Unsurprisingly, Douglas McGeorge, past president of the the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, told the BBC he thinks the concern is "over the top. Essentially this is just about removing a bit of loose flesh, leaving behind an elegant-looking labia with minimum scarring." Oh, well if that's all it is! I mean, obviously, if you want to be taken seriously at a job interview or get a decent table at a hot restaurant, you can't just show up with inelegant-looking labia. Adds McGeorge, "Lads' mags are looked at by girlfriends, and make them think more about the way they look. We live in times where we are much more open about our bodies -- and changing them -- and labioplasty is simply a part of this."  By "this," you mean "a painfully sexist culture that encourages debilitating body shame," right? Because otherwise, you might want to think that one through a little more.

On the other hand, there are women out there who really do need genital reconstruction. Amanda Hess at The Sexist shares the stories of two of those, women who didn't just have "more than enough labia" but serious post-pregnancy complications described by one as "My vagina is falling out of my body!" (Actually, it was her uterus. Also, for the record, that woman had labioplasty while she was at it and reports that it "was brutal. All of 'Dr. 90210''s patients who say it doesn't hurt are lying. I'd rather get my teeth pulled out than do that again!") But after all that suffering, both women describe their new equipment as A) equivalent to a virginal young woman's and B) therefore incredibly desirable. Allison Henry, who nearly bled to death more than once: "We just had a cocktail party to celebrate me feeling healthy. And I do have the vagina of a 13-year-old virgin, with a perfect labia, as a bonus." MomLogic guest blogger Sara: "So now I'm on the mend, with a teenage-sized vagina ... The way things are at present, no man's apparatus, even of the Fisher Price variety, could ever fit down there. Still, I'll try to write a follow up report when it happens. That is, if my husband and I ever leave the bedroom again!"

To recap: These two women suffered severe trauma to their reproductive organs, but the big silver lining is that they now have vaginas reminiscent of girls too young to consent to sex. It's what every man wants, without the pesky statutory rape charges -- lucky hubbies! Sara even jokes (I hope) that her husband bought her cheerleader costumes to go with the new model. Look, I'm all for making inappropriate wisecracks about horrifying things, and any woman who has ever had to say or even think the words "my vagina is falling out of my body"  has earned the right to be seriously inappropriate,  but what the hell? Neither of you squicked yourself out, writing that? Hess puts it best: "I'm happy for you. I am. You went through some bad shit, and now your vagina is back inside your body, and I think that's wonderful. But I never, ever, ever, ever again want to have to think about a grown woman having a 'the vagina of a 13-year-old virgin.' That's some messed up heebie-jeebies shit."

And it's the same messed-up shit that drives perfectly healthy women to pay someone to cut into their genitals for purely aesthetic reasons. Oh wait, I'm sorry, did I say "messed-up shit"? I meant openness about our bodies. Now that our culture is much less repressive, we've learned important information that used to be hidden away -- like that pubic hair is disgusting (on a woman), which means we must wax it all off to avoid offending our sexual partners, after which we might just discover our vulvas are kind of funny-looking and thus require surgery to give us the "elegant labia" of ... children. Such progress we've made! Why, if people had never broken the silence, we'd all still be walking around assuming adult-looking vaginas are perfectly fine! Instead, we've completely eliminated all that old-fashioned shame about our bodies and backward thinking about sexuality. Whew. 

Flogging her book "Still Standing" on the "Today" show this morning, Prejean brushed off the term "sex tape." She described the footage as "me by myself, there was no one else with me. I was not having sex," failing to consider that "me by myself" qualifies as sex for roughly 80 percent of the Internet population.

The news of Prejean's one-woman show comes the same week Jennifer Lopez hit her ex-husband with a fat $10 million lawsuit over his attempts to peddle footage from their 1997 honeymoon and Colin Farrell's antics with a Playboy model have resurfaced. In a world where Fred Durst has a sex tape, is there anybody left who doesn't?

Kids, back in the day, a sex tape used to mean something. There was expensive equipment to set up and hide, cassettes to load, storyboards to be drawn. It was a big freaking deal when Rob Lowe had a romp with underage girls or Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee enjoyed connubial bliss (if that's what you call it). Sex in front of a camera was still considered something porn stars did, and breaking that barrier was exciting -- and blurry.

Today, anybody can just aim the phone at the interesting bits and upload the results before they even finish. So much for our happy ending. 

The celebrity sex tape -- as well as its close kin, the much forwarded naked snapshot -- started veering toward that fabled shark tank in June of 2004. That's when "1 Night in Paris" made its Web debut. Unlike other stars who'd been caught knocking boots, Paris Hilton didn't adopt a demeanor of scandalized abasement when her video emerged. Instead, she shrugged it off with the same bored lack of interest she'd displayed during her coital performance. Her career didn't suffer. Her fame didn't abate. On the contrary -- it skyrocketed.

