‘Everyone wants a vagina that looks less like a vagina’: Australian women’s views on dissatisfaction with genital appearance

Abstract

We present a thematic discourse analysis of 94 Australian women’s written comments about women’s presumed dissatisfaction with their genital appearance. Two themes emerged: ‘from natural to normal’ and ‘the difficulty of resistance’. In the first theme, participants discuss genital dissatisfaction with reference to hegemonic constructions of femininity and to postfeminist, neoliberal discourses that position the natural female body as inadequate, with beauty practices necessary to achieve acceptability. The second theme addresses the difficulty of challenging this positioning, referencing discourses that position the vagina as unpleasant and discussion of it as taboo. We consider implications of these constructions for women’s well-being.

Keywords

Australia genital dissatisfaction thematic discourse analysis women

Dissatisfaction with genital appearance appears to be increasing among Western women. Research in this area is largely driven by concerns about unnecessary genital cosmetic surgery, a procedure which is infrequent but increasing. In the United Kingdom, numbers increased fivefold, to over 2000 per year, between 2001 and 2010 (Crouch et al., 2011), while over 1500 labiaplasties were conducted in 2010–2011 in Australia (Deans et al., 2011). Perhaps more concerning is evidence that a third to a half of women express some dissatisfaction with their own genital appearance (Bramwell and Morland, 2009). Furthermore, genital dissatisfaction can have negative effects on sexual satisfaction and sexual risk behaviour (Schick et al., 2010).

We present a critical analysis of young, educated Australian women’s explanations for this apparent dissatisfaction. Following Bordo (1993), we take a social constructionist understanding (Parker, 1992) of the female body, assuming that women understand and engage with their bodies in ways constructed by socio-cultural representations and practices, arising within socio-historical contexts (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001b).

The female body in contemporary culture

The conflation of successful femininity with a particular physical appearance in Western culture has been extensively documented. Early second-wave feminism emphasised beauty practices as one major site of the objectification of women (e.g. Dworkin, 1974). Since then, the regulation of women’s bodies has increased: women’s bodies are judged against increasingly narrow definitions of acceptability (Stuart and Donaghue, 2011). Modern culture requires women to engage in extensive body maintenance and modification in order to appear acceptably feminine, indeed to appear ‘normal’ (Braun et al., 2013).

Contemporary Western societies may be understood as both neoliberal and postfeminist. The neoliberal view of the individual is as a self-governing, independent entity, engaging in endless self-examination and self-improvement (Petersen, 1997). Within this discourse, virtue and success are achievable through consumption (Leve et al., 2012), and a woman’s ‘choice’ to engage in body modification is positioned as a contextless individual decision (Braun, 2009b).

Simultaneously, the discourse of postfeminism disguises sexism by suggesting that systemic gender inequities no longer exist, and that continuing differences result from individual choice (Stuart and Donaghue, 2011). Gill (2007) has highlighted the consistency between neoliberal and postfeminist discourses, both valorising concepts of individualism and choice, and both simultaneously requiring women, in particular, to adhere to restrictive norms of appearance and behaviour.

Patriarchal neoliberalism focuses on physical appearance as a measure of women’s value (Leve et al., 2012), while the individualist, free-choice assumptions of postfeminism make it difficult to identify or resist the sexism inherent in this cultural requirement. In qualitative research on ‘choosing’ to conform to beauty standards (Stuart and Donaghue, 2011), women said they felt compelled to engage in beauty practices to gain confidence, fit in and look desirable, but did not seem aware of any broader cultural influence. Considerable research has demonstrated that many women judge themselves by social constructions of what is attractive, with results that can compromise their psychological, physical and sexual health (e.g. Schick et al., 2010).

Through media, advertising and celebrity culture, bodily perfection is positioned not just as desirable, but as integral to normative femininity (Tiefer, 2008). While cultures have always monitored acceptable femininity, the current neoliberal and postfeminist moment is distinguished by the extent and intensity of this surveillance (Gill, 2007), and indeed by the level of (apparently freely chosen) self-surveillance (Gill and Scharff, 2011).

