Women Getting Upsold Into Labiaplasty For No Good Reason

More and more women are being encouraged to have labiaplasty by unscrupulous private clinics in a trend that continues to worry health experts.

Some have even gone as far as questioning what the difference is between these wildly popular cosmetic surgeries and female genital mutilation.

If you haven’t seen a lot of vaginas in your life, it’s easy to get confused about what is ‘normal’ and what is not. Sadly, the large majority of vaginas that women are able to see in popular culture through softcore pornographic media are not representative of what vaginas should actually look like. In fact, these vaginas have been photoshopped, not because it makes them more beautiful, but because that is the law.

Yes, you read it right.

“Discreet Genital Detail”

The Classification Board of Australia notes that although softcore pornographic magazines are allowed to show full frontal nudity, they can only show ‘discreet genital detail’. In general, editors have taken this to mean (and the board agrees) that acceptable vaginas should be neat and tidy, healed to a single crease using photo manipulation software. As always, it’s a challenge to get a straight answer out of the Classification Board, but when they’ve been approached in the past this certainly has seemed to be their party line. The overall effect of this is that women are only seeing highly altered versions of vaginas, with no idea that they’ve been altered. This leads to a serious distortion of ‘normal’ in terms of genital appearance that may very well have links to the rise in genital surgeries.

Labiaplasty

Now before we look at those links, let’s figure out what a labiaplasty actually is. Essentially, a labiaplasty is a plastic surgery procedure that alters the inner and outer labia (the labia minora and majora respectively). These areas of the vagina are cut down, or thinned, to ensure they don’t protrude so much from the genitals themselves. In the earlier days of the procedure it was primarily used by transfolk in the midst of their gender reassignment, or by women who experienced physical or psychological discomfort as their genitals did not fall into the normal range in terms of appearance.

Unfortunately, more and more women now feel like they’re vaginas are outside the realm of normal.

In the public system, there seems to be a positive move forward towards body-image acceptance. The Royal College of General Practitioners recently released a new guide for doctors when treating patients who were interested in genital surgery. One of their recommendations included that women interested in labiaplasty be directed to images of female genitalia that aren’t altered in any way. The Labia Library (link contains images of labia) is a great place to start, and their photo gallery shows just how much diversity exists within this one body part.

Sadly, within the private system women are being led along a different path. While public clinics work to encourage women to love what they’ve got, the private system works on a profit margin. Public critics argue that as well as not being properly informed about the range of normal when it comes to vaginal appearance, women are also not being properly informed of the possible risks of the surgery. In some cases, women had reported being pressured into further clitoral hood reduction surgery following a labiaplasty, under the pretence of ‘balancing out’ the other areas.

With the risk of reduced sexual function and sensitivity, and the pressures placed on them by private clinics working to cushion out their profits, the entire trend should serve as a wake-up call for women everywhere. Both the experts, and the ladies at SAHM, agree that without the proper information the patients of these labiaplasties aren’t able to give informed consent, which puts the surgery in the same boat as genital mutilation.

Our question:

What gets us is, why is it illegal for female genital mutilation to occur in Australia under the pretence of religious appropriateness, but legal for a labiaplasty under the pretence of social appearance?

Of course, there will always be some cases where women really do need a labiaplasty to live their lives to their full potential, and damage to the vagina from activity or childbearing can leave scars that need cosmetic surgery to heal. However, the idea that women should be aspiring to the single crease of a pre-pubescent vagina just because it’s what they see in the media isn’t just wrong, it’s an embarrassment for our society.

So if you’re worried that your vagina doesn’t look normal, get educated! There’s no reason that your vagina should look the same as another woman’s, and there’s certainly no need to stress over it. These are differences to be celebrated as a part of our identities, not hidden away and labelled as inappropriate. We love our lady bits just the way they are, uniquely wonderful.

Note: The term ‘vagina’ has been used in this article as a reference for the genital areas of a woman. Of course the term ‘vulva’ is more appropriate as the term ‘vagina’ actually refers to the muscular tube leading from the external genitals to the cervix of the uterus. The vulva is indeed the external part of the genitals, but it is not a term used in everyday language. So, with the intention of making our point clear we have used the word vagina instead.