In the ensuing years, compromising footage of the quasi-famous has become as commonplace as conspiracy theorists at a town meeting. And amazingly, it's proved an effective way of giving Hollywood has-beens a jolt of, well, exposure. Are you a Dirty Sanchez-dispensing, former "Saved by the Bell" cast member? Are you a man whose most famous role is playing a character called "McSteamy"? Smoke a little weed, head for the hot tub and don't forget to invite a friend. (Sweeps week crossovers await! ) Is your last name "Kardashian"? That and a little raw footage can get you your own perfume line. Excuse me, I have to go roll my eyes and yawn in an exaggerated manner now.

With each new revelation of a dirty video lurking in a famous closet, the shock at the genre itself dies a little more. Had honeymoon movies of J.Lo emerged when she married her ex in 1997, it might have been a cause célèbre. Now? Big whoop. The explicit sex tape and the compromising photo are no longer potential career ruiners, nor are they the hallmark of a wild, anything-goes character -- not when so many of us, famous and not, have been there and done that. It's a fair assumption that if there aren't explicit images of you floating around somewhere, you may not have a sex life. Or a phone.

While it's easy to enjoy a moment of delectable schadenfreude watching right-wing sweetheart Carrie Prejean, who says in her new memoir that "We should earn respect and admiration for our hearts, not for showing skin to look sexy," tell Meredith Vieira about "the biggest mistake of my life," it shouldn't really come as any surprise. Prejean may be a smug, backward-thinking idiot, but she's not the whore of Babylon. So when Prejean kvetched on the "Today" show that "nothing is private," she may have sounded whiny -- but she wasn't wrong. Some people learn it in more public and embarrassing ways than others, of course (like having your mom and some lawyers watch the footage you made for her boyfriend). But what Prejean did isn't different from anything many, many people are doing in their homes and hotels and dorms right this minute, alone or with a friend or two. Deviants, perverts, married couples, teenagers and "normal, churchgoing" folks like Carrie Prejean -- we are all sexual beings, and we don't need to send our images to the Fotomat for processing anymore. Stuff's bound to happen. Prejean wanted to be Miss USA. Turns out she's everywoman after all.

Now, PTC has finally stumbled upon something it can really sink its teeth into. Those of you who have already seen the promo for next week's "Gossip Girl" episode (posted below) may remember that we've been promised a "3s0me." The ad shuffles through the (now mostly college-age) main characters' images like a slot machine, begging us to guess which trio will hook up. That's all we know about what's to come... and that seems to be all PTC knows, too. But that hasn't stopped them from writing a lengthy letter (reproduced in full at EW.com) to CW affiliates promising that there will be hell to pay if they air the episode in question.

The arguments are pretty much what you'd expect. Here are some highlights:

• "To include a story line like this on a program that is expressly targeted to impressionable teenagers is reckless and irresponsible."

• "When television portrays attractive, popular teenage characters as sexually active, it sends a powerful message to young viewers that they, too, should be sexually active and in fact, there might be something wrong with them if they aren’t."

• "Gossip Girl routinely depicts teenage characters engaging in promiscuous and consequence-free sexual behavior, and that’s bad enough.  But will you now be complicit in establishing a precedent and expectation that teenagers should engage in behaviors heretofore associated primarily with adult films?  Behaviors that not only increase health risks, but which are emotionally and psychologically damaging to participants, as well?"

Oh, and in case PTC's implicit threat wasn't clear enough, the group offers the following helpful hint: "May I also remind you that it is the affiliate, not the CW network, that will bear the financial burden of an FCC fine should any of the content of the November 9th episode be found to violate broadcast decency laws." (I think the lack of a question mark at the end of that sentence pretty much speaks for itself.)

Am I the only one who finds it strange that PTC has so much to say about the episode, sight unseen? How do they know that the threesome in question will a) occur on-screen; b) be as sexually explicit as they fear; and c) actually come to fruition? TV promos are, after all, pretty well known for making mountains of molehills. And as for the idea that ménages à trois are a porn-only phenomenon, well... perhaps PTC should talk to some real college students for a reality check on that assumption.

Even if the episode is as bad as PTC assumes, what will pulling it accomplish? Despite being a "Gossip Girl" fan myself, I would never argue that the kids on the series  are great role models. But I also don't think censoring the show -- which attracts a sizable adult following --  is a particularly effective way of keeping teens safe. It's ridiculous to imagine we can (or should) shield high schoolers from any and all unsavory influences. What we can do is help them interpret the messages they're getting. With that in mind, parents might want to consider actually watching and discussing "Gossip Girl" with their kids. Sure, most episodes are a blur of pretty clothes and soap-opera plot points. Yet the series has also raised a slew of issues relevant to teens' real lives, from eating disorders to coming out of the closet to virginity loss. Hell, earlier this season "Gossip Girl's" debauched villain-turned-devoted boyfriend Chuck Bass kissed another man and was totally fine with it. ("Do you really think I've never kissed a guy before?" he asked his girlfriend.) Parents searching for an excuse to start a conversation with their offspring about homophobia or Gen Y's unprecedented sexual fluidity need look no further.