It is this self-surveillance that may explain the contemporary focus on the appearance of the genitals, which are not publicly visible. Like anal bleaching, genital modification is widely discussed in the lay press. Although these body parts are seen only by the individual and an intimate few, acceptance of neoliberal concepts of the body as a project (Petersen, 1997) means that the mere awareness that there are cultural appearance standards for a part of one’s body may provoke anxiety (Bordo, 1993).

Cultural constructions of women’s genitals

Cultural norms frame women’s genitals as a taboo area that should not be mentioned (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001a) and as a source of shame and disgust (Braun and Wilkinson, 2001): perhaps the most offensive word in the English language is a synonym for female genitalia. There is a cultural imperative for the vagina to be tight, small and all but invisible (e.g. Bramwell, 2002; Braun and Wilkinson, 2001; Liao and Creighton, 2007). Aesthetically, the ideal vagina has been described as a smooth curve, with no visible labia minora (Bramwell, 2002; Braun, 2009a). Although normal genitalia show considerable variation, with healthy labia minora ranging from 2 to 10 cm in length (Liao and Creighton, 2007), representations of women’s genitals typically reinforce this ideal (Bramwell, 2002).

Narrow models of normality based on limited exposure to unrealistic pornographic or artistic images, lack of exposure to other women’s genitalia, increased visibility of one’s own genitalia due to hair removal, a media culture that celebrates the ‘makeover’ (Tiefer, 2008), increasingly sexually permissive attitudes and the ready availability of Internet pornography (Attwood, 2006) have led some women to genital cosmetic surgery such as labiaplasty. Despite no relationship between the size of the labia minora and either sexual pleasure or physical comfort (Bramwell et al., 2007), surgery is presented as a solution to a problem which is grounded in cultural, rather than medical, issues (Braun, 2005; Moran and Lee, 2013).

With these concerns in mind, this study analyses young women’s responses to an open-ended question on female genital dissatisfaction, at the end of an experimental study which involved viewing images of natural and surgically modified vaginas (published elsewhere, Moran and Lee, 2014). By examining the discourses that women drew upon and the subject positions adopted within these discourses, we aim to understand the factors that may be involved in genital dissatisfaction.

Method

Participants and recruitment

A total of 94 women from Brisbane, Australia, aged 19–31 (median 25) years, provided written responses to an open-ended question. Following university research ethics clearance, we recruited 97 participants (including three who chose not to comment), through posters on campus and a sexual health clinic, advertisements in a university newsletter and a free daily newspaper and an announcement in an undergraduate psychology lecture. Advertisements were headed ‘Every Woman Has One: Looking at Female Genitalia’ and invited 18- to 30-year-old women to view ‘a range of images of women’s vaginas’, for the purpose of examining ‘women’s perceptions of normality and abnormality’ regarding vaginal appearance. Women were invited to email the first author (C.M.), who provided an information sheet and a link to the study online and answered any questions. Participants had the choice of participating in a research room at the university or alone in a private place elsewhere; all chose to participate elsewhere. There was no payment for participation.

The project was controversial, with complaints to our university department and destruction of posters. Because of this apparent sensitivity, we made it clear that participants were not required to provide details of age and occupation: 66 did and 28 did not.

Procedure

Participants, who had already had an opportunity to ask questions by email, provided informed consent before proceeding to the study. The first part – involving viewing and rating images of surgically modified or non-modified vaginas – is reported elsewhere (Moran and Lee, 2014). Here, we analyse the second part, written responses to a single open-ended question: ‘Research has shown that many women today are dissatisfied with how their genitals look. We would love to hear any thoughts you have about why this might be the case’. We recognise that this question frames women’s genitals as problematic, but the aim was to explore how women understand and react to this cultural assumption, rather than to draw out their perspectives on their own genitals. There was no word limit or time constraint. In quotations below, we have corrected spelling mistakes for ease of reading and used pseudonyms.

