The Rise of the Intimate Nip/Tuck

Lippy girl is out there! I have a mention in the August edition of Red, which reveals that labiaplasties on the National Health Service have more than doubled in two years.

The article quotes gynaecologist Dr Deborah Boyle who says, "labia is not just additional skin that's redundant". Hurrah for doctors who know about female anatomy!! 
  
Dr Boyle also comments, "it's sensitive, and some people have orgasms which originate in part from the vulva." Again hurrah, but why is this treated as a medical revelation several million years after we first started enjoying our flappy bits...? 

The article also quotes 'Anna', a woman who has undergone labiaplasty because she 'dreaded' sex;  and who is presented as an example of why labiaplasty is a valid choice. Even Dr Boyle comes down for it in the end, implying she sees some strong women who are determined to amputate, some so much that 'they'd consider doing it to themselves'.

I've got some sympathy for the informed choice argument. But Dr Boyle needs a challenge here, in the light of legislation which states labiaplasty may not be performed without medical reason, notwithstanding a woman's desires - or even her threats of DIY. And also because there have been no public sightings of that creature she mentions: the informed assertive women who chooses labiaplasty as a positive option. Show me the evidence!

Anna I'm sorry to say is not the one. 

She begins, quite petulantly, by stating that labiaplasty is not a female circumcision, 'it's just not'. Wrong. The WHO clearly defines removal of the labia minora as a type IIa female genital mutilation (FGM). This surgery forms 8% of FGM in Egypt, where cutting has been dominated by medics since the 1990s or earlier. When finally in 2007 the Egyptian government closed the medical loophole, they banned any "cut of, flattening or modification of any natural part of the female reproductive system". Clearly labiaplasty was in their sights...

Anna's follow up rings equally hollow as a demonstration of knowledge and empowerment. She says that labia are, 'just excess skin that's unsightly'. The first point is not correct, and the second is a scattergun insult. Neither ignorance nor aggression are generally considered hallmarks of empowerment. 

As regards Dr Boyle's position, it should be said that the UK FGM Act 2003 is clear that many women buy into cutting practices (in all their multifarious forms) - Clause 2 explicitly rules out the threat of DIY cutting as a doctor's defence. The Act protects, "any part of .... labia majora, labia minora or clitoris".

However a loophole has been built into our FGM law. It denies women the right to present a belief in 'custom or ritual' as a reason for tissue excision, but fails to legislate against the equally crazy/misogynistic/unscientific Caucasian view that women should just be a neat little hole.... 

As such it seems to have been designed to protect the Western (and mainly white run) labiaplasty industry, rather than female empowerment per se.

The distinctions in the act raise an interesting challenge for doctors. Imagine that the next patient who visits Dr Boyle to demand labial excision is an educated professional of Egyptian origin, and a member of a family in which each generation has undergone automatic excision to be (as she sees it) beautifully smooth, clean and feminine.
 

Where then for autonomy? 

Love Your bits

Thanks to all those who have either commented or sent me private messages of support.

I agree with the correspondent who asks me to make sure I remind women without dangly bits that they are 'perfectly normal too'.

I'm happy to do this - in fact my concerns about framing this campaign in a way which is positive for all natural sizes and shapes is the reason I took so long to start the blog.

I don't want to put anyone down, quite the opposite. My point is simply this: we're made the way we're meant to be, and the genitals in particular are very highly engineered. You tamper with them at your peril.

To allow plastic surgeons to set the agenda on how our bits should look and feel is like putting Morticia Addams in charge of your flower garden.

Another correspondent has reminded me that men - especially in circumcising countries - may feel they have to apologise before taking their boxers off, if they are intact. In the parts of the world where circumcision is not common (ie most places) men may feel a little uncomfortable if their foreskin seems too long, or even too short, or may be embarrassed that they don't have one at all. The message to these men is, don't ever be ashamed of what you've got. Love your bits!

If any individual finds themselves taking their underwear off for someone ungrateful for the present they're being given, the solution is: throw them out and get someone more sensual and less superficial instead.

When I found myself in bed with a man with the longest foreskin I'd ever seen, I was incredibly excited. I considered it the 'king of foreskins' and told him so. Later I had a man with a shortish one he'd injured so it rolled a bit asymetrically as if squinting. I thought this was adorable too. When I had a circumcised man with an incredibly harsh and botched cut, first of all I found this difficult to be positive about. Then I thought how innocent it was and how brave to overcome what had been done to it. So I named it my war hero...

Let's stop making war on genitals though. Please?

Thanks for supporting, and hope you'll keep reading. In my next two posts I'm going to cover the function of the labia, and the link between labiaplasty and phrenology.