It was from a 20-year-old woman, asking me to refer her to a cosmetic surgeon for a cheap labiaplasty, because her boyfriend "didn't believe in her longer labia."

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because I really, sincerely hope none of you ever feel like this, ever go to that sort of headspace.

It's worth asking some questions with situations like this, like:

• If she "didn't believe in" the size or shape of her parner's penis, would he have a half-inch sliced off of it?

• Wha would even compel a partner to SAY something so incredibly stupid, uninformed and hurtful? And when one does -- thankfully, that actually doesn't seem to happen often -- why isn't the FIRST assumptiion about what's wrong with that partner it's said to that her partner is a jerk that needs dumping and a handful of clue, not that she needs to be fixed?

• Why does self-respect and self-worth so often take second place to someone else's wants or impressions?

• If her best friend said she didn't like her nose, would she consider a nose job for her best friend's likes? If not, what's the difference with the boyfriend?

• Why is it, that her health, her sexual pleasure -- the inner labia have nerve endings that enhance sexual commfort and sensation ( and protection from infection which the inner labia provide) -- her own love of her body as-is, her finances all come immediately second to one partner voicing a ridiculous opinion? If her next partner wants the labia longer, what will she do then? If this partner, seeing she'll hack away at her body to please him, next voices he wants her breasts or thighs smaller, will she hop on over to get those surgeries too?

• Why is the response to being treated like an object not an objection to that treatment, but an attempt to better become an object?

• As a curiosity, if women could see other normal women's genitals in passing all the time as men do in bathroom stalls, do you think things would be any different in this regard?

• And if you'll allow me one of many moments I have in a day like this, why do women keep falling prey to this stuff?

What would YOU do in this situation? How might you feel, about that partner, about yourself? How would you process and reconcile those feelings? What action might you take?

What might YOU tell someone in this situation?

As for what I'd say in the situation, I'd probably laugh at him and ask if, as stated, he'd like to "have a half-inch sliced off" of his penis at the same time. I find it hard to believe he had the gall to ask such a thing. (Keeping in mind the nerve damage such surgery would do, he must think he was really great if he could make up for that loss sexually!) Then again, I once had a guy ask me "what that weird thing was", that "weird thing" being my cervix! But really, what societal influence makes people feel the "need" for labiaplasty?

I agree that more women would feel okay with their own genitalia if they were to see other women's more often. Plastic surgery in general just seems like a neverending cycle to me: I think if people were to be more in touch with their bodies through exercise and cooking tasty, nutritious meals, they could appreciate their bodies more. (What especially blows my mind is when some people will run to a plastic surgeon and drop a lot of money for liposuction, but don't consider working out.)

It makes me really sad that this woman thinks this way: I just hope she dumps the jerk and changes her body image (and dating) standards.

Why do male partners say idiotic and hurtful things? -I'd guess because all humans occasionally do.

And why are we so vulnerable to that sort of thing? -I'd think it has to do with lack of knowledge and proper discussion.

Everyone wants to be attractive, to cause love and interest and whatnot in people around them. To be accepted by peers and lusted after by cute members of relevant gender.

People *are* vulnerable to critique from friends -dunno about nosejob, but how many girls diet because their friends do, or their girl magazines and girl fashions demand it?

Mixing in sex makes it yet worse, of course -our partner is who we desire so if they don't desire us it feels pretty bad as rejections go. Especially if we feel it's through some fault of ours.

Media images of women are completely unrealistic and modelled to make us always strive for better. We're very conditioned by the beauty industry to believe we're not good enough, ergo likely to believe it when someone, such as male, says so.

A lot of people, both men and women, are not at all aware of the sexism in the culture. They also often don't have a clue as to how a normal woman's body is supposed to work. Girls tend to think they're inadequate somehow, and boys who learn from tv that period blood is blue, can be shocked when confronted with girl reality. We're not much like the media ideal, so I guess it makes sense they'd think there's something wrong with this particular chick. If you've only ever seen labia photoshopped tiny and pink, thinking that different look is abnormal is in fact perfectly logical.

Should both women and men be aware of normal function and variety available in human bodies, we'd not have a prob. But the way "girls work" and especially the sticky and "gross" bits are not often talked of.

Even if one is armed with biological facts, there's the prob that attraction is not a fact. It just happens, one finds some people gorgeous and others not, tastes vary wildly. So no matter how hard one tries, there's never any guarantee that one will be pleasing to the person one wants.