Data set

A total of 94 women wrote a total of 8708 words. Mean response length was 94 words, ranging from two single 6-word sentences to one reflective response of 599 words. The two briefest comments were ‘Society’s obsession with hairless female genitalia’ (Louise, age 29, web content editor) and ‘Not aesthetically nice to look at’ (Jane, age and occupation not specified).

Respondents appeared to engage seriously with the question, referencing mass media, lack of knowledge of normal variation and cultural pressures on young women. They seemed an educated and verbally fluent group of young women, many with some understanding of the role of social discourse in the construction of the desirable female body. The following complete extract is typical:

I think this is because pornographic films, men’s magazines and also just generally the way men talk – all say a woman’s vagina should be smooth hairless blemish free smell nice and have a nice complexion/colour. I also believe that because women don’t watch pornographic films as much as men and we don’t tend to look at other women’s vaginas, we believe what men say our vaginas should be like. I hate waxing and it hurts and I often feel extremely self conscious about the fact that my genital area is hairy and I quite honestly wish I had other women who were more open to talking about this topic. (Belinda, age 30, teacher)

Analysis

We conducted a thematic discourse analysis, identifying ‘discursive themes’ as patterns within talk with specific rhetorical and ideological purposes. A discourse may be understood as a ‘system of statements which constructs an object’ (Parker, 1992: 5): language brings these objects into being, allowing certain subject positions to be taken up, shaping how we experience the world (Willig, 1999). Power is constructed and reproduced through discourses, which fundamentally shape the way an object can be spoken about or understood (Parker, 1992).

C.M. read the responses repeatedly and made notes. C.L. read the responses and contributed to discussions as the themes developed. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the question, the responses constructed both the natural body and the natural vagina as unacceptable: some women identified this as a view they held, others as a cultural discourse of which they were aware. All noted that social acceptability could only be achieved through modification (Gill and Scharff, 2011). Even those who recognised these constructions as socially imposed described considerable difficulty in rejecting them: discourses of the vagina as unpleasant and taboo underpinned the entire data set.

Results and discussion

These young women responded to our declaration that ‘research has shown that many women today are dissatisfied with how their genitals look’ by drawing on dominant cultural discourses to make sense of genital dissatisfaction, both as a general phenomenon and in their own experience.

Our first discursive theme, from natural to normal, examines ways in which the natural female body and vagina are constructed as inadequate, with normality only achievable through modification. This construction is informed by dominant constructions of heterosexual femininity, postfeminism and neoliberalism. We identify two sub-themes: women’s bodies, dealing mainly with the role of media in defining and policing how women should look, and women’s genitals, specifically about genital appearance.

The second theme, labelled the difficulty of resistance, examines the apparent difficulty of rejecting this construction of the natural vagina as inadequate, even when able to articulate its cultural basis and potentially harmful effects.

From natural to normal

Women’s bodies

Many participants reproduced the observation that women’s bodies are subjected to tight social control and judgement:

The way women look in all aspects is constantly being judged … low self esteem is a huge problem for most females which plays a huge part in the way they live their lives and the decisions they make. (Jenny, age 28, office manager)

Numerous authors have noted the ways in which neoliberal culture dictates aesthetic norms, defining acceptable behaviour and appearance and requiring that women, in particular, engage in consumptive practices in the quest for bodily perfection (e.g. Bordo, 1993; Gill, 2008). Some participants reflected this view:

There is such a relentless push to be perfectly groomed. (Kate, age 27, media coordinator)

Wrinkles, pimples and blemishes are marks against our name rather than proof of our existence. (Judy, age 28, accounts clerk)

These comments highlight an awareness of the pressure on women to conform to a narrow aesthetic, with women’s bodies constructed as ‘always at risk of failing’ (Gill, 2007: 149):

Women are policed constantly and told that their bodies are not good enough the way they are. (Jess, age 24, office worker)

