Authors’ note: Not all women have vulvas and not all vulva owners are women. Where gendered language has been used in this article, it refers to direct quotes from sources, and does not express the views of Woroni or the author.  

A few months ago, I learned that the growth of the labia minora (the inner folds of the vulva closest to the clitoris) happens during puberty. Don’t laugh, but I had simply assumed that like belly buttons, people born with vulvas were born with a labia minora that either protruded beyond the labia majora (the outer folds), or one that doesn’t. Much earlier than the discovery of my anatomical ignorance, however, did I become aware of the societally held tenet that it was desirable to have an ‘innie’ vulva and embarrassing if not. I can’t remember when I first became aware of this belief, but the fact that the number of labiaplasty procedures performed worldwide increased by 73.3 percent between 2015 and 2019 affirms its grip on vulva-owners around the world.    

‘Labiaplasty’ is a cosmetic surgery that alters the appearance of the vulva. According to Dr Sofia Din, labiaplasty is most commonly performed on the labia minora “to create a ‘tucked in’ appearance.” While some people have labiaplasty for functional reasons, such as discomfort during physical activity or when wearing tight clothes, most vulva-owners who have surgery (over 68 percent in Australia)  are motivated by embarrassment or unhappiness with the way their vulva looks. But where do these sentiments come from? I think you’ll find most fingers pointing toward our dear friend, the porn industry. 

“With pornography,” body positivity activist Taryn Brumfitt expressed in an interview with Triple J, “there’s only one type of body”, and by extension only one type of vulva. This is to say that it must mirror the ‘tucked in’ appearance that most labiaplasty patients seek to replicate. Melinda Tankard-Reist, Co-editor of Big Porn Inc; Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry, claims that a “significant” factor contributing to anxiety and unhappiness over labia appearance is the influence of pornography, coupled with the increased popularity of Brazilian waxing. “Now that the labia have become more visible, women think there is something wrong with them, because they don’t look like the women in porn,” Tankard-Reist told Farrago Magazine. There have been numerous studies exploring how watching pornography can negatively impact people’s body image, but I wasn’t quite prepared to let all of the blame rest on porn. Sure, the industry is guilty of perpetuating these norms, but where do they come from?  

My recent epiphany about how the labia grows throughout puberty was, (paired with the discovery that labiaplasty is also commonly referred to as “vaginal rejuvenation,” yikes), contextually disturbing. I tried not to meditate too hard on how the standard of the “tucked in” vulva has probably both contributed to and derived from the sexualisation of children. There must be something else, I told myself. I desperately didn’t want to land on the conclusion that the main driver of the labiaplasty industries’ success was society’s underlying paedophilic perversions.  

Besides, according to my research, something wasn’t adding up. I braved the depths of Reddit and AskMen.com, sifting through anonymous submissions seeking to know whether people with larger labia could ever be considered sexually desirable, and I found an outpouring of responses affirming that larger labia are, get this, still sexy! Some commenters actually expressed a preference for larger labia, but most merely affirmed an overall sentiment of indifference. I also considered a study from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Good Samaritan Hospital, Cincinnati, on the desirability of different types of Vulvas (note: this research concerns male perceptions of desirability only). While a slight preference for smaller labia was recorded, the majority of respondents in this study also remained largely indifferent.  

Why, then, given this variety and indifference of preference, are so many people embarrassed by the appearance of their vulva? People form opinions on what they expect the average vulva to look like based on what they see depicted in pornography, as this is often the only exposure we have to naked bodies before we become sexually active. Subsequently, when we see genitals in real life that differ from the homogenised depictions we saw growing up – be it our own or someone else’s for the first time- we feel confused and become convinced that something is wrong with them. So, it all comes back to how vulvas are depicted in the media.  

Australia has always had an extremely contentious and complicated history of censuring the vulva and the female body in general. In an age of digitalised everything, a magazine from the corner store is no longer the way most people access porn. However, to this day, if you want to produce a pornographic magazine, the vulva must only appear as a single “healed crease” in order to comply with Australian censorship laws. The actual clause in the Australian Classification guidelines is as follows: 

“Realistic depictions [of naked bodies] may contain discreet genital detail but there should be no genital emphasis.” 

Which was somehow interpreted to mean that while the outer labia were fine, showing someone’s inner labia in porn was simply going too far. To comply with these guidelines, many magazines began using editing software to perform ‘digital labiaplasty’ on their models, and hence the expectation of a “tucked in” vulva as the norm was born.  

In a review of the Publications Classifications Guidelines in 1999, a spokeswoman for the Anti-Censorship Program, Kylie Potter, raised a pressing double standard. While the Australian Classification Board (then known as OFLC), maintains that the labia minora is “too explicit” to be allowed in soft porn publications, the board has been “unable” to explain why it is therefore okay to show an unadulterated image of a penis. Could this strict regulation of the vulva-bearing body, where the cis-male body is free to go unchecked, have anything to do with a desire to restrict only certain people’s bodily autonomy? At the very least, I’m calling j’accuse for the board’s role in perpetuating censorship practices whose double standards carry harmful implications for bodily regulation. 

So, there we have it. One day, someone simply decided that it was offensive to show a person’s inner labia in pornographic media publications, and managed to convince entire generations of impressionable, porn-consuming youngsters that a discreet “tucked in” vulva is the norm. In reality, studies suggest that around 56 percent of adult vulvas actually have inner labia that protrude beyond the labia majora; but if porn is the only exposure most people have to the naked human body until we become sexually active, how could anyone know?  Perhaps, then, the lack of representation of different body types in mainstream pornography is not a standalone issue, but one fuelled by porn’s status as our youth’s primary source of sexual education.  

These days there are many resources seeking to normalise and celebrate different types of vulvas, including Australian photographer Ellie Sedgwick’s Comfortable in My Skin and Netflix’s Sex Education campaign All Vulvas are Beautiful. As the show’s beloved character Aimee expresses, “Every vulva is unique and beautiful and deserves to be cherished.” So, from a policy level, it’s time to get rid of these archaic censorship laws which do nothing but prop up a multi-million-dollar cosmetic surgery industry and perpetuate double standards of bodily regulation. 

Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘Cum As You Are’

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