And again for reasons of screwed-up culture, attractiveness is considered more important in a female than a male. We are conditioned to think that if we're not, we're failures in every way, and that we are not. No wonder self-esteem takes second place to some guy's opinion.

The thing to do about this is to complain, explain, analyse and try to resist the brainwash. Which of course can be difficult, since acting like a pissed-off feminist is by many understood to be ...unattractive.

That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads people into believing they should be "fixed" somehow. The standard of how people ought to look is so high that neither men nor women can attain it as easily as it seems. Women seem to believe all this mumbo jumbo more than men do, but I don't know why.

I'm usually a very self-confident person, but sometimes a small comment from whoever/whatever can reduce me into a pile of mush, ready to believe whatever crapola they have to say about me. I can't figure out what triggers that change, only that when it happens, I feel bad. Until I remind myself that it's their problem, not mine. You're not happy with the width of my nostrils? Too bad.

If anyone told me they didn't "believe in" my ________ and that I should change it, be it lips, earlobes, toes, labia or 2nd eyelash from the left on my right eye, I'd say I didn't "believe in" the fact that the relationship, friendship, whatever, was going to continue. Finito! And goodbye. I'm fine as I am, if you don't think I'm good enough, you might want to take a minute and realize it's your expectations that are messed up. Not me.

And yeah, I think that if women saw other women's genitals more often, they'd have a better expectation of what human women's genitals look like. Porn is edited, photos are edited. People don't need to start editing themselves too. And if they see that actual people are not all built the same (and really, why should they be?) then maybe they'll understand that it's ok to be exactly as you are.

Personally, I think cosmetic surgery is the last thing you wanna cheap out on. Just ask Tara Reid's nipple scars. If you're gonna undergo plastic surgery, you're going to want a doctor who can explain the risks, the procedures, show you actual before/after photos of his/her work and give you some dang good credentials.

In other news, i think it's a sad day for society when women clamor to have their genitals sheared off.

I figure it was more rhetorical than anything, but I have an answer, it's the same for men too...of course :

the desire to feel loved

common sense, self-worth, communication skills, these things mean nothing in the face of that overwhelming NEED to feel loved.

I think I understand the woman's mentality : "if I get this thing done that he wants me to do he'll want to be with me/spend time with me/love me/...appreciate me"

What I would I tell someone in this situation...heck...a toughie...hmm..."define your goal"...this woman needs self esteem bolstering, and to dump her boyfriend...if she respected herself she'd walk, no question in my mind, a boyfriend capable of saying such a thing needs dumping, pronto...I'd go with :

"he's no good, he doesn't respect you, get rid of him"

no half measures, she needs to see that he is the real problem, otherwise she remains a doormat.

She doesn't believe that she's OK, if she did she'd reject him. Her problem is her feeling that she has a problem, and that's her only problem.

If I was in that specific situation, as you may have gathered, I'd end the relationship immediately. Easy for me to say that, I know I'm OK. I'd not bother with discussion, or any kind of in depth explanation, he's a jerk, he deserves complete rejection and deep down he probably knows it.

Maybe the best thing she could do in the short term is tell someone else close to her. Heck, tell anyone! He totally lost privacy rights the moment he said what he said.

My Gf ( yes she know i am saying this... ) has ONE labia minor lip, a bi more enlarged than the other.... i find that kind of sexxy to be honest... it difers her from other women who are.. well.. SEEMINGLY alike....

girls and women reading this... as stated in the articles in this forum .. sex, and lovemaking is about YOU and your partner.. NOT about your partner alone.... we are all humans in here... and humans ARE different...if not.. then we are all... clones.. and who the hack wanna be a copy of something else??? :P

I can't believe it! Actually, I can... sadly. Some partners just seem to want their partners to be they way they want, not the way they really are, and that is really hurtful. Whether is changing your body, they way you dress, the way you act... and we keep on falling for it? It's hard to say why, maybe the so-called *love* we feel for them blinds us, and we try to do things that will please them.

The important thing is to know when to pull the plug and say no. Each person is different, and that's the beauty of it! If a partner can't understand that about you, there's no point in keeping that relationship. No one has the right to make you feel insecure, if they do, they don't appreciate you for who you really are.

Love,
Leni

I was thinking about this recently, however, and started to wonder what this woman's peers had told her about her body throughout her life. I recall that when I was in high school many of my female peers would react with utter horror if I so much as refused to remove leg hair-- even going to the extreme one time, of trying to forcibly remove the hair for me with a self-styled "waxing" strip made from sticky tape. And these people were supposed to be my friends.