A further aspect of neoliberal, postfeminist culture is the centrality of looking sexy to women’s identity, with Gill (2007) arguing that sexiness is positioned as women’s main source of value. For example,

Young women are increasingly sexualised from a younger age and feel pressured to fit an ideal. (Belle, age and occupation not specified)

Participants expressed concern about the way women’s bodies are positioned as ‘objects for men’s pleasure’ (Jess, age 24, office worker). This perspective is in line with research (e.g. Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2007; Moran and Lee, 2011) showing that – despite women being positioned as having power and freedom – their actual choices are increasingly limited by narrow, heterosexist and homogenised representations of female sexual being.

Women’s genitals

Some women put the view that the natural vagina is positioned as in need of improvement, to an even greater extent than women’s bodies in general. Here, the vagina is positioned as a commodity, which can be streamlined to make it more pleasing to the consumer:

I believe somewhere along the line it has been suggested that the most attractive and desirable vagina is one that is small, tight and generally neat […] We seem to be obsessed with everything being smaller and slimmer so maybe this has flowed on to female genitals. (Laura, age and occupation not specified)

The comments below – from a woman whose language suggests some familiarity with critical perspectives on women’s bodies – suggest that the vagina is always, and problematically, positioned as unpleasant:

The assumption is that the vagina is somewhat unacceptable as is: it needs to be tidied and made presentable for another’s gaze […]. Women are socialised to implicitly regard their genitalia with embarrassment and shame. Unless they appear in pornography (which is largely produced for a male gaze) vaginas are concealed as something that is generally distasteful. (Grace, age 21, legal secretary)

Here, Grace distinguishes between an ‘unacceptable’ natural vagina and an acceptable vagina, which has been ‘tidied and made presentable’ for a male gaze. Her language positions the vagina as specifically for the benefit of men, and the actual embodied experience of having a vagina as offensive by its very nature. This comment illustrates the point that the imperative for self-improvement has come to include the most personal and hidden part of the body, the genitals. A makeover culture that incorporates surgery into the beauty industry has meant that bodily anxieties are frequently met with surgical solutions, as the same woman continues:

I think in our contemporary affluent society where there is a tendency to engage with the body as a project […] causes women considerable anxiety; which in turn has led to the proliferation of cosmetic procedures to somehow normalise the vagina. The beauty myth has basically extended to the vagina and it’s nothing short of depressing. (Grace, age 21, legal secretary)

This comment explicitly references a problematic neoliberal discourse of the body as ‘a project’ requiring constant improvement, with the vagina requiring surgery to render it normal. It suggests that anxiety leads to surgery, but as Braun (2009b) has noted, the relationship between cosmetic surgery and bodily anxiety is more complicated, as the mere existence of cosmetic surgery creates the very anxieties that surgery is claimed to dispel. As another participant wrote,

Guess with the introduction of labiaplasty and other vagina surgeries more readily available it makes women think that maybe it’s something they should think about. (Jo, age 23, youth worker)

Other women noted the effects of pornography and mainstream media:

The media tells women how their vaginas should look implicitly and explicitly. Vaginal ‘lips’ are photoshopped out of magazines (e.g. when women wear bikini bottoms) and the infantilisation of female body makes ‘the least vagina possible’ the ‘best vagina possible’. (Rachel, age 26, student)

Pornography on the internet and in men’s magazines – from what I’ve been told a lot of women in the porn/sex industry have surgery to reduce the size of their labia but I’m not sure how common this is. (Meg, age 23, student)

Women’s magazines and pornography were not the only places that were referenced as presenting only one image of women’s genitals. Consistent with research on illustrations in anatomy textbooks (Howarth et al., 2010), some women commented on images in sex-education and other ostensibly factual texts. This was positioned as particularly problematic in lending authority to a uniform depiction of the vagina, normalising a particular type of genital appearance and pathologising variation:

