Alarming Number Of Young Women Seek To Reshape Their Private Parts

Its boom time for female genital cosmetic surgery! While insecure women are queuing up outside the clinics of gynecologists and reconstructive surgeons to get their private parts reshaped, the latter are laughing all the way up to their banks. There is a lot of money in this business and no medical parameters to measure if a surgery is successful.

Are you paranoid to look perfect?

In this age, women are getting paranoid to look perfect. Influenced by the bodies of super models and porn stars, swayed by internet pornography and lured by the advertisements for such surgeries, women are ready to shell any amount of money to get that perfect body. Most of them do not deem it necessary to get their partners’ opinion about their body. Narcissism is driving them to undertake procedures which may be deleterious for their health. Though the surgery may give them better looking genitals, there is hardly any evidence that it may improve sexual function.

This whole trend of cosmetic surgeries started in 1990s. Before that, corrective gynecological surgery was offered to patients suffering from incontinence or sagging of the vagina following childbirth. In the 1990s, the practice of cosmetic surgeries, like nose jobs and face lifts, began, to improve the aesthetics and boost the self-confidence of the clients. As the popularity of such operations grew, the surgeons began offering more and more procedures in the name of bolstering the self-esteem of the patients. Now, people can pick and choose whichever cosmetic surgery they would like to undergo.

Alarming number of women going for surgeries to reshape their private parts

Alarmed by the increasing number women going for surgeries to reshape their private parts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a notice to its member physicians in 2007. The notice questions the medical validity of such procedures and the safety issues attached to them. According to ACOG, women are being misled to opt for these surgeries despite the fact that the effectiveness of none of these procedures is proven. Moreover, there are several side effects of these operations like infections, scarring and pain. Many women opt for these procedures in the hope that these will enhance their sexual pleasure. But the procedures can lead to the cutting of certain nerves which innervate the private parts, leading to loss of sensations in the vagina and clitoris. Thus, the very purpose of the operation stands defeated.

Moreover, these cosmetic reconstructive operations do not come cheap. In the U.S., they may cost anything between $2,500 and $12,000. And to make matters worse, they are not even covered by insurance. In the U.K., such surgeries cost more than £3,000. Most of these surgeries are done in the private sector where the conditions are totally unregulated.

Women Opting For Cosmetic Genital Surgery Often Require Psychological Help

According to Dr. Lih-Mei Liao, a consultant clinical psychologist at University College London Hospitals, many women opting for cosmetic genital surgery require psychological help. But they are being denied it for obvious reasons. Surgery is suitable in certain but not all cases.

Dr. Liao believes that when a woman is dissatisfied with certain aspects of her life and is low on self-confidence, the symptoms often manifest as a poor body image of oneself. The women feel that they are not achieving what they want because of certain physical flaws. It is these women who should be given an access to a clinical psychologist before they undergo surgery. But a recent report has found that less than 35% of clinics carry out psychological examination of patients checking in for cosmetic surgeries. Now, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons is asking for a psychological screening of the patients before surgery to be made mandatory.

Three types of cosmetic genital surgeries are being frequently conducted. They include the following.

Labioplasty

Labioplasty is the most common of all cosmetic surgeries of the genital area. Around 2000 labioplasty operations were carried out by the NHS last year, which is a five-fold increase from five years back. This does not include the surgeries performed in the unregulated private sector. In this procedure, excess tissue from the labia is removed in order to make it smaller. It costs about £2,000 at a private clinic in U.K. to get the operation done.

Vaginal rejuvenation surgery

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more than 2,149 women in the U.S. underwent this surgery last year. In 2010, as many as 5,200 women had ‘vaginal rejuvenation’, as reported by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. This figure does not include the surgeries performed by the gynecologists. The surgery costs about £3,000 in the U.K.  Vaginal rejuvenation involves reshaping the vagina to tighten it, after it has become lax following childbirth.

Hymenoplasty

It is an operation in which the torn hymen of a woman is restored so that the woman appears to be a virgin.

G-spot amplification

Another procedure, called as “G-spot amplification” is also becoming immensely popular. Here, the front wall of the vagina is injected with collagen or other fillers. The surgery claims to increase sexual pleasure.

Negative implications of designer vagina surgeries

However, there are critics for all these surgeries. What is the basis of labioplasty when nobody knows what corrected labia should look like? The results that one gets after undergoing vaginal rejuvenation can be achieved by simply performing floor exercises. Moreover, surgery can result in the formation of a lot of scar tissue. Nerve endings present in the vagina can be severed as a result of the operation, resulting in permanent loss of sensations. And some physicians point out that if a woman has some psychological issues, her sex life would not improve regardless of the surgery. Similarly, there is no clinical evidence to support enhanced sexual gratification after G-spot amplification. So, while these operative procedures cost a bomb, there is no clinical evidence to prove whether they help in resolving psychological distress or improving sex life.

And yet, we see that women of all age groups (young girls, some as small as 11 years to elderly women as old as 70) ready to undergo cosmetic surgeries to reshape their private parts, ignoring the side effects of these procedures. Google is flooded with references to cosmetic vaginal surgery (more than 45,000) whereas you will find less than 100 medical studies on it at databases like PubMed or Medline. There is no end to this consumerist attitude towards life where people believe everything can be perfected at a cost. It is high time we get a reality check.