This summer, District wrinkles are under assault with the opening of D.C.'s "first ever botox boutique." The Georgetown-based Luxxery Express Medical Spa will feature no-appointment-necessary injectable fillers for "D.C.’s on-the-go, beauty-driven community"—a local demographic that's been ignored for too long.

The man behind the needle is Dr. Ayman Hakki, who, according to a press release, "saw two alternatives as a career: become a plastic surgeon like Ivo Pitangue whose work on Sophia Lauren popularized cosmetic surgery or become an architect like Frank Gehry whose work evokes both pop culture and high art." Thankfully for the nomadic beauty-driven community, Hakki's "love of beauty and the human body" won out. The choice paid off: The presser touts him as "the first D.C. metropolitan-area plastic surgeon whose artistry was featured on MTV’s 'True Life: I Want Breast Implants.'" He'll be available to stuff your face at 2141 Wisconsin Ave. NW starting July 1.

On Sunday evening, Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA 2010. By morning, her reign had already been tarnished by the requisite beauty queen sex scandal. Photos had surfaced of the now-24-year-old Fakih dancing on a stripper pole in a local radio event titled "Stripper 101." But as Broadsheet's Tracy Clark-Flory notes, Fakih's "official Miss USA glamor shots" (above) are actually significantly more risque than the "stripper" shots, which revealed Fikah—clothed—in short-shorts and a tank top.

Well, well, well. What on earth could possibly be happening here?

First, Clark-Flory lays out the sexual landscape:

What's absurd—no, make that what's most absurd—about this faux scandal is that the photos of Fakih pole-dancing are far tamer than the official Miss USA glamor shots. As Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote last week, it seemed pageant officials were "heading scandal off at the pass" by releasing a "spank-worthy collection of its contestants in lingerie." Fakih is wearing less clothing in her glamor shot than in her pole-dancing pics—we're talking fishnets, a garter and a bra compared to a tank top and booty shorts. In all seriousness, you're likely to see racier getups on suburban soccer moms at their local strip aerobics class.

"The beauty queen's fall from grace has been institutionalized and mainstreamed," Clark-Flory continues. "The post-win scandal is now every bit an expected and essential part of the pageant as the swimsuit portion of the show. It's all so predictable and boring. Could it be that we're nearing maximum sex scandal capacity?"

Not a chance. Clark-Flory is right that it's boring, predictable, and hypocritical for the Miss USA pageant to expect completely virginal contestants when the pageant itself encourages its Misses to embody the other half of that particular dichotomy.

But this pattern—parading its contestants in string bikinis and high-heels, and then clutching its pearls over any unsanctioned skin-showing—is hardly an idiosyncrasy of the pageant circuit. This comes from a long and storied tradition of (a) expecting women to be extremely sexy, and then (b) furiously policing their sexuality by confining it to particular contexts, which are controlled by (c) assigned (usually) male guardians, like fathers, husbands, and pageant organizers.

That's why Americans have got our sexy teen pop stars who are saving themselves for marriage, our Christian true-believers who are saving their breast implants for their husbands,  and our beauty queens who are explicitly judged on how sexy they are—as long as they're only sexy for Donald Trump. Last year, Miss California USA funded Carrie Prejean's breast implants, only to ditch her when she almost showed them off. It doesn't matter that these beauty queens are often wearing less clothes in the pageant than they are in their "sexy photo scandals"—they're still not saving themselves sufficiently, and for that they deserve to be shamed.

Trump, like many arbiters of female sexuality before him, wants a lady in the street but a freak in the, uh, swimsuit competition. He'll never find one—it's difficult to find a young woman who can perform sexuality at Miss-USA-standards without any practice.  So what's the only way to keep the dichotomy alive? Dole out the shaming when any less-than-perfectly-chaste photos arise. In an age when beauty pageant interest is flagging, the American public is still invested in that virgin-whore narrative—and slut-shaming for fun and profit has proved a reliable investment for Trump.

So, I've been pretty hard on breast implantation lately. First there was this screed against justifying breast augmentation as empowering. And then there was this dissection of the plastic surgery industry in general. And then C.L. Minou, a writer I admire very much, sent me an e-mail basically saying, "Hey! I am a woman who actually has breast implants. Want to talk to me about it?"

And good thing, that! For behold the product of that missive: This lovely interview with Minou about the ways in which the feminine beauty ideal intersects with trans identity and feminist identity and the work of just living our lives and being comfortable in our bodies. But first: Minou blogs at The Second Awakening, a blog about feminism, post-gender-transition; she is also a regular contributor to Below the Belt and Tiger Beatdown; soon you'll see her work over at Change.Org, too. Onward:

SEXIST: What was your decision-making process like in deciding to undergo breast augmentation, and how do you feel about the whole thing now?

CLM: As I say over at The Second Awakening, my experience of privilege has left me an opponent of it in all its forms—because I'm quite familiar with the gradient. And it's not even as simple as male privilege vs female subordination—as a crossdresser, I was a lower status male back in the days people thought I was male. I was a feminist before I transitioned, but I'm a much more ardent feminist since I transitioned.

