designer vaginas
by Jenny Bryan
female anatomy
In the past, few women gave much thought to how their private parts were arranged. But the growing popularity of genital grooming and waxing has drawn attention to the fact that women's vulvas vary as much as men's penises and testicles.
The vulva is the outside part of a woman's genitals which includes the opening to the urethra leading up to the bladder and the vagina leading up to the cervix and womb. Over these two openings lie two folds of fleshy tissue – the outer folds, called the labia majora and the inner folds, called the labia minora. At the front of the vulva lies the clitoris – the small piece of erectile tissue which is important for sexual arousal.
In anatomy books, the outer labia are larger than the inner labia. But, in real life, things vary, the inner folds may protrude down between the outer labia and, as agony aunt Julia Cole explains, women don't tend to compare their labia in the same way as they do breasts and thighs.
'Some women are conjuring up the idea that their labia are not the right shape and, increasingly, they look at pornographic pictures of labia in men's magazines. But these are often air-brushed, so they're getting a false picture,' she says.
It's a view back by gynaecologist Sarah Creighton and clinical psychologist Lih Mei Liao, who writing in the BMJ, described genitoplasty as a classic example of commercial, media and social pressures artificially creating a problem.
'There is nothing unusual about protrusion of the labia,' they said, 'It is the negative meaning that makes it into a problem – meanings that can give rise to physical, emotional and behavioural reactions, such as discomfort, self-disgust, perhaps avoidance of some activities and a desire for a surgical fix.'
(February 2002, updated August 2008)
