Mum says splashing £1,900 on a ‘designer vagina’ has made her feel 15 years younger

Abby confessed the intimate procedure has boosted her sex life and helped her incontinence.

Inspired by model Danielle Lloyd’s confession to having a “designer vagina” for incontinence, a 56-year-old Essex mum spent £1,900 on the intimate treatment – boosting her sex life and making her feel “15 years younger.”

A regular user of anti-ageing procedures, Abby Short had the tightening treatment after years of incontinence forced her to carry spare knickers everywhere – saying she looks after her face, “so why not take care of the rest” of her body.

Abby (Collect/PA Real Life)

Now, following three lunchtime procedures lasting just five minutes each, the Billericay events planner says she feels like she is back in her 40s, when she and her company director husband, John, 62, make love, adding: “I feel younger, like I’m back in my heyday.”

Before the Femilift vaginal rejuvenation treatment – which gently heats the vaginal tissue contracting existing fibres and stimulating the formation of new collagen – Abby suffered with embarrassing leaking everywhere from the office to during exercise classes.

Abby (Collect/PA Real Life)

Already spending £2,000 a year on Botox, non-surgical facelifts and teeth-whitening, when she heard Danielle Lloyd confessing on TV to having vaginal tightening treatment to combat her own incontinence issues, it seemed like the logical next step for her, too.

Abby’s incontinence issues began after the birth of her son Josh, now 15, making her desperate to solve the embarrassing problem.

“If I sneezed, coughed a little too energetically or did any kind of real physical exercise it would mean an embarrassing leak,” she recalled.

“It wasn’t all the time, but would come on randomly and would be really embarrassing as a result.

Abby with husband John (Collect/PA Real Life)

“It all started after the birth of my youngest son Josh and got worse from there. I had the treatment after listening to Danielle Lloyd talking about having vaginal tightening, as her incontinence issues sounded just like mine.”

She added: “I’d be in the office, having a laugh and a bit of wee would come out. Not only was it embarrassing, but it wasn’t very hygienic either.”

Before taking the plunge, Abby researched the treatment, discovering that the procedure involved using a pixel Co2 laser, to improve blood flow, increase lubrication and restore the strength and elasticity of the vaginal wall.

Confident it was the right solution for her, she contacted Courthouse Clinics, the company where she already went for Botox, having the first of three sessions in London on June 29 this year – noticing a difference straight away.

Abby (Collect/PA Real Life)

Abby, also mum to Daniel, 24, from a previous relationship, explained: “You have to position yourself at the edge of the couch and spread your legs for the laser to be inserted, a bit like having a smear test, only warmer.

“My doctor explained that I wouldn’t feel results immediately, but I actually did, I didn’t feel the pressure to go to the loo as often and when I did run up and down the beach on my holiday straight after, the effects weren’t nearly as bad.

“It doesn’t make it look any different, but it is more about the inside and improving the function, which it has done.”

Abby with husband John (Collect/PA Real Life)

Having another session at the London clinic before her third treatment in October, Abby also discovered it had another unexpected benefit, when she and her husband made love.

She continued: “It’s given me a real confidence boost and makes me feel so much younger, knocking 15 years off how I feel in the bedroom.

“I couldn’t recommend it enough.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Teresa Younger's term leading the Ms. Foundation, the first national philanthropy run by women and for women, has spanned the #MeToo movement and the rollback of national abortion rights and is now ending during Donald Trump's second presidency.

“We are currently not in the best shape,” Younger said, of the pursuit for political equality for everyone, part of the Ms. Foundation's mission. But even as she prepares to step down from her role as CEO in June, Younger said she is not walking away from the fight.

“I believe feminism is still alive and well," Younger said in an interview with The Associated Press. "In fact, it has been the one thing that has been the preservation of democracy and our constitutional rights in some way over the past 12 years.”