Even the sex-ed type diagrams normalise a certain type of vulva as a ‘typical healthy’ one. (Jess, age 24, office worker)

Tampon instructions are very unrealistic and are often the first ‘adult’ vagina images a girl sees. (Marie, age 23, student)

The women’s comments frequently demonstrated an understanding of this particular representation of the vagina as most desirable:

We are led to believe that men (and women) only find these ‘tidy’ vaginas attractive and anything that deviates from this is messy. (Ava, age 30, waitress)

I do believe that pornography by no means is a clear representation of what a woman’s vagina should look like […] except that’s what I associate with vaginas so for some idiotic reason I feel inadequate about my own. Then come the questions: It doesn’t look as neat as that. Should it? Is hair ugly? unhygienic? Do men find it a turn off because it looks different to what I see in men’s magazines/pornos?[…] It’s like everyone wants a vagina that looks less like a vagina … Just a hole you can barely see … Maybe because if it looks less like a vagina then it’s less confronting for us and more appealing to men in regards to sexuality? … (Orla, age and occupation not specified)

These comments highlight the extent to which these women appear to recognise the problematic nature of the vagina, and the apparent impossibility of one’s own vagina meeting cultural expectations:

Women have little exposure to other women’s genitalia. Moreover any exposure is usually to genitals of those in the pornography industry […] and these women all have similar looking genitals (presumably a pre-requisite of entering the business). If women’s genitals don’t look like those of these few women they are likely to think theirs are ‘abnormal’. (Peta, age 20, student)

Here, Peta’s comments provide a possible reason for this expectation, referring both to the ready availability of unrealistic pornography and to a general lack of exposure to other women’s actual genitals.

The difficulty of resistance

The first theme, from natural to normal, highlighted the participants’ understanding that women’s bodies and genitals are culturally positioned as unacceptable in their natural state, requiring commodification and beautification to bring them into line with cultural constructions of hegemonic femininity. The second theme considers reasons why this socially constructed view of acceptable appearance may be difficult to resist. First, women described a sense of discursive silencing (Thiesmayer, 2003) which rendered the entire topic one about which they could not, and should not, speak:

I never spoke about it with my mother nor my friends. It’s like it’s ok for men to talk about their penis but vaginas are a total taboo. (Orla, age 21, student/part-time retail)

This taboo seems to silence even practical discussion around natural body changes:

I think as someone who has not had a baby but is thinking about it there is also some anxiety about how your vagina will change if you have a natural birth – and it’s not really something I talk about with my friends (both those who’ve had babies and those who haven’t). Does it? Who knows? (Luiza, age 26, administrator)

The cultural use of slang terms rather than correct terminology also reflects and reinforces the silence around women’s genitals. Slang tends to lack precise or consistent meaning and is frequently derogatory (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001a). Research has highlighted the psychological benefits for girls of using correct language, as well as the importance of knowing this language in order to access information on issues such as sexual feelings, sensations and practices, and sexual and reproductive health (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001a). A number of comments noted the difficulty that people have with terminology, for example,

People are uncomfortable saying those words (vagina, vulva, labia etc) so this could be making girls feel as though it’s not okay to talk about your vagina if you can’t even say the word. (Lisa, age and occupation unspecified)

This discursive silencing, rendering women unable to speak about their genitals, is reinforced by strongly negative framing of the vagina, which has been well documented in feminist research: historically, vaginas have been positioned as disgusting, smelly and shameful (Tiefer, 2008), and the respondents indicated an awareness of a cultural imperative to consider the vagina in negative terms:

They are also often thought of as dirty/smelly things. (Marie, age 23, student)

Vaginas are still viewed by mainstream society as dirty ugly shameful things. (Lisa, age and occupation not specified)

Other comments suggest that it is this cultural positioning of the vagina as disgusting that has influenced women’s own subjective feelings about their own bodies, for example,

I think society be it religion or other influences has created this stigma that it’s such a forbidden ‘ugly’ area. Although I would like to say that I disagree, it’s a difficult area to feel confident and comfortable about. (Orla, age 21, student/part-time retail)

Here, Orla noted that ‘I would like to say that I disagree’ with this cultural positioning, but found herself unable to do so.

