Labiaplasty - Beauty Pressures Amongst The Youth

When reports come to light that girls under 10 years old are seeking genital surgery because they are disgusted by their genital’s 'wrong shape and size', I think it's safe to say it can be confirmed that 2017's pressures of perfection have reached its pinnacle.

With social media's easy accessibility and the ability to view porn at the touch of a button, it is no surprise that insecurities are starting to manifest in the minds of young children. Daily, young people are bombarded with expectations to look a certain way, but have these expectations of perfection reached a new level? Breast augmentation surgery has been around for years, nose jobs? Standard and lip surgery to get the perfect Kardashian pout has been the rage for a while now but genital surgery? This is something when I first read that completely took me by surprise and surely surgery at such a young age can be seen as comparable to genital mutilation which is illegal in the UK but prevails to be rife across the globe in other countries.

Maybe I’m late on the surgery train but vaginal surgery or its proper name ‘labiaplasty’ is the reshaping or reduction in the size of the labia and it is advised by the NHS that the surgery should not be carried out on females until they reach 18. I feel like this is a perfectly logical and understandable protocol, as before this age your body is raging with teenage hormones which is a product of puberty. Now I know that I can speak for many of us here when I say that during puberty my brain was often all over the place and I made brash decisions that I didn’t always like the outcome of. Now, this is normal as the brain is not fully developed yet and for me, this probably doubled my insecurities. Allowing a hormonal and emotional individual to have surgery in such an intimate area would be bordering on ludicrous and like previously mentioned, alike genital mutilation as the female body has not fully developed yet. However, the BBC has reported that between 2015-2016 ‘more than 200 girls under 18 had labiaplasty on the NHS’ and more than ‘150 of the girls were under 15.’

I personally feel that this is very upsetting and saddening that the often-unattainable pressures of beauty are currently so high that it is affecting how young girls view and feel about their own genitalia. An intimate area that is unlikely to be on show to a large group of people or that is rarely seen by by-passers. Most people don’t look like these perfect girls on Instagram, and it is not uncommon to not have a completely symmetrical ‘perfect tucked in vagina’ like the female porn stars. These women can often be unrealistic because of editing, or excellent lighting, or pre-existing surgeries when in reality, vaginal variation definitely exists. We all have different fingerprints, we all have a different face and hands and feet so we are most definitely going to all have different looking genitals too.  

I am in no way bashing or shaming woman who have undergone labiaplasty, but I am merely presenting the idea that if young girls are feeling disgusted by their own intimate anatomy because of external beauty pressures then maybe beauty standards have reached a new level of bonkers. I am a firm believer that the purpose of a vagina is for peeing, sex and reproduction and procreation. If they function properly and do all these things then that is a perfectly fine vagina to me. Inevitably vagina's will come in all shapes and sizes and if anyone is lucky enough to see yours and shames you for its appearance then they are not worth it ladies. You pull your knickers back up and you carry on being the great person that you are.