But there's definitely the possibility of my feminism being dismissed for a lot of reasons. The one you cite is certainly one of them—that I'm only a feminist because I'm a woman now, or to express it more bluntly, that I'm trying to recapture my male privilege. (Of course, some people would accuse me of still having it, or acting like I do). The whole question of my former male privilege is pretty complex and delicate–I've never denied that my career (outside my writing life, I'm a programmer) was certainly made much easier because at the time I wasn't a woman. But is that balanced by the lack of status I have as not just a woman, but a trans woman, one who often loses status even among women? Because there's also a trend to automatically discount my feminism or feelings about a feminist topic because I don't share the background that most cis women share. (In its most extreme form you get the attitude of Lu's Pharmacy in Vancouver, a woman-only store that refused service to trans women because we've never bled.

At the same time, as someone who identifies and is usually identified by other people as a woman, I've certainly become more confident in expressing myself in feminist ways. Obviously my words have greater impact when I speak as a woman, rather than as a feminist-identified man. It's not that I deny there's any self-interest in my feminist viewpoint—it's just that it's not the ONLY reason.

Dr. Val Lambros is five years into a 20-year study of how the face ages. Every five years, Lambros sits a group of study participants in front of a 3-D camera, maps out their faces, and then painstakingly aligns the images to see what time has wreaked upon their pores, wrinkles, and facial structures. Lambros’ “Longitudinal Facial Aging Project” culls its subjects from those who will most benefit from its results—aesthetic surgeons. “Plastic surgeons reliably show up to meetings every year throughout their careers,” Lambros explains. At the annual American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) conference, held last weekend in National Harbor, Md., surgeons dutifully filed into Lambros’ exhibit booth to face the camera.

Lambros’ sample, while reliable, has one major limitation. “I need beautiful women!” Lambros called out to one female surgeon passing by his ASAPS booth, who agreed to get mapped. “The problem is, the vast majority of them are men,” says Lambros, who estimates that less than ten percent of his aging faces are female. “It’s a guy-dominated field. And men don’t age in the same way that women do,” he says. Lambros chalks that partly up to cultural perception, partly up to biology. “Society will see a 60-year-old guy as looking better than a 60-year-old woman,” says Lambros. “But women’s skin is thinner, too.” And Lambros’ female sample is not necessarily aging naturally: “Typically, female plastic surgeons will do fillers on themselves—the Botox and stuff,” he says. “You’ll be able to see that in the photographs, and it will invalidate some of the findings, but not all of them."

Over 90 percent of plastic surgeons are men; over 90 percent of their patients are women. Aesthetic plastic surgeons do not seem overly concerned with why that is. Despite the recession, the business model is strong—cosmetic procedures only decreased by 2 percent from 2008 to 2009. The demographics are shifting slightly—last year, women’s procedures were down 3 percent, while men’s were up 8—but the industry remains focused on the ladies. At the kick-off of the ASAPS annual conference, four male plastic surgeons convened at the head of a large, U-shaped table to announce the launch of “Project Beauty,” ASAPS’ new editorial arm focused on the way women look. After airing a few sample video testimonials from women—“I wanted to look more feminine in my clothes, and have more self-confidence!” one breast augmentation patient claimed before breezing down the street in a revealing top—the men took questions from the crowd.

When asked why the vast majority of plastic surgery patients are still female, there was an extended pause, followed by a collective shrugging of shoulders. Robert Singer, a short, balding surgeon who greeted everyone with a kiss on each cheek, took a stab at it: “There are a variety of reasons. Men don’t want to give up control. They can’t put aside the time. They have a resistance to change. They’re not like women, who change their hair all the time.” At least one consumer found fault with the idea of a bunch of men dictating beauty standards to a bunch of women. Joan Kron, an octogenarian Allure columnist who writes an aesthetic surgery column for the beauty magazine—and whose smoothed face reveals a personal interest in the industry—assessed the project from behind a pair of oversize sunglasses. “I would trust your opinion on plastic surgery,” she told the men. “I wouldn’t trust your opinion on beauty. And I certainly wouldn’t trust your opinion on fashion.”

The ASAPS conference was teeming with gatherings like this one—male surgeons discussing how best to fix women’s bodies. During the conference, a panel of male surgeons convened to discuss the importance of jowl management, illustrated by a collection of middle-aged female jaws; a panel of male surgeons demonstrated how best to mark up a (female) face before a face-lift procedure; a male surgeon clicked through a series of photographs of the lower halves of women’s bodies—all dressed in identical white thongs—and recommended the number of joules he’d apply to each one.

