Abstract
Purpose of ReviewTo examine the ‘zero tolerance’ policy for female genital cutting (FGM/C) in the international health community in light of the growing popularity of FGCS (female genital cosmetic surgery) worldwide.Recent Findings‘Traditional’ FGM/C performed in Egypt and Sudan and cosmetic labiaplasty performed in Europe, the Americas, and Antipodes by medically trained gynaecologists and plastic surgeons are based on similar aesthetic logics: labia minora that protrude beyond the labia majora are deemed ugly, masculine, and ‘abnormal’. Drawing on the burgeoning medical, social science, and humanities literature surrounding labiaplasty, the paper documents the narrowing of aesthetic standards governing ‘normal’ genital appearance and finds that, in addition to adult women, thousands of (mainly Caucasian) adolescents have undergone these operations whose long-term health consequences are unknown.SummaryWestern heteronormativity, gender binarism, ageism, and the colonial association of protruding labia minora with animality contribute to body image insecurities and fuel the labiaplasty phenomenon, despite the ethical challenge that the procedures are clearly defined by the WHO as type II (a–c) female genital mutilations.
Highlights
In February 2018, I was invited to address faculty and students at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, home to the independent Babikir Bedri Scientific Association for Women’s Studies (BBSAWS). These two organisations have been at the forefront of efforts to stop female genital cutting (FGC, a term I prefer for its moral neutrality over WHO’s FGM/C), practices that have a lengthy history in Sudan and are deeply entrenched in everyday life
Many of the operations are performed on nulliparous young women, and as Michala notes, little is yet known about how a previous female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) will affect childbirth
To return to the issue with which I began, what does it mean to adopt a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to traditional female genital cutting in an era when medicalised female cosmetic genital cutting is gaining purchase and respectability worldwide? How do we continue to differentiate legally and ethically between the two when issues such as underage ‘consent’, choice, cultural aesthetics, and political context so consistently overlap? I close with two observations
Summary
My topic that day was the rising popularity in the West of female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS), the procedure of labiaplasty: the trimming or removal of the labia minora and/or labia majora for aesthetic purposes. In response to women who requested a perfectly smooth look, much like the doll after whom this form of labiaplasty is named During this procedure, most or all of the Labia minora (the ‘inner lips’) are removed to create a completely tight and petite look. Note the words used in the passages above: ‘smooth’, ‘tight’, ‘enhance’, ‘corrected’, beautification’, and ‘streamlined’ These terms echo those of Sudanese women in the village where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the mid1970s who said that they performed and underwent what the WHO calls ‘traditional’ genital cutting, including a modified infibulation (FGM/C type III2), in order to create a smooth, clean vulva with no ‘inner flesh’. I start with the binary imperative and the concept of genital normality, take up the issue of race via the specious notion of ‘labial hypertrophy’
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