Sexplanations with Stacey: Designer vaginas

Designer vagina’s are here. Now, not only can you get your breasts augmented – you can get your vagina enhanced as well. Vulval and vaginal augmentation can include lipouction of the mons pubis (the pocket of fatty tissue over the pubic bone), labiaplasties (the surgical reshaping of the vulva or labia – often a decrease in the labia minora), vaginal tightening, clitoral unhooding’s and hymen repair. Often women are looking for nice, neat, small and symmetrical looking vulvas.

One of the reasons for these requests is that women want their vulvas to look like the vulvas they have seen in porn.

Men often expect the same. What they don’t realize is that most of these women are airbrushed and cropped and have had surgery to look the way they do. They often also bleach or dye their vulva skin to make it pale and pink, usually adding a brazilian bikini wax, sometimes a tattoo or piercing. And
the women who naturally look this way are a small minority who just happen to have the shape, texture and colour that porn is looking for. That look being what some would call the look of a prepubescent girl, but I am not going to go there today.

Women do not understand the beauty of their own vulva because they have never seen one that looks similar to theirs, nor are they given positive messages about their vulvas and vaginas.

Women are told over and over by the media that their vaginas are dirty and smelly, and that they need to buy products that will make them smell like flowers. Vaginas should not smell like flowers, they should smell like vaginas! I have always wondered why society is so concerned with the smell of vaginas. Has anyone ever taken a whiff of someone’s testicles? Where is the spray to make them smell like flowers?

Worse yet, many women have never seen their vulva. They know it’s there but they don’t want to see it or examine it. It often remains a mystery, even to those who have one. Every vulva is unique and beautiful in its own way and deserves respect. Vaginas should not smell like flowers, they should smell like vaginas.

It is time to brush the dust off the hand mirrors and admire the beauty that is your vulva.

If you would like to look at pictures of real and beautiful vulvas, Nick Karras has published a book of vulva photography called ‘Petals’ and produced a documentary about the process with the same name. There is also a book called ‘I’ll Show You Mine’ filled with vulva photography and women’s stories.

Allison is a journalist in Kitchener-Waterloo, and former editor-in-chief of the Community Edition.