The New York Times reported on it Tuesday, and now the aesthetic blogosphere is buzzing all over the place — here, here, and here, at least.
PHIT, or Pelvic Health Integrated Techniques, is a new medical spa in Manhattan "dedicated to the latest in vaginal rejuvenation, pelvic fitness, and non-invasive skin rejuvenation."
Spa for Those Women Concerned About ‘Pelvic Fitness’
Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.
The spa is essentially a gussied-up examination room down the hall from Dr. Romanzi's medical practice. At the spa, the signature treatment will be a $150 gynecological exam — in which a client contracts her pelvic muscles around Dr. Romanzi's fingers — to determine by feel whether muscle tone is weak, moderate or strong.
Dr. Romanzi likes to call the vaginal workouts she prescribes "personal training." Clients could also use an in-office electrostimulation machine to improve pelvic muscle tone or buy a device for home use. Dr. Romanzi said that such treatments are intended to improve bladder control; she said pelvic training may also lead to more intense orgasms.
Later in the article, a gynecologist responds to the obvious quesion: Why? The reply: “If this is being recommended to women who have no symptoms, then there are no medical organizations or literature that support that that is necessary.”
Romanzi is relentlessly upbeat about the need for such a specialty spa, likening some of PHIT's "treatments" — such as The "Other" Face Lift, Core Restore, and the intriguingly-titled Lip Sync — to how one can treat tooth decay by flossing your teeth each day.
If you can vote and you have a vagina, you should do these [fitness techniques]," she says. "It's the dental floss of feminine fitness."