If you thought ridiculous beauty standards for women peaked with the thigh gap, you’re going to want to sit down for this. (Or maybe not, since sitting can create stomach rolls, which we’re also not supposed to have.) Allow me to introduce the “armpit vagina.”
The alleged “armpit vagina”?also known as the “arm vagina”?is the fold of skin formed when your arm is lowered against your torso. Yes, that’s it. Basically, everyone with arms and a torso has it regardless of size. It’s just one of those things that happens when you have a body and is in no way abnormal or ugly or deserving of its own name.
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Although the specific origin of this faux anatomical term is fuzzy, many credit Jennifer Lawrence for introducing it into the body-shaming lexicon when she used it during a SAG red carpet interview in 2014. Thankfully, the idea didn’t really pick up steam after that, but recently received major exposure when Hollywood stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray mentioned it in an interview with The Times on Nov. 29. Detailing how her A-list clients are always worried about one body part or another, she said that one that comes up a lot is the “arm vagina.” As a writer pointed out in The Guardian, Corbin-Murray isn’t trying to give women a complex about their arms; rather, she was highlighting the unattainable beauty standards set for women in...