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June 26, 2005

Plastic Surgery For Your Vagina, Are You Serious? (A HUGE Plastic Surgery Update)

Tummy tucks, facelifts and breast augmentations all have their devotees, but a growing number of women are now also having cosmetic surgery on their genitalia.

It has become the hottest trend in just a few short years, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and other sources.

In Canada and the United States, dozens of clinics that offer these surgeries have recently popped up, attracting thousands of clients from around the world.

A handful of companies have signed licensing agreements this year with a California-based physician credited with popularizing cosmetic applications of the surgery, once applied only in dire medical situations, to use his scheme to market designer vaginas in Asia.

And, doctors in France, Sweden, Indonesia, Chile, Australia and the Dominican Republic have started to nip and tuck in this area too.

The most popular surgeries, according to doctors, are tightening the vagina to enhance a woman's sexual gratification, sculpting and cutting sagging or long labia, injecting fat into labia, and re-constructing hymens, primarily for women with a cultural interest in marrying as virgins.

"I've been doing it for four or five years already, but business is suddenly getting much busier," said Roy Jackson, a Vancouver obstetrician and gynecologist who specializes in vaginal and vulvar cosmetic procedures.

The first patients to undergo such procedures were actually being treated for incontinence or complications arising from giving birth. Some returned afterwards cooing that their sex life had improved significantly, Los Angeles-based doctor David Matlock told AFP.

Through word of mouth and some minimal advertising a few years ago, he suddenly became inundated with requests from women for tighter vaginal passages. Other women came in with porn magazines, asking for surgery to make their genitalia look like those pictured, he said.

Since, a range of women from teenage girls to grandmothers, from homemakers to lawyers, have been treated, doctors said.

"I didn't like the way my vagina looked or the way it made me feel," said a 21-year-old college student who asked not to be named and who had her inner labia trimmed six weeks ago. "You see all these girls in Playboy (magazine) and mine didn't really look like that."

Since, she claimed to be "more confident" and "so happy" and her mother later underwent surgery too.

"It's not out there for the world to see, but it's something that deals with my inner being," she said.

Leroy Young, co-chair of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons' emerging trends committee, however, cautioned that vaginal cosmetic surgeries are not without risk.

"Matlock has sort of franchised this like McDonald's (restaurants) at the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute and marketed it as an adjunct to improve your sex life instead of as a gynecological procedure for the repair of a problem, but they don't say much about the downside," he said, adding that the use of the term "laser" is a gimmick. "All you're doing with it is making an incision."

He warned of wound healing problems, painful scars, nerve injuries that could result in less sensation, and even constrictions that might prevent future intercourse. And, like any surgery, bleeding, damage to other organs and complications resulting from anesthetics could occur.

"Someone considering this should also decide, are they doing this for themselves or trying to salvage a bad relationship and make a boyfriend or husband happier. Most gynecologists will tell you that you don't need this," Young said, critical of the upswing in these surgeries.

He noted that societal pressures on women to feel "normal" or "beautiful" are misplaced -- particularly in this area -- because female genital anatomy varies greatly.

Posted by sergeg at June 26, 2005 06:22 PM

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