Revirgination

Steinem had, on arriving in India, "revirginated" herself, as she would later put it. Her practice of revirgination in India — that is, of allowing the assumption that she was a virgin — had to do both with the protection virginity offered and with the Toledo knowledge that once a woman "lost" her virginity ...

The time it takes for revirgination to occur varies from woman to woman. Some might revirginate in a matter of weeks, while for others it might take months.

For their sexual bodies will always be dangerous, the sign of the fall and original sin, the "disease that's in my flesh"(King Lear, 2.3.224), "the imposition.../Hereditary ours" (The Winter's Tale, 1.2.74-75): as they enter into sexuality, the virgins -- Cressida, Desdemona, Imogen -- will be transformed into whores, their whoredom acted out in the imaginations of their nearest and dearest; and the primary antidote to their power will be the excision of their sexual bodies, the terrible revirginations that Othello performs on Desdemona, and Shakespeare on Cordelia.

Alison Dundes Renteln's chapter (Chapter 14) shows how women seeking hymenoplasty (revirgination surgery) are sometimes met with resistance from their own physicians.