One of the impacts of working one-on-one with POSAs, or partners of "sex addicts" is that not much about extreme sexual (mis)behavior shocks me very much any more. That's not to say I don't find it heartbreaking each time I hear about it from clients; I most certainly do. But I'm not that often surprised.
Imagine, then, that an article on sexuality in The New York Times should leave me so astounded. Here's the title of the article from yesterday's paper:
More Teenage Girls Seeking Genital Cosmetic Surgery
For those who may not know (and I envy you), genital cosmetic surgery is also called vaginal rejuvenation surgery, a procedure that some women have sought to tighten vaginal muscles and reshape their labia after having children. From an acquaintance who has had this procedure performed, she shared with me that it is extremely painful, a fact downplayed by many surgeons who perform it.
This article, however, isn't addressing the elective surgical preferences of mature women. It is talking about surgical requests of girls 18 and under.
Let's let that sink in for a moment.
"....gynecologists who care for teenage girls say they receive requests every week from patients who want surgery to trim their labia minora, mostly for cosmetic reasons..."
And lest we think that this is a rare occurrence, the article goes on to state:
"The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says that 400 girls 18 and younger had labiaplasty last year, an 80 percent increase from the 222 girls who had cosmetic genital surgery in 2014. While the overall numbers remain small, the data probably understates the trend because it does not include procedures performed by gynecologists. A 2013 British report found the number of labial reductions on girls and women done by the National Health Service had increased fivefold over 10 years.
Girls 18 and younger account for less than 2 percent of all cosmetic operations, but almost 5 percent of all labiaplasties.
(bold font added by PoSARC)
If you are still with me after reading those numbers, read on to the next part, where the writer of this article starts exiting the reality zone. Having been with a sex addict for over a decade, I know something about this zone.
They write:
"What's driving the trend for labia surgery? Well, for one, doctors say, many young girls shave or wax their pubic hair, exposing the genital area. According to a 2012 study, more than 70 percent of girls and young women ages 12 to 20 said they routinely shaved or waxed the pubic area."
I find myself wondering if the writer is now going to mention the impetus for teen girls shaving or waxing their pubic hair in the first place?
Uh....no.
Any further elaboration on the rather disturbing statistic that 12 year olds are waxing their pubic hair?
No.
Really?
Well, maybe the author will make that point later.
"As for why there has been an increase in demand for the surgery among teenagers, physicians are "sort of baffled," said Dr. Julie Strickland, the chairwoman of A.C.O.G.'s committee on adolescent health care."
Physicians are sort of baffled? Seriously?
Ok, I can almost overlook that level of naivete. Doctors are always busy studying, right?
But what about the writer interviewing them? One would think the writer would have done some field research, maybe even interviewed a few of the girls who have had the procedure done and asked them what motivated them. I'm quite sure they wouldn't have responded that waxing is the culprit.
I'm sure our PoSARC readers could offer them a clue or two here about what might drive young teens and women to make such insane choices.
"These girls have come of age at a time when they can go online and look up images of the vulva, doctors say."
Look up images of the vulva!
What, like we did as kids with the Encyclopedia Brittanica sneaking peeks at the celluloid transparencies of human anatomy?
Is the author actually suggesting that girls are researching medical images of vulvas to learn more about their own? How positively quaint.
My apologies ahead of time if the writer lives on an island in the widest part of the ocean and has no way of connecting these dots, but.... I think this would be a fine insertion point for the writer to mention the impact of the massive pornography epidemic and its effects on teens, don't you?
Maybe even say a word or two about the tremendous pressure that teen girls are under to compete for the male gaze, increasingly difficult since statistics readily demonstrate that nowadays, most boys and young men prefer self-stimulating using online pornography.
All too often, teen boys don't even want to bother getting to know the girls that, at their age, they should be noticing as part of normal social/sexual development. And in case anyone thinks I am overstating the case, doing research on pornography use in young people has become all but impossible because finding a control group that doesn't use pornography has proven largely futile.
The article goes on to say that a new committee formed in response to this baffling increase in teen girls asking for vaginal rejuvenation surgery, feels that "....doctors should screen patients for body dysmorphic disorder, a psychiatric disorder that can be debilitating and involves being obsessed or preoccupied with a physical defect that is being imagined or exaggerated."
Interesting that girls are being pathologized for being obsessed and preoccupied with imagined defects. If the pornographic videos the boys are viewing almost unilaterally portray vaginas that look pubescent, how exactly are our girls imagining or exaggerating anything?
Most heartbreaking of all to consider, what if girls' experiences consistently mirror back to them that they're not actually attractive enough to capture the interest of the boys they like, because no matter what they do, boys don't seem all that interested.
This is the first generation where, as Dr. Gail Dines puts it:
"Girls now have two choices-- they can either be f--kable or they can be invisible. If you're an adolescent girl that choice becomes pretty clear. No one wants to be invisible."
Thank you, pornographers.
And, referring back to the New York Times article, while it would be irresponsible of us to minimize the seriousness of body dysmorphia as a mental health condition, why is nobody in this article talking about how girls develop dysmorphia in the first place?
Who and what is teaching them that it's far superior to be called "hot" than to be considered smart?
Perhaps psychiatrists should spend more time studying the pathology behind young males' obsession and preoccupation for seeking out mediated sexual imagery. The phenomena of girls stopping at nothing to achieve acceptability and boys gorging themselves on online pornography are inextricably linked and to pretend otherwise is misinformed, at best, and dangerous at worst.
Where is the moral imperative to hold accountable a porn-apologist society for these consequences, for the absolute tragedy that 400 American girls willingly mutilated their genitals last year?
My sincerest hope is that for our clearly uninformed public (including journalists) who still overwhelmingly believe pornography is a harmless past time with no discernible power to influence, that this article shocks them wide awake.
To read the article in it's entirety:
More Teenage Girls Seeking Genital Cosmetic Surgery
What comes up for you as you read this? Please share your thoughts, opinions, suggestions or outrage in the Comments box below:
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