Relax, people. It’s a face. When I worked in magazines I got worked up for quite some time about the censorship requirements around vaginas. Unless anything has changed since then, the basic situation is that any magazine featuring a picture of a naked woman, had to digitally remove
anything visible outside the ‘single slit’ of the vaginal lips. So any stray bits of labia or clitoris had to be airbrushed out. Because it was deemed OFFENSIVE.
[oh, and if you’re at work right now? You might want to be cautious about scrolling down this post….]
Which would be exactly like someone deciding that testicles were offensive and had to be airbrushed out of nude photos of men.
The now defunct magazine Women’s Forum first brought the issue to my attention years ago and Cosmo then took up the cause with a campaign protesting it. What a shocker. And nothing changed.
To this day, any magazine showing any ‘genital detail’ must be sold in a sealed plastic bag. Like pornography. And I’m not talking about explicit legs akimbo shots, just shots of a normal girl standing up with her legs closed. She must look like Barbie or the airbrush will be deployed to make the censors happy and protect our sensitive eyes from OFFENSIVE VISIBLE LADY PARTS.
Did you even know all this? Many women don’t. And since women don’t have a non-sexual place to compare bits with other women (unlike men who see other penises all the time at urinals), the only place any of us are likely to see vaginas that don’t belong to us is in men’s magazines.
And when you’re unwittingly comparing your own lady garden to one that has been digitally altered, it’s no surprise that you may be left feeling…..self-conscious. Or even abnormal enough to make you take drastic measures to ‘fix’ yourself.
Top Comments
mjog ahugavert, takk
I had the surgery 10 days ago. I had it done due to a combination of physiological/psychological reasons. I had pondered getting the surgery for the last four years but decided to do it when I accidentally torn my labia minor during sport. I was in quite a bit of pain and uncomfortable for the first three days (Don't plan to do a thing those days) The next fours days I was back at work, it was a little uncomfortable to sit. Then on day seven, I felt fine again. I'm healing well, and I went for a run today.
I understand the pressures for women to get the surgery. In the end, the reason I got mine was the tearing (And the last one was quite bad)
The only person I spoke with about the surgery was my boyfriend said he didn't care (Not in a bad way but you know...) as long as I was happy. ANd he would be happyeither way.
I don't regret getting the surgery, I'm happy with the resulty so far.