We recently watched a documentary on labiaplasty; here are our thoughts on the matter.
Clorisa: This kind of surgery just brings up a whole lot of questions about plastic surgery in general, and when it’s needed and when it’s not needed, and when is it excessive?
Dylan: Watching a woman cut her labia off made me want to vomit.
C: It was so hard to watch with just the clamps and the cutting…
D: …and she’s crying, and understandably so.
C: Even with the anaesthetic and whatever.
D: Straight-up sympathy pain for me. I watched a male circumcision once as part of a documentary, and it was just unbelievably difficult to watch. This gave me the same feeling, but didn’t hit as close to home. I was disturbed by it.
C: I’ve also seen male circumcision, but I don’t think sympathy pain covers it. Because I know what getting cut feels like, and seeing a woman get her labia cut off, I know exactly what it would be like and I do not approve.
D: And just for how it looks? The girl who gets it cut off in the film, it’s like the equivalent of getting a vagina-nose-job. The one girl who has the vagina that has a labia so massive it’s like having junk…
C: …obviously very obtrusive and awkward…
D: …and it’s causing you chafing and pain, and you’re hugely self-conscious about it because you’re afraid to even be intimate with your partner, I understand that. That’s not superficial like a boob job – that’s causing you serious emotional distress. I guess the thing for me is the idea that somebody would do it because they think their vagina doesn’t look like a porn-star vagina; that’s stupid. The issue is less about the fact that surgeries like these exist, the problem is people not being comfortable with their bodies, and how we grow up being bombarded with imagery of what “perfect” people look like, of what “normal” is when there is no normal – it’s a fictitious average.
C: The average length of the labia is between 2cm and 10cm – that’s a huge range. That’s like ears. Ears come in all different lengths and sizes. Ears come with like a billion different kinds of curves in them. And guys, do you even care what a girl’s labia look like? If you’re about to get some, do you really take notice?