Last month, a French judge annulled a couple’s marriage because the woman wasn’t actually a virgin. Perhaps because other women don’t want to have a similar fate, or disappoint their future husbands with bloodless sheets, some are undergoing hymen reconstruction before getting married, spending as much as $5,250 at private clinics in France, or traveling to other countries where it costs as little as $300. (I wouldn’t scrimp on this kind of surgery, people.) Time spoke to one French doctor, Dr. Stephane Saint-Leger, who often performs the surgery because he feels that Muslim women’s physical and psychological well-being can be threatened if they aren’t virgins, and he said that 30 to 40 percent of both original and reconstructed hymens fail to produce “virginity-confirming bleeding” when ruptured by penetration, anyway, so there’s no need to feel inferior if yours doesn’t. [Time]