As CEO, Younger took on domestic abuse by professional football players, expanded the foundation's investments in grassroots groups in the South and Midwest and raised more than $100 million for its endowment. In 2018, the foundation embraced a strategy to advocate for resources to go to girls and women of color. Younger said that change was a long time coming, but it resonated differently under her leadership as a Black and Indigenous woman.

“The institution was explicit in our strategic plan to say that we want to center women and girls of color as a point of inclusion, not exclusion," Younger said. "And now we are sitting in a spot where quote-unquote DEI is looked at as bad. And we refuse to accept that.”

As part of that strategic shift, the foundation produced a 2020 report called, “Pocket Change: How Women and Girls of Color Do More with Less,” which is a call to other philanthropic funders to change not just what they fund but how.

The research identified that charitable foundations granted about $356 million to women and girls of color in 2017, which represents less than 0.05% of funds granted out in 2018 by foundations.

But beyond highlighting this tiny investment in some of the country's most marginalized people, the report revealed major misalignments between funders and groups led by women of color. For example, many of these nonprofits use multiple strategies, providing child care and diapers alongside their advocacy for reproductive justice. Meanwhile, funders may separate grantmaking by population, strategy or issue, and may only want to fund part of their activities.

The report calls for foundations to provide flexible, long-term funding, to align their strategies with the groups they fund, to solicit feedback from grantees and to support intermediaries who are well connected with these groups.

This has long been the role that women's funds and Ms. Foundation have played within philanthropy. They both support grassroots groups that serve marginalized populations, and pioneer new ways of funding and working with those groups, which some other funders then adopt as best practices.

The earliest women's funds in the U.S. started in the 1970s, with Ms. Foundation being the first national funder to support women's groups and feminist movements. It was founded in 1973 by Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Marlo Thomas.

Sunny Fischer, one of the founders of the Chicago Foundation for Women, said the women who started it around 1983 wanted to serve women differently than how many large social service organizations were at the time.

Rather than telling women experiencing domestic violence to go back and save their marriages, she said, “There were new groups that were trying to help women where they were, to really understand what was going on in the home," and to give them safer choices about what they could do if they were in an abusive situation.

Lucia Woods Lindley, a photographer and an heir of a wealthy Nebraska family whose fortune came from telecommunications and coal, was another founder of CFW, who Fischer remembered as "a great planner."

In 2023, Ms. Foundation announced that Woods Lindley had left them $50 million in her estate, the largest gift it had ever received. It made up almost half the $106 million the foundation ultimately raised for its endowment.

In an interview at the time, Younger said Ms. Foundation had not expected the gift from Woods Lindley to be so large.

“She trusted and believed that Ms. (Foundation)’s role as the national public women’s foundation was critical to the thought leadership that needed to happen in philanthropy around feminism and around challenging the field and around growing and asking the right kinds of questions,” Younger said.

Overall, the amount of money controlled by women’s funds remains tiny compared to the assets of major foundations and the largest individual philanthropists. One exception is Melinda French Gates, who has committed billions to benefit women and girls.

The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy has tracked giving to women and girls and found that over 10 years, the proportion of overall philanthropic support they've received has risen from 1.59% in 2012 to 2.04% in 2023, with an increase to 2.18% in 2022.

“The vast majority of philanthropic dollars are going to the general population and based on need rather than identity,” said Jacqueline Ackerman, the institute's director, but she said they track giving to historically underfunded groups in order to reveal whether those trends are changing.

Ms. Foundation plans to announce Younger's replacement later this spring and Younger has not yet said what is next for her. Speaking with emotion, Younger said she has loved the work she's done with the foundation but is confident it will benefit from new leadership.

“I want to look back and see somebody who’s built on what I’ve been able to do and take it to the next level,” she said. “And I will sit back with pride in what they are able to accomplish.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

FILE - Ms. Foundation President and CEO Teresa Younger, right, and Gloria Steinem pose at the Ms. Foundation's Women of Vision Awards at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, May 16, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)