But on the exhibit floor, where the surgeons are inundated with new products and procedures to help augment their practice, women were everywhere. The floor was bursting with photographs of them—their faces wrapped in the latest in post-operative garment technology; their eyelashes fluttering from the effects of artificial lash-grower Latisse; their heads thrown back in ecstasy as their augmented breasts faced the camera. Across the floor, dozens of silicone breast implants were served up on platters, ready for prodding and squeezing; videos of their bloody insertion into women’s bodies abounded. A couple of live ones in bikinis and wedge sandals were splayed out on exam chairs as a non-invasive body-contouring machine canvassed their asses and thighs. They were not the only pieces of meat in attendance: In the corner of the exhibit hall, a sweating slab of pork stood in for human flesh; a couple of Megadyne reps sliced away at it with an electrosurgical pencil.

Ronadró, a 75-year-old artist specializing in surgical art, has spent two decades casting the aesthetic surgery gender divide into bronze. On the exhibit floor, Ronadró displayed a dozen original sculptures specifically crafted for aesthetic surgeons. In New Dawn, a surgeon’s gloved hands peel away a woman’s wrinkled face, revealing a new, youthful visage. In Renaissance, a naked woman admires herself in a mirror as her discarded, old face piles on the floor with her robes. Art of Aesthetic Surgery depicts the aesthetic surgeon as an artist, creating a beautiful woman from a paintbrush; Magic Hands depicts him as a genie, conjuring a naked woman from a magic lamp. Ronadró’s masterpiece, In His Hands, situates the surgeon as God; in it, Jesus places his hand on a surgeon’s shoulder as the surgeon reaches out to touch the hand of his patient. “This piece was inspired by the Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, where God is almost touching Adam’s hand,” Ronadró says. All of Ronadró’s surgeons on display in his ASAPS booth were men; all but one of the patients were women.

Dr. Laurie Casas, a Chicago-area aesthetic surgeon, was one of the few female surgeons who had a visible role in the conference leadership this year. Casas, who is president of the Aesthetic Surgery Education and Research Foundation, says the gender divide in ASAPS is easily explainable. “The number of women in surgery is low. The number of women in plastic surgery is low. The number of female plastic surgeons who can meet the rigorous requirements to be a member of ASAPS is even lower.” Why an estimated 94 percent of Casas’ surgery patients are female requires a more complicated explanation. “It’s not that men aren’t interested in looking good—they wear nice clothes, they groom their hair. But unlike women, they’re not conditioned into thinking about making a significant change. They don’t even think of surgery as an option for altering an aging sign like excess eyelid skin or hanging neck skin,” says Casas. “For women, over the years, we’ve watched other women have plastic surgery. We’ve seen other women go through major changes in the way they look. It’s on our radar as an option. For men, I don’t think there’s a lot of open discussion about this. I think sometimes men are uncomfortable even thinking about the topic.”

Women, too, have suffered from a culture of silence surrounding their aesthetic surgical procedures. In the ASAPS exhibit hall, a representative for Innogyn hawked a laser employed in a form of aesthetic surgery that has finally hit the mainstream: “designer laser vaginoplasty.” “This has been going on for 80 years, behind closed doors,” says the rep, who declined to provide his name. “A woman would come in after childbirth and say, hey, doctor, while you’re down there, could you do a little tuck or a pull or a cut? Before, people thought that vaginoplasty was just for the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous set, and strippers. Only now is it finally out in the open.” The representative referred to this development as “empowering.”

Finally, women are free to talk about our vaginas and what’s wrong with them. Someday, men, too, will be empowered like us.

Yesterday, Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto took five minutes out of their busy schedules to skewer anti-gay-marriage Miss California Carrie Prejean after the "news" broke that the Miss California Organization had paid for Prejean's breast implants. Olbermann and Musto choose to shame Prejean by tearing into her body—riffing on boobs as "performance enhancers," saying the Miss California Organization's comments "added saline to the wound," and comparing her breasts to basketballs.

A blogger at the Conservative XPress responded to the Olbermann segment, writing, "Anyone know of any women's rights groups defending this woman yet? Nope? Didn't think so."

I'll do it.

Why is the commentary on Prejean's anti-gay commentary so devoid of the context of the Beauty Pageant?

So, Carrie Prejean is a homophobe. Is that any surprise, seeing that she's a product of a pageant machine which proudly parades its sexism in front of television screens across America? And now, the mainstream media is shaming Prejean for her pageant-consistent beliefs because she did something that would—what—help her win a beauty pageant?

The Miss California Organization leaking the news of Prejean's boob job is not sweet revenge for her intolerant comments. The organization paying for her fake breasts only reiterates the fact that pageant organizers deal in and profit from sexism, not public service. Meanwhile, they act completely sanctimonious when one of their fembot minions voices another shameful view? What a clusterfuck.

Try to think of a situation where a man is forced to parade his near-naked body in front of celebrity judges and millions of television viewers for an hour, and then speak for about ten seconds on public policy. It doesn't happen. Everyone knows those women weren't chosen for their policy positions, and that they essentially have no business commenting on political issues. And yet, the Q&A section remains. Why? To produce Youtube videos of pretty girls stumbling over "thinky" questions.

Perhaps the Prejean blowup will move pageant organizers to be more careful about coaching their representatives on the Q&A. But who cares? It's still a fucking beauty pageant.