Mum Wants Her 15-Year-Old Daughter to Undergo Labiaplasty for Cosmetic Reasons

A mother has taken her 15-year-old daughter to a GP to let her have a labiaplasty — all for cosmetic reasons.

The mother said that her daughter, Alana (not her real name) has ‘abnormal’ genitalia and that she needs a plastic surgery to get a ‘designer vagina’. She told doctors that Alana’s inner labia protrudes past the outer labia and she is fighting doctors to change its appearance. All of this, despite Alana not suffering from any medical condition that requires her to actually have the surgery.

“Normal women are neater.

“She will never be able to have sex looking like that,” the mother told doctors.

The GP told the mother there was a range of different labia sizes, but she insisted that Alana needed the surgery.

Alana remained quiet during the consultation and when the doctor asked what she thought about the surgery, she shrugged her shoulders and said she would like to have it done.

This is one of the unbelievable stories that emerged as a case study in a new book When Doctors and Patients Disagree.

Merle Spriggs, a research fellow at the Children’s Bioethics Centre and Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, said that in an audit of referral letters for labiaplasty surgery at the Royal Children’s Hospital, around 25 per cent were mothers raising the idea.

A large inner labia can leave some women embarrassed and it can sometimes even rub, causing uncomfortable chaffing, but only in extreme cases.

Incoming president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Professor Steve Robson, said it was risky performing plastic surgery on anybody under 18.

He said that these past few years, the number of people wanting labiaplasty is increasing.

“Having your mum say a man wouldn’t want to make love with you because you’re untidy is not particularly helpful parenting.

“The thing we need to stress to both young men and women is intimate relationships are about being a good person and the quality of your heart and not the quality of your genitalia,” he said.

News.com.au reported earlier this year a rise in the number of Australian teenage girls having “genital anatomy anxiety”.

A third of GPs had consultations with girls younger than 18 who want to trim their genitalia. The GPs said women who asked for the surgery could be suffering from a range of mental health issues, including anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, depression or eating disorders.

A Women’s Health Victoria report said that between 2000 and 2011, Medicare claims that cases of vulvoplasty and labiaplasty rose from 640 annually to 1565 per year.

“It would be a really valuable thing for women to get their head around what’s normal is not what you see in images. It should be all about the connection of minds, hearts and how things feel rather than how it looks,” Professor Robson said.

Source: News.com.au