Vagina Anxiety: The Rise of the Labialplasty

This is what I've now been forced to think as I peruse my Wall Street Journal, and then again as I read my New York Times Magazine, and then again as I watch a special CNN report. As if the era of the Brazilian bikini wax hadn't made me nervous enough, with its laying bare of things that used to be covered, now there's this: Labial plastic surgery and hymen reattachment are apparently all the rage in some circles. Circles with too many resources, to be sure, but also circles that end up foisting their twisted insecurities upon me via esteemed news sources, where I am supposed to be safe from such things.

I am an intelligent, well-adjusted woman with slightly above-average self-esteem (there are plenty of parts of me I don't like, but I'm unabashedly fond of my legs and abs). So upon hearing about such idiocy, I summoned the requisite outrage. What pigs plastic surgeons are, giving women another source of insecurity! What a travesty, kicking us girls, so to speak, where it counts! Not to mention the risk of losing some of the precious nerve-laden square inches that make that part of us so special to begin with. And the fact that some women in less fortunate parts of the world are forced into genital mutilation ... and here some women are paying for a form of it? Ladies, come on.

But women, throughout time, have been afraid to look at themselves too closely down there, and not just because it requires some serious flexibility or the old Our Bodies, Ourselves-era exercise with a hand mirror. Nowadays we talk a good game when it comes to sex -- and might even indulge in some graphic analysis of guys' parts -- but we're still pretty mortified to give our own much thought.

Vaginas, historically, are not beloved. Women's sexuality has been deemed evil since the days of Adam and Eve, and, hell, even recently the University of Notre Dame president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, questioned whether his institution should sponsor an annual staging of "The Vagina Monologues" -- a play whose express purpose is to turn women's source of sexual shame into a source of power -- wondering what it said about the school's "character." At least he cleared up one thing: We still need "The Vagina Monologues."

The fact is, this labialplasty "trend," reprehensible as it may be, dredges up centuries-old insecurities in all of us. What I took away from all those recent stories about it wasn't my outrage, it was a nagging fear: Oh my god, what if I don't have a pretty punani?

At least I'm not alone (though I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing). A sexy friend can traipse around in teeny pieces of cloth and not feel a twinge of self-consciousness, but when it comes to self examination ... well, her words kinda say it all: "Eww! I don't want to look down there at all." I find this confusing. She's a consummate Brazilian waxer. "Yeah," she says, "but I never see it! Waxing is for technical reasons, but I honestly don't know what it looks like, and, frankly, I don't want to."

So, great. Even enviably beautiful women are totally freaked out by their vaginas. Maybe that means labia are the great equalizer. Or maybe it means we all need some serious help.

The problem with this variety of anxiety, though, is that it's tough to assuage. Guys have grappled with genital insecurity since penises were invented, but at least there's a yardstick by which they can measure their adequacy -- literally, a yardstick. Bigger is better, the end. Bummer if you're on the smaller end of that one, but at least you know where you stand and can make up for it by buying big cars or lifting weights or becoming a real-estate mogul or whatever. With this dilemma, I don't know where I stand: What is the ideal here?

It's tough to find a standard, realistically speaking, not only because we don't spend a lot of time staring into other women's vaginas, but also because labia vary about as much as snowflakes. "Compared to other body parts, vulvas look totally insane," says Sarah Mundy, who has compiled a staggering amount of information for her website, All About My Vagina. "They have a billion parts, they're very diverse, and semi-internal, which can seem a bit foreign."