Remember, you heard it here
March 3, 2010

Note this moment. Because there'll be a day when you're asked, ''Where were you when you first heard of vajazzling?''

I thought if I alerted you to the existence of vajazzling here in the privacy of our one-on-one reading communion, the damage would be contained. It would mean your shock-induced coughing fit resulting in latte spraying out of your nose would occur here, preventing you the public humiliation of spitting your drink into someone's face when the conversation turned to vajazzling and you innocently asked, ''What's that?''

On Twitter, the web equivalent of passing notes in class, you can start a chain on a subject. One chain I found amusing was ''party conversations fom the '90s''. I contributed ''When cigarettes hit $5 a pack, I'm giving up'', ''George Michael gay? You're mental'', ''What's pesto?'' and ''You wax off your pubic hair? That's seriously weird''.

I'm no longer surprised when I find myself doing things I once would have thought unthinkable. Because I'm a dickhead who's famous for saying things like, ''Why would I send a - what do you call it? - email when I could just ring someone up or write them a letter? This internet business is never going to last.''

Which is why my ears always prick up and I occasionally break out in a sweat when I hear of things like bungee jumping, colonic irrigation or anal bleaching for the first time.

OK. Vajazzling. We're all familiar with the fact that it's so common for people to turn their Barry Jones below the belt into a Livinia Nixon - one AFL player recently confided in me that he was the only player in his team with pubes.

But first: ''bedazzling''. Bedazzling is the art of applying fake plastic jewels to items of apparel via a stapler-type apparatus. It's not compulsory that the garments are distressed denim, nor is it compulsory that the bedazzled garments are worn by middle-aged menopausal line-dancers. But they generally are.

So to vajazzling: strap yourself in. But when you explain vajazzling to anyone else, just act like it's the most normal thing in the world and when they're slightly surprised, appalled or disgusted, make them feel they're the weird one.

Vajazzling is when jewels are applied to the hairless pubic region, creating a sparkling spectacular. Put it this way, there's a party in your pants and not a porch light but a disco ball lighting the way. Because yes, ladies, being naked is no longer enough. And no, women don't have enough to do.

Stuff eating salad or a brisk walk, vajazzling will make you feel good about yourself. Because you're worth it.

If you loved yourself, you would vajazzle. If you loved him you would vajazzle. If you don't, some other MILF, cougar or post-vaginoplasty home-wrecker will. Don't check for lipstick on the collar but for small, twinkly little stars in his pubes.

By the year 2015, no child will live with the memory of pubic hair. Fingers crossed, by then vajazzling will be so de rigueur that children, when they sprout their first unexpected hairs, will think there is something wrong with them because it's not fake rhinestones.

Sure, First World women are no longer spending hours trekking to the well, grinding the maize and washing our clothes in the river with babies strapped to our backs. We are now, in order to attract a mate and continue the species, turning our maps of Tassie into Glomesh Island. Why spend the money on buying a pig for a widow in Bangladesh so she can become self-sufficient, when you can spend it on vajazzling yourself?

Why am I writing about vajazzling? Because Monday is International Women's Day. So sisters, let's celebrate by empowering ourselves by pimping our bits for human rights. For the 70,000 women who die every year because of unsafe abortions. Vajazzle! For the 2 million girls who suffer female genital mutilation every year. Vajazzle! For the 1 billion illiterate women across the globe. Vajazzle! And for the 80 per cent of the world's 27 million refugees who are women and children. Vajazzle!

twitter.com/CatherineDeveny