Kirsty Rice Monday 24 September 2012 10:00am

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Hang onto those labias…

by KIRSTY RICE

I was standing in the car park of the little traveller’s school with a group of women. One of my friends was talking about a friend and her breast cancer recovery, she explained that the breast reconstruction was now complete and she would return to have her nipples added.

There was relief that everything was okay, we’d all put ourselves in her shoes for a moment and thought about our families and how we’d cope. And then someone asked exactly how the nipples were made.

“I think you can get them tattooed but they’re going to use her labia”.

I needed to make sure I had it right. Labia, on your bosoms?

I stuttered in my line of questioning, if I had this wrong it would go down in history as one of my most finest word mixes. “I’m not sure of the technical term here, and I imagine this is highly inappropriate, but I believe the phrase from my teenage vocabulary is flaps? Are you saying they’re going to use her flaps?”

There was much giggling. Flaps were confirmed.

In an instant another girlfriend had taken the thought a step further.

She was going to be a labia donor.

“No seriously, mine are HUGE, I’d have heaps to donate.”

Saving the world, one labia at a time.

It all made sense once I thought about it; the coloring, the texture, they were almost a perfect fit. A medical miracle of sorts. Imagine being the person who went to work one day thinking about nipples and eventually landed on labia “I’ve got it!” Which is why it’s a little more than concerning that so many young women are literally throwing their labia in the bin.

With the dramatic increase in Labiaplasty, cosmetic surgeons are financing new cars, holidays and private school fees solely from someone’s concern that their vulva is a little untidy. Trust me – it’s not. We’ve all got labia – and we need to keep it safely where it belongs.

On my recent trip to the urologist I was to learn that our labia have become a much coveted item. If you’ve happened to have gone through a particularly traumatic birth requiring surgery of the vajayjay kind – you may have really been very thankful for your labia in the form of a “fat pad” graft. The fat inside your labia has sent many a fistula on their way. Yep, it’s the miracle body part.

So please, ladies, don’t go getting yourself in a flap. Hang on to your labia. You just never know when you’re going to need it.

This was originally published on Kirsty’s blog here and has been republished with full permission.

Kirsty Rice is an Australian writer and Blogger currently living in Qatar. After calling 7 countries home over the past 11 years she’s embarrassed to admit she still can’t pack a suitcase properly. Visit Kirsty’s blog here. And you can read more of her writing here.

Would you ever consider plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons?