BBC 3 My unusual vagina

[junemami]

I'm bored recovering from an operation so whilst flicking throuh iplayer watched this to see if it showed some insight into why there are more women deciding to have plastic surgery. Pretty disappointed, its 15 minutes of mostly monologue by a woman who wants her long labia minora reduced. She does complain of some discomfort and swelling with them, which I can sympathise with, but doesn'toffer any alternative options, reasons why she thinks a normal "vagina" should look like a neat bap on its side, with no "filling" spilling out like "big mac". She ends up having surgery privately and is pretty dissappointed with the result on one side, and might need to have further surgery. Couldn't help thinking during the operation footage that if her pubic hair wasn't removed her labia wouldn't be nearly so conspicuous (and of course maybe she had only removed it for the surgery...but I suspect not).

Feel saddened that this has been unilaterally presented as a normal thing to do. There was some footage of her mother saying she disagreed with cosmetic surgery but that was it. I have made a complaint to the bbc.

Anybody else see it?

In the current climate I actually came on to see if this was about an "unusual vagina" looking suspiciously like a penis

Me too, me too.

It is a vulva, not a vagina, and it is the labia she had a problem with. If they used precise terminology, it would be easier to tell the fakers from the actual vagina havers.

I can understand wanting surgery if the labia were longer than a penis. (Which apparently happens in ... well, very few cases).
However, men manage to tuck their penises somewhere, so I don't see why labia that do not exceed penis length would need to be cut off.

And quite probably, they were normal labia minora - at least I have heard of many women getting surgery to make the labia minora not stick out, not because they were dangling ten centimetres long.

Accurate if you ignore the fact that all kinds of vulvae are represented in porn

I don't watch porn, but would assume that it is like with breasts ... and while I do not doubt there's porn with small breasted women, most of what someone who would rather see none at all sees is silicone filled monstrosities.
The casual porn watcher probably won't see those representations of diverse vulvae.

Ha, also at home recovering from surgery and decided to watch it June from the brief bits where the vulva was shown it really did look normal, and would be much less obtrusive had the pubic hair not been removed.

Putting aside the desire for a porn style acceptable 'Bap' as opposed to a Big Mac it was the mothers attitude that I found most difficult to watch. I guess she could have just been saying what her daughter wanted to hear but I found it really upsetting that her own mum was saying that her vulva was not great (she did go on to say that she didn't think any women's bits were nice...). This struck me especially when thinking alongside side of Fgm.

BBC3 needs a bloody feminist overhaul - this combined with that awful "let's interview only white middle class prostitutes about why sex work is so fantastic" video is just taking the piss.

Thank God it's only online now, we can at least hope that will significantly reduce the number of young people they get to brainwash into this bullshit "everything is empowering if a woman does it" feminism.

I guess she could have just been saying what her daughter wanted to hear but I found it really upsetting that her own mum was saying that her vulva was not great (she did go on to say that she didn't think any women's bits were nice...). This struck me especially when thinking alongside side of Fgm.

I don't know what I would say if asked my opinion on another woman's vulva.
Nothing more than "Yes, it is a vulva and it looks like a vulva. Nothing interesting to see here."

To me, genitals in general look weird, but male genitals moreso, because there's more visible of them.
Doesn't mean that I'd be in favour of cutting them off.

I would not be able to reassure any woman that her vulva looks "great". And I, like, really, really, wouldn't want to utter any opinion on the matter.
(I mean, really, what could she have said? If she had said she found her daughter's vulva really pretty, that'd have been rather creepy, wouldn't it?)

Not sure that it has to be words like pretty but just normal would do and I guess just less of the nose wrinkling disgust face would do it. Your imagined response Vestal seems like a reasonable one.

Maybe I am too accustomed to intimate body parts, when I am not on sick leave I am a hcp and really used to seeing admittedly more female genitals, I have never been overcome by repulsion. I found the mums attitude depressing, but guess that is heavily influenced by my own perspective as the mum of a 16 yr old dd.

I like how genitals look. A penis, when erect, has a lovely sculptural quality and a vulva looks like an exotic flower. I have unusually large labia minora and when in my early teens I was very self-conscious about them. Luckily experience with a number of men who were genuinely into women's bodies taught me that my body was not just OK but great, just the way it came. Sexual experimentation with other women taught me that vulvas are just as varied as faces, which is obvious if you think about it. I have a theory that having extra large labia helps you orgasm during PIV sex, but I can't imagine anyone would fund me to check it out.

This is perhaps a bit of a tangential perspective but I think this also really undermines efforts to tackle FGM. I know there's a difference in terms of consent and setting, but how can we as a society hope to have any credibility when we preach to other cultures about not modifying their vulvas for nonmedical reasons if we're doing it ourselves?!

There is no comparison between an adult women choosing this type of surger and a child being forcibly held down and butchered.

Kudos to Prawn for that posting about a positive attitude to the body. One's own, one's partner's, everyone's body generally. If humans could all just accept ourselves, and look for fun and not something to criticise in each other's bodies, we'd be a lot better off.

It really is fgm.

There is no comparison between an adult women choosing this type of surger and a child being forcibly held down and butchered.

No, of course not. That's why I said there's a difference in terms of consent. But FGM doesn't always involve a child being held down and forcibly butchered. In many places it's carried out with anaesthetic in a clean, medical setting. But it's still wrong in the eyes of UK law, and I'd argue that that wrongness is rooted in the fact that the practice itself (regardless of consent, pain, a sterile environment) is based in misogynistic ideas about women's sexuality and the cleanliness and aesthetics of female genitalia. The same can be said of genital cosmetic surgery in the West. It's a double standard.
theelephant is right - the World Health Organisation would consider this FGM as it fits the definition of "procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". It's just that it suddenly becomes acceptable to some people when it's a white, English-speaking woman doing it.

Well said Fernanie.

I am sure that it is much more normal to have labia that protrude. This woman's idea if what is normal is surgically operated labia.

But FGM doesn't always involve a child being held down and forcibly butchered. In many places it's carried out with anaesthetic in a clean, medical setting. But it's still wrong in the eyes of UK law

It's wrong because it's a child or a woman who is not consenting. It's not up to you to decide what adult women choose to do with or to their bodies, no matter how much you disapprove.

I've just caught up on that, and found it really depressing! My labia are 'bigger' than hers - do I need them chopped! Gah.