing the temperature first. Hot wax burns the bejesus out of you.