Participants also commented on the effects of jokes and slang terms that positioned women’s genitals negatively. Slang allows users to draw upon shared cultural knowledge (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001a), by encoding derogatory understandings of women’s bodies in implicit ways that are difficult to resist:

I have regularly been exposed to jokes about long flaps loose vaginas and excessively hairy vaginas. It is impossible not to take that on in some form. (Laura, age and occupation not specified)

Men have also developed a range of derogatory terms to describe the vagina like gash, meat curtains, flaps etc. which makes women self-conscious about their vaginas. (Anita, age 23, student)

Many women do not know what their genitals look like, and this too may be linked to discursive constructions of the vagina, both as a taboo topic and as unpleasant, dirty and a source of shame (Braun, 2009a):

So many women don’t even know what their own vaginas and vulvas look like because they still think that women’s genitals (especially looking at them) are something dirty or taboo. (Jess, age 24, office worker)

Other comments showed that some participants accepted this perception:

In preparation for this study I looked at my own genitals with a mirror for the third time in my life and was fairly horrified. I have no idea why anyone would want to go near a female vagina it looks pretty awful. (Karen, age 20, student)

Women may have few opportunities to see other women’s genitals (Bramwell and Morland, 2009), and lack of understanding of normal diversity may be another source of silencing:

To compare body parts is natural and is ingrained in our society […] with things like hair styles or breasts or legs we can compare with friends and with women on screen or magazines but it is rare for women to see other vaginas. (Janice, age and occupation not specified)

Some comments referenced a general perception that there is only one type of ‘normal’ vagina:

I read an article once that showed lad rags were photoshopping out the labia to meet censorship standards: this meant that many men had no idea other types of vaginas existed. In the comments on the article it became clear many women didn’t either and had considered their type the only normal one. (Suzanne, age 28, student)

This lack of awareness was also raised by other women, whose insights may have been gained through exposure to the images in the first part of this study:

I don’t think women know what is considered normal. I also don’t think they understand that there is large variation in how genitals look. (Dee, age 24, student)

Women may not have seen another woman’s genitals and may not realise that everyone is different. (Janette, age 22, student)

The lack of information about genital diversity, and the assumption that there is only one ‘normal’ type of vagina, extends to sexuality education in schools. In Australia, teacher training generally includes nothing relevant to sexuality education (Carman et al., 2011). It is perhaps thus not surprising that some women noted,

I don’t remember ever being educated on the variation in vagina ‘shapes’. If this is not part of sexual education then it probably should be. (Gail, age 23, student)

I had no idea that there was such a range in appearance when it came to vaginas when I was growing up. For some reason you don’t learn about the ‘rude’ parts of the body at school so it makes sense that there is so much confusion and insecurity about them later on. (Aisling, age and occupation not specified)

On the whole, the pathologisation of the natural female body and vagina, negative socio-cultural understandings of women’s genitals, the positioning of one type of genital appearance as normal and desirable and the inability to challenge these constructions verbally or visually combine to produce genital dissatisfaction that is extremely difficult to challenge. As Felicity noted,

As women I don’t think we are taught to like our vaginas but rather to esteem a certain look and feel shame if ours are different. (Felicity, age and occupation unspecified)

Other women drew on their subjective experiences:

I don’t trust men who tell me that my genitals are normal or beautiful as I am not symmetrical or evenly coloured. I honestly believe they are making it up to make me feel comfortable but it makes me trust them less. If they agreed I was weird looking I’d feel more comfortable. I do wonder how men can find our genitals attractive as they are not exactly interesting or alluring parts of the body. (Brianna, age 24, scientist)

This quote illustrates how the two discourses reinforce each other. This young woman drew on narrow, artificial constructions of acceptable female appearance, to suggest that she is not normal; furthermore, her emphasis on what men say (and what she assumes them to think) illustrates the pervasive construction of the vagina as primarily for men’s consumption while suggesting that she finds it difficult to imagine any other perspective.

