ABSTRACT
Vulvas are highly diverse in terms of size, shape, texture, and coloration. Yet an idealized, small, “neat and tidy” vulva is often imagined as both the “normal” and the “desirable” vulva. The last two decades have witnessed the appearance of procedures – such as labiaplasty – designed to aesthetically alter the vulvar region. In this chapter, Braun describes genital modification procedures, and outlines, contextualizes, and considers the consequences of, the popularization of the procedures in Anglo-Western contexts. Various factors that make this surgery socially “understandable,” include normalization of cosmetic surgery; neoliberal subjectivity and healthist mandates to improve oneself; medicalization of “problems” and commercialized “solutions”; a history of misogynistic medical neglect of genito-urinary problems; sociocultural pathologization of “women’s bodies,” particularly the vulva and vagina; representational practices in media, advertising, and pornography; shifts in pubic hair removal norms and practices; and post-feminist choice mandates/rhetoric. Braun describes resistance from within medicine and feminism but notes these have not prevented an expansion and normalization of these procedures. Consequently, societal and individual understandings of what vulvar distress is, and how you respond to it, have changed: Vulvar distress is legitimated, but the route to resolve such distress is medicalized, is surgical.
