Plastic Surgery: Has It Finally Gone Too Far?
Plastic Surgery: Has It Finally Gone Too Far?
Shivani Rami The relative mainstreaming of the sex industry along with popular culture and its objectification of women in many forms, such as in advertisements, have led to a perpetually increased sense of pressure among many women to obtain seamlessly sexualized and almost airbrushed bodies. The movement towards this idealized physique began with the now socially approved breast augmentations, liposuctions, rhinoplasties, and so on. Yet the road to achieving this perfect body has taken a turn below the belt, and the new craze is for women to alter the shape of their labias to create a more aesthetically pleasing look. The new trend for women to shape the size of their labias is a practice that virtually serves no purpose and fosters negative social obligations for females. The practice essentially takes away from the notion that every woman is beautiful in her own way by comparing each woman to her neighbor, and classifying genitals on an “abnormal” or “normal” scale. The Second Wave Feminism urged women to take out their hand mirrors and embark on self discovery and celebration. However, women were now beginning to look for imperfections and defects, such as large labias, and were seeking possible ways of fixing these imperfections. The surgical procedure, called a labiaplasty, involves trimming away labial tissue, and sometimes injecting fat from another part of the body into labia that have been deemed excessively droopy. In contrast to the tightening operation known as “vaginal rejuvenation,” labiaplasty is merely cosmetic in purpose and claims to have no impact on sensation (Davis, 2002). Labiaplasties not only medicalize and pathologize the differences in women’s genitals by using words such as “normal” and “abnormal,” the procedure also thrives off the insecurities of women, supports homogeneity among women rather than heterogeneity, increases health risks as a result of surgery complications (both
Shivani Rami The relative mainstreaming of the sex industry along with popular culture and its objectification of women in many forms, such as in advertisements, have led to a perpetually increased sense of pressure among many women to obtain seamlessly sexualized and almost airbrushed bodies. The movement towards this idealized physique began with the now socially approved breast augmentations, liposuctions, rhinoplasties, and so on. Yet the road to achieving this perfect body has taken a turn below the belt, and the new craze is for women to alter the shape of their labias to create a more aesthetically pleasing look. The new trend for women to shape the size of their labias is a practice that virtually serves no purpose and fosters negative social obligations for females. The practice essentially takes away from the notion that every woman is beautiful in her own way by comparing each woman to her neighbor, and classifying genitals on an “abnormal” or “normal” scale. The Second Wave Feminism urged women to take out their hand mirrors and embark on self discovery and celebration. However, women were now beginning to look for imperfections and defects, such as large labias, and were seeking possible ways of fixing these imperfections. The surgical procedure, called a labiaplasty, involves trimming away labial tissue, and sometimes injecting fat from another part of the body into labia that have been deemed excessively droopy. In contrast to the tightening operation known as “vaginal rejuvenation,” labiaplasty is merely cosmetic in purpose and claims to have no impact on sensation (Davis, 2002). Labiaplasties not only medicalize and pathologize the differences in women’s genitals by using words such as “normal” and “abnormal,” the procedure also thrives off the insecurities of women, supports homogeneity among women rather than heterogeneity, increases health risks as a result of surgery complications (both
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