“Why Don’t I Look Like That?”
A woman sat in my office and said something that stopped me cold.
Doc, I think my vulva is ugly.
Not abnormal.
Not painful.
Not causing symptoms.
Ugly.
I asked her why she felt that way.
She pulled out her phone.
Photo after photo after photo.
Images she had saved for years.
Images she had compared herself to for years.
Then she asked the question.
Why don’t I look like that?
I looked at the photos.
Then I asked her a different question.
Who told you that’s what you’re supposed to look like?
Silence.
A long silence.
Then she laughed.
So you’re telling me I’ve been comparing myself to someone else’s labia?
Pretty much.
What struck me was not her question.
It was that she had lived in her body for more than 50 years and was still convinced there was something wrong with her anatomy.
She wasn’t a teenager.
She wasn’t scrolling social media all day.
She was a successful professional.
A wife.
A mother.
A woman who had spent decades living in her body.
Yet she sat in my office wondering if she was normal.
Many women have never seen a normal range of vulvar anatomy.
They’ve seen pornography.
They’ve seen filtered images.
They’ve seen surgically altered anatomy.
They’ve seen carefully selected anatomy.
But they haven’t seen reality.
Research from The Eve Appeal found that 47% of women did not know the difference between a vulva and a vagina.
Yet many of those same women are trying to decide whether their anatomy is normal.
As a cosmetic gynecologist, I’ve examined thousands of women over more than 20 years.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that normal is far broader than most women have ever been shown.
I’ve seen long labia.
Short labia.
Asymmetrical labia.
Prominent clitoral hoods.
Full labia majora.
Minimal labia majora.
And do you know what I almost never see?
Two vulvas that look exactly alike.
Normal comes in far more varieties than most women have ever been shown.
We would never expect every nose to look the same.
Or every ear.
Or every breast.
Yet somehow women have been taught that there is one correct way for a vulva to look.
There isn’t.
There never was.
Human anatomy was never designed for copy and paste perfection.
Now let me be clear.
Some women are excellent candidates for labiaplasty.
Some experience discomfort.
Some have functional concerns.
Some simply want a change for themselves.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But every conversation about surgery should begin with education.
Not comparison.
Because you cannot make an informed decision about your anatomy if you’ve only been shown one version of it.
The biggest myth I see isn’t that women have concerns about their vulva.
The biggest myth is that there is a single version of normal.
There isn’t.
The problem isn’t that women are looking.
The problem is that they’ve been taught to mistake difference for a defect.
And that’s a lesson women have been carrying for far too long.