In no way to I mean to take any responsibility away from the man in this instance-- it is disgusting that he asked his girlfriend to do this, and he has full responsibility for that. However, it does strike me that horrible comments like that could lose a lot of their potence if young women grew up in an environment in which their peers did not try to exert control over their bodies-- an environment in which, instead, peers accepted and supported them.

I mean, we can't just adopt the attitude that no-one's allowed to criticize us about anything. My singing teacher tells me all the time what I need to improve, sheesh, I pay her to do so. My best friends are allowed and indeed encouraged to point it out if they feel that I'm not listening enough or whatever. Wanting to please those around us, live up to the standards of the people who truly *do* care about us, is not just normal but rather a good thing.

The difficulty is in distinguishing a/ whether the person truly cares about us and b/ whether they're right about their recommendations. I mean, my mother's always pestered me to do more exercise and to eat better -but why? Because she wanted me healthy. Had she wanted me pretty according to some inane standard, she'd have been wrong.

It possible that someone suggesting another's improvement is doing it altruistically and is right too (though that's not the case with the labioplasty guy!!). It's also possible that they mean well but are misguided about what's good for us.

I've had most ridiculous suggestions for "self-improvement" from various males, and upon discussing the matter it turned out that they, being a bit ill-informed as to what girls really are like, actually meant well. Up to and including the one who thought I had bad self-esteem because I preferred cargo pants to miniskirts. Once when I got it through that this was not a case of me feeling that my body was "not pretty enough for display" but instead that I found said pants practical, and found myself quite pretty in them, and did not feel the need to "display" to random passers-by anyway, he ended up admiring my attitude.

So I find the problem is not so much that males or anyone else is mean. They may not have had the chance to unlearn the insane societal standards pressed upon us all.

Then there's the case when they may simply prefer a woman who's like this or that, who wears skirts or is blonde or whatever. This may not be societal standard but a genuine preference. We all have those.

We can drive ourselves insane bending over backwards to fit one guy or another's standard of perfect woman. Or we can realize that we are a person first, and being found utterly unattractive by someone is not the end of the world. It's not the assumption that women should be cut or shaved or what freaking ever (seems to change every month), in order to be generically attractive, that's the worst of all. The worst is that society manages to condition us to believe that being attractive is a woman's foremost duty and if she fails in that, she's failed as a person. NOT TRUE!

Plnety of us very well may (for instance, I do), but just not view them as problematic. I've had the labia I have for 35 years now, and have been sexually active with all types, genders and ages of partners for more than 20 of those years and have never experienced my labia as in any way problematic, nor have never had a partner who didn't enjoy them as they are.

Perhaps the problem for you isn't your labia, but your perspective, and the partners you are choosing's utter ignorance about the female anatomy.

so, i'm tryi n to decipher what you said, but lemme see if this is right. He said your vulva looked like roast beef? But he was okay with it. Well, if someone told me I looked like roast beef, I'd be a bit uneasy too.

But the point is, the vulva is what it is, and it can look like a lot of things. If it's a little wrinkly, stretchy, hairy, or whatever, that's OK, that's what a vulva is supposed to look like.

But oyur problem is you don't feel like your boyfriend is sexually attracted to you. That might just be a passing phase. People's libidos come and go. But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. There is probably some underlying problem in your relationship since it seems you and he are totally unable to communicate with each other about your mutual needs. You are not diseased just because he doesn't want sex. Moreover, you should not rely on someone else to make you feel sex. you are YOU, and you can feel sexy if you want to. Don't let a guy define your sexiness.

There is no pill to help you down there since you don't need any help down there. You are normal. You are sexy and you are putting too much stck into what comeone else thinks. Stand up for yourself.

I don't believe in those two people's heads.

------------------
You catch more flies with manure than you do with honey.

it stupid casue he's like oh its an ok pussy but i just dont feel comfortable but he has before or at least tried so y stop all of a sudden? he didnt touch me that much before but was willing to and stuff and now he's cold. i said then stop saving pics of soem girls showing more of their stuff on ur comp - how ironic, mean and dumb is that. >_< mean of me but he said nothing to that..its stupid tho...im confused and still tyring to tlak wiht him. un comfortable blah balh - u did before so y stop and then y other girls - we were happy til he stopped ..then i nagged him a bit then stopped for awhile and now asking him again so i dont know whats goign on but its annoying. i try to confront him nicely and stuff and ya...he confuses me..esp from before and now. U said it might pass - that statement so i beleive cause of that and thinking...it might =D til he's willing to touch me again =S

I like my labia the way it is too.