Conclusion

We analysed women’s responses to an open-ended question about reasons for genital dissatisfaction, identifying discursive themes concerning the constructed nature of ‘normality’ and the difficulty of challenging hegemonic views of how women’s genitals should look and how they should be spoken about. Rather than ask women to talk about their own experiences, as others have done (e.g. Braun et al., 2013), we invited women to write about what they saw as the views of women in general about genital appearance. Their responses tended to resonate with feminist views of the ‘normal’ female body – and by extension, the vagina – as socially constructed in ways that emphasise the male gaze and that reinforce views of women and women’s bodies as in need of correction (Bordo, 1993).

Of course, these responses were generated in a situation that we co-created by asking about genital dissatisfaction. The fact that none of the participants directly challenged our claim that ‘many women today are dissatisfied with how their genitals look’ may suggest that they were responding to the demands of the research context, or perhaps that only women who already held critical views about social attitudes to women’s genitalia chose to participate. Furthermore, we sought young women only, and most respondents appear to have tertiary education (including some familiarity with the social sciences), meaning that their views may be those of women with a particular set of social and cultural experiences. Future research might explore the views of specific groups of women (e.g. adolescents, lesbians) and men, or introduce the topic in different ways.

Our findings are consistent with an intense focus in contemporary culture on the regulation of women’s appearance. The first theme, from natural to normal, demonstrated the participants’ awareness of how dominant postfeminist and neoliberal discourses construct the natural female body, including the vagina, as pathological, and normality only attainable through beauty practices (Braun et al., 2013). The second theme, the difficulty of resistance, highlighted socio-cultural discourses that position the vagina as unpleasant and taboo and make it virtually impossible to resist the construction of one type of genital appearance as normal (Braun and Kitzinger, 2001b).

Our analysis suggests that genital dissatisfaction is socially and culturally produced, but has a reality in the lives of young women and may have negative sexual health implications. While the participants understood that the idealised vagina is not natural, this construction nonetheless appeared at times to create considerable anxiety. In line with the work of others (e.g. Braun and Kitzinger, 2001a; Braun and Wilkinson, 2001), our findings have also shown that taboo and lack of precise language affect women’s embodied experience of their genitals. As has been shown elsewhere (e.g. Schick et al., 2010), genital dissatisfaction affects self-esteem, self-consciousness about genital appearance and ability to enjoy sexual experiences.

The silence that surrounds women’s genitals, the construction of the vagina as inherently unpleasant and the positioning of the natural vagina as inadequate and in need of beautification can lead to genital appearance anxiety. Surgery is positioned as a solution for a ‘problem’ which is grounded in culture, rather than medicine. Given the influence of these negative constructions of the natural vagina, we argue for a need for people to be equipped with the tools to challenge cultural norms (Braun et al., 2013).

Awareness of natural genital diversity needs to be encouraged among both men and women. In addition, the positioning of female genital cosmetic surgery as beneficial, safe and straightforward (Moran and Lee, 2013) needs to be challenged, with information about the risks (Goodman, 2011). The negative framing of women’s natural genitals and the positive framing of surgery that has risks and lacks proven benefit also raises questions (Braun and Wilkinson, 2001; Crouch et al., 2011).

In conclusion, our findings resonate with a growing body of quantitative (e.g. Bramwell and Morland, 2009; Crouch et al., 2011; Schick et al., 2010) and qualitative (e.g. Bramwell et al., 2007; Braun, 2005) research into genital dissatisfaction. Discursively analysing young women’s views about the phenomenon enables a rich understanding of their own views of the impact that socio-cultural norms have on their relationships with their bodies and helps us understand the inherent difficulty of rejecting these constructions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Britta Wigginton for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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