In this era of technology, the Rocky Balboa, old-timey, blood, sweat, and tears workouts are over—it’s all about outsourcing your muscle-toning. There’s FaceGym, to activate the 72-muscle scaffolding under your dermis for a snatched cheekbone; there’s EmSculpt, which carves out an eight-pack by making your abs do thousands of crunches while you lie there; and now the same power can be harnessed for your vagina.
All mothers who endure childbirth are queens, and now we have the New York vaginal medispa VSpot’s Kegal Throne, also known as Femilift. Any postpartum mom is told by her gyno to do the box-tightening box crunch, which is basically squeezing your walls together, similar to stopping mid-pee. But even with the best intentions, and after being told how easy it is (“You can do them anywhere! The grocery-store line!”), very few busy mothers really practice the exercise. Until now. While some women have explored the trending pelvic-floor classes, others prefer the instant gratification that Femilift offers.
The company that created the machine, B.T.L. (Better Tighter Labia?), gives us something that resembles a droid hooked up to a large chair with a round back that you sit on fully clothed, including panties. Before I started, I studied its information pamphlet, or cliterature.
VSpot founder (and former Real Housewife) Cindy Barshop explained that the tech isn’t new but is now being harnessed to e-stim muscles while you sit. It performs 13,000 Kegels in 28 minutes.
A serial entrepreneur, Barshop is no stranger to female bits ’n’ pieces, having created the vanguard laser-hair-removal studio Completely Bare in the 90s in the basement of Barneys. (May it rest…) I was an early adopter and, thanks to her technicians, winced my way into Barbie-doll smoothness, with my lashes being the lowest hair on my body.
After selling that business, she zoomed into down yonders, bringing cooters out of the shadows and building a serene, loft-ceilinged wonderland, complete with blush walls, bowls of pink Starburst candies, and vag-adjacent artwork of stuff like orchids. Much like the painter “Georgia O’Kweef.”
After sitting in the calming lounge as other women were escorted in and out of the many treatment rooms, I was summoned to my X-rated R2-D2 robot friend and hooked up to the Throne. I was bracing for a painful clit electrocution, but it wasn’t even remotely painful, just …strange.
There are several settings you can select for orgasm enhancement (though, for that, I highly recommend the O-Shot, which centrifuges stem cells from your blood that they inject in y’ bean) (with laughing gas if you want) (I wanted). It helps strengthen your pelvic floor and cure incontinence. In middle age, where women can pee a little from sneezing or laughing at a comedy club, the Kegel Throne zaps all that away.
As the technician switched modalities, I definitely felt jolted but not in any pain or discomfort. As I marveled at the way it all worked, Barshop remarked, “There’s still a taboo about women’s sexual health, but this year that’s going to change.” She credits Gen X’s lack of squeamishness about discussing menopause, which boomers barely whispered about.
Now, with Naomi Watts’s line of products—for middle-aged women going through what was formerly known as “the change”—to the mainstream media finally discussing symptoms and cures, perhaps women have reached the point of doing what men have done forever: talking about their organs.
As for the results, after two sessions I definitely felt stronger, younger, and more toned. Not that I’m doing an Amsterdam-style Ping-Pong-ball trick anytime soon, but I’m still at it, aiming to become Barshop’s newest Dame of Thrones.
Jill Kargman is the author of Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave and Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut. She also created and starred in the Peacock series Odd Mom Out
