The Perfect Vagina

The Perfect Vagina

A documentary focused on genital plastic surgery who tries to answer the question why so many women hate the appearance of their vulva to the point that they'd willingly have pieces of them surgically removed. First of all, we met gynecologist Linda Cardoza, who informed an appalled Rogers that NHS labiaplasties have doubled in the past five years, and that she has received requests for this procedure from 14-year-old girls. Cardoza, makes one of the most important points of the programme: They want to look like a small child, but you're never going to look like a small child as an adult woman. It was great that this point was made even once, but it ought to have been repeated many times throughout, in order to indelibly scorch it onto the minds of viewers - as it is the root of the whole issue. Some pointed questions wouldn't have gone amiss at this point either, such as: Why do women want to look like little girls? What is sexually desirable about children's genitals exactly? No, really, what?



During the programme we met three women who all hated their vagina: 21 year old Rosie, who went ahead with a labiaplasty on camera, and thirty-somethings Regan and Kelly, both mothers. They used words such as "cauliflower" and "hot dog bap" to describe their vagina, and it was upsetting to hear about the abuse they had suffered at the hands of their nearest and dearest - Rosie's sister and male friends had teased her nastily about "hanging hams", and Regan's ex partner had used the words "Mersey Tunnel" to describe the organ by which his children were born. Saddening though it was to hear of this bullying, it emphasized that women are not having vaginal surgery because they are imposing unrealistic beauty standards on themselves. There is clearly a loathing of vagina at large in society, and women are driven to hate themselves at least partly because of their treatment at the hands of others. This was emphasized again later in the programme, in a moment of documentary film-making which admittedly raised class issues, when Rogers asked two builders working on her house for their opinion. The two men refereed to vagina with phrases such as "squashed hedgehog" and the obligatory "beef curtains". About the prospect of an imminent sexual encounter, one of them remarked: "If she's got an ugly fanny, then sorry mate." "Those small pieces of pink, wrinkly skin lying on the operating table were probably two of the most sensitive areas in Rosie's body, and she had just had them cut off because she thought they didn't look nice." But where does this hatred come from? This was a stone left virtually unturned by the programme. Rogers had a quick look at some porn mags and concluded that: "The fannies that looking at aren't real fannies, and there is the problem." True enough, but porn has a lot more to answer for than simply being unrealistic, and this was never touched upon. Thankfully, not everyone shares the view of Rosie's sister the builders or the porn mags. We also met sculptor Jamie, who took plaster casts of women's bits in order to make a giant work of art out of them. I couldn't quite make up my mind at first whether he was truly doing great work or just wanted to cop a feel, but after seeing Kelly's delighted reaction to her own plaster cast, and her fascination at the variety of vagina which had been cast before hers, I plumped for the former, deciding that bringing real vagina out into the open in this way can only help to stem the tide of harmful, childlike images. Sex therapist Rachel is also keen to get women to accept their bits, and has great success with a technique involving women looking at and discussing their feelings about their vagina in a small, all-female group. Rogers was very skeptical at first, but she changed her mind later on, after she and Regan both participated in the therapy. As a tearful but elated Regan said: "Once you get over the initial bit, it's like, fucking yes!" It was a heartwarming moment, and more importantly Regan no longer wanted surgery. The same could not be said for Rosie. The cameras watched as she had two pieces of her entirely normal inner labia cut away under local anesthetic. She screamed in pain, to which the (male) cosmetic surgeon sensitively responded: "Are you on drugs?" After the surgery, Rosie experienced severe pain and bleeding, but after having her stitches agonizingly removed, she remarked: "It looks a lot better now, doesn't it?". Watching this, I felt a sympathetic twinge in my own bits and it made me feel incredibly sad. Those small pieces of pink, wrinkly skin lying on the operating table were probably two of the most sensitive areas in Rosie's body, and she had just had them cut off because she thought they didn't look nice. "Given the usual programming schedule, I was grateful it was broadcast at all. However, I want more - this programme could have really plumbed the depths of what makes our society so fearful of female sexuality. It could have told women to go play with their bits and delight in the pleasure therein." This issue came up for me throughout, and was one of the areas where I found the programme lacking. I kept waiting for Rogers to make the point that inner labia are highly sexually sensitive, and that removing them thus reduces a woman's sexual sensitivity, but while the programme criticized the idea of "designer vagina", at no point did it mention sexual pleasure. The vagina's function, rather than its appearance, was barely mentioned aside from a few nods to childbirth - and since a woman may give birth on a handful of occasions in her life, but has sex hundreds if not thousands of times, this seemed to me quite odd. Is the subject of women's sexual pleasure so taboo that it cannot even be mentioned in a documentary which showed viewers several close up shots of women's vagina and didn't bleep out the word "cunt"? I felt cheated - the programme makers had the perfect opportunity to tell women not just to accept the way their vagina looks, but to enjoy the pleasure it gives them, and they bottled it. Labiaplasty wasn't the only surgery examined by The Perfect Vagina. Rogers also touched on the practice of hymen restoration among some parts of the Muslim community. After highlighting the hideous double-standard of virginity by interviewing a particularly cocky and objectionable young man over a pool table, Rogers broke down in tears over a young woman who insisted that her parents would kill her and then themselves if they found out she was no longer a virgin. These surgeries were worthy of a whole programme in themselves, but I was glad to see this documentary touch the tip of the iceberg, if nothing else. Rogers was somewhat off the ball with her analysis, though: she opined that "sexual liberation" has not been the solution to women's miseries, in fact, it has led us to want to "cut off our flaps". Wrong, Lisa. We are not sexually liberated. We have just swapped one type of oppression for another; we live in a society where images of male sexual fantasies and desires are ubiquitous but where women's own sexuality is still seen as something to be feared, hated and sanitized. It may seem churlish to criticize a programme which fundamentally had a positive attitude towards women, and whose "love yourself as you are" message couldn't be faulted. I found Rogers to be a charming, warm and investigative host: she questioned the assumptions of the surgeons implored women to accept themselves, and clearly loved her own bush.