Of all the magazine's sordid findings about New Yorkers' sex lives -- or, more accurately, the sex lives of the self-selected group of people who volunteered to share their stories with the world -- the part Brooks finds "most interesting" is "the way cellphones have influenced courtship." One might wonder: Really, the role of cellphones is the most interesting thing about a series that's featured everyone from a "polyamorous paralegal" to a "trader who will fly for sex"? In fairness, though, technology does play a significant role in the magazine's exegesis, particularly because it makes communication much easier. Writer Wesley Yang explains that everyone has someone on their back burner and everyone's on someone else's back burner -- because no one wants to find themselves without romantic options. Except some are overwhelmed by having too many options and fear they'll make the wrong decision -- so they often don't and instead send out late-night mass texts in search of someone, anyone who will bite, so to speak. This all makes it easier to project an image of being cool, calm and totally uninvested.

This all rings true, but then Brooks gets at what bothers him about all these technological innovations. "If you have several options perpetually before you, and if technology makes it easier to jump from one option to another, you will naturally adopt the mentality of a comparison shopper," he writes. In other words: You will date around before settling down. Horrors. He says:

Once upon a time -- in what we might think of as the "Happy Days" era -- courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts -- dating, going steady, delaying sex -- was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

That rosy time was ruined by feminism, he says, and now technology has made it difficult to "come up with [more] appropriate scripts." That's because "etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint," while "technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles." Thus we have a "frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments." Shorter Brooks: People can now freely engage in sexual relationships without a suffocating degree of societal pressure. As John Knefel writes on True/Slant, it's a "good thing, not a bad thing" that people are free to come and go from relationships as they please -- "it means that if somebody stays, they really want to."

It might be that young people today are experiencing more heartbreak and are taking special pains to keep their guard up with romantic interests -- but that's because young people today are also spending a whole lot more time trying out different suitors. Romance is bound to bring about insecurities, anxiety and heartbreak. Sure, you can respond by socially shackling two people together to make them feel more romantically secure, but it doesn't mean they're actually going to be happy -- and that should be the point, right? Brooks fails to mention that Yang ends his analysis of Sex Diaries with an entry from "an ordinary young man earnestly seeking a happy ending" (of the fairy tale sort, you pervs). For all their crazy antics, many of these text-messaging, bed-hopping New Yorkers are ultimately looking for the same thing Brooks wants for them: Long-term love.

At first glance, a paper published in the journal Pediatrics may seem to imply that young women are virtually unaffected by body image: As The Washington Post's The Checkup blog reports, researchers found "no association between high-school girls' body-mass index -- which indicates whether a body is under-, over- or of normal weight -- and their ever having had sex." But once the University of Pittsburgh team began to break down their results by high-school girls' race, perceived weight and a matrix of especially risky sexual behaviors, the findings became more complicated.

Overall, the study found that underweight girls, as well as those who were or believed they were overweight, were less likely to use condoms than their normal-weight counterparts. Of the many things this might suggest, what seems obvious to me is this group's lack of agency and self-worth. Girls may be seeing their (real or perceived) larger size as a flaw they must compensate for, and those with low self-esteem may already be starving themselves. (Personally, I'd be interested to see how much overlap there was between the group of girls who were actually underweight and the group that considered itself to be overweight.)

And the findings only get stickier when race enters the equation. Here's how The Checkup breaks them down:

These results are, of course, all over the map, and more research is likely necessary to determine why the racial differences are so pronounced. But a few common threads emerge: Girls who are or believe themselves to be over- or underweight seem most likely to be leading dangerous sex lives. And, for some reason, young Latinas are especially vulnerable, regardless of real or perceived weight.

So, now that we are beginning to understand how weight, race and body image can play into girls' early sexual experiences, what can we do to decrease their risk-taking behavior? For Dr. Aletha Akers, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of gynecology and and reproductive sciences at Pitt, it comes down to better sex education. "This study will contribute to sexual health education prevention efforts, which can be tailored to address how cultural norms regarding body size may influence adolescent sexual decision making," she says, in a press release. "Knowing how a girl perceives her weight may be just as important as knowing her actual weight." More specifically, the study concludes "that girls at weight extremes and those from different racial backgrounds may have unique sexual health education and prevention needs."

I have no quibble with Akers' recommendations; in fact, I hope politicians and those who design sex ed curricula are listening to what she has to say. But I think it's also important to point out that not all sex education happens in school. If we want girls to feel good enough about themselves that they wait until they're ready, practice safe sex and avoid other risky behaviors, we're also going to have to help them interpret the messages they're getting from more informal sources -- from friends and siblings to magazine and TV.