The Colloquium series is a regular event held by Victoria University’s psychology department, where local and outside researchers give lectures that are open to the public. The latest talk came with a warning of ‘graphic’ images of female genitalia. Melody Thomas was there.
“WHAT’S wrong with my labia?” is one of the top five most asked questions on US sex education site Scarleteen.com. Teenagers have always been concerned with what is normal, but young women’s anxieties over their bodies have recently grown to include the look of their genitals.
Dr Virginia Braun is a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Auckland who specialises in how culture and society affects women. Dr Braun’s talk looked at the way women feel about their pink bits, or vulva, and the latest plastic surgery craze - female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS). FGCS refers to genital surgery as a means of attaining a “designer vagina”, inferred as a “neater” and more attractive version of what women actually have between their thighs.
Of primary concern to Dr Braun is that a surgical treatment is being offered where there is no medical need whatsoever.
“It’s been called ‘psychiatry with a scalpel’, this idea of transforming the body to somehow transform the mind” she says.
FGCS advertising plays on this, aggressively promoting “increased sexual pleasure”, “self-confidence” and other forms of psychological transformation following the procedure.
“Women think that if these surgeries are available then there must be a real problem. Any social influence is therefore undermined or obliterated.”
These claims of dramatic psychological transformation are not supported by research.
Surgeons offering FGCS training brag the US$50,000 loan can be repaid in six months. There is obviously good money to be made in creating a medical condition from natural differences in female genital appearance.
Hypertrophy of labia minora is a ‘condition’ where the labia minora are described as “protruding”. The condition is often self-diagnosed through the internet, although there is no standard for what degree of protrusion is ‘abnormal’.
“Definitions of hypertrophic range from two to five centimetres, often with no apparent evidence base” says Dr Braun.
“Women often take Playboy [magazine] into the surgical office to show what they’d like done,” she says, but women don’t realize is that these images are air brushed.
Often air brushing is done to suit censorship laws, which say it’s illegal to picture protruding labia minora.
“One porn editor admitted that if they don’t like a model’s vulva they just cut it out and paste in another model’s,” says Dr Braun.
Dr Braun says the result is women are being exposed to greater numbers of female genitalia, but there is little diversity of genital appearance in the images they see.
“While one narrow definition of beauty propels people towards surgeries like a nose job or breast augmentation, you can walk down the street and see that breasts and noses come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It’s not the case with genitals,” she says.
Safety and regulation are also issues.
Although there are many tales of FGCS gone horribly wrong surgeons report extremely high patient satisfaction, “and one surgeon in California actually advertises specifically in labiaplasty repair. The demand is obviously there,” says Dr Braun.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology reported in 2007 that these surgeries were “not medically indicated, nor is there documentation of their safety and effectiveness”. Nevertheless, they continue to be practiced.
“We don’t know how much it happens in New Zealand but Auckland has a specialized clinic so there’s a market,” says Dr Braun.
The Wellington Plastic Surgery Institute, New Zealand, offers labiaplasty surgery for approximately $2500.
At Victoria University’s next Colloquium series on October 29 Dr Marc Wilson talks about: “If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”