Behind both female genital mutilation and the dramatic increase in genital surgery is the pressure to conform to a constructed ideal of desirability
The girl lies in a half-conscious state, her legs wedged wide apart, her exposed genitals splayed. By her shoulders, a man and woman are stationed to prevent her from stirring. Standing over her naked body, the man in charge brandishes the metal instrument in his hand. The metal glints, he clamps the red lip of her of her most intimate parts into the jaws of his scissors, and he cuts. There is no other sound in the world like that of flesh severed by a blade and that’s the sound made as he snips, slices and chops away bloody chunks from the healthy tissue of the young woman’s vulva.
This is not snuff porn. These are not the superstitious rituals of ancient traditions in faraway lands. This is not a horror movie. This is labiaplasty, the cosmetic reduction and reshaping of the female labia minora; one of surgeries gaining such rapid popularity in Australia that its official numbers have tripled in little more than a decade. There were 1565 women who claimed the surgery on Medicare in 2011 alone. The scene described above I saw in a documentary.
Related: Designer vagina surgery: snip, stitch, kerching!
Women electing to have unnecessary surgery on intimate tissue risks a permanent impairment or loss of erotic sensation.
Related: Sierra Leone's secret FGM societies spread silent fear and sleepless nights | Lisa O'Carroll
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