"I do not know where I got the idea that my vulva was not pretty enough, it did not look good", admits Anna, a Briton whose name is actually another, who wanted to get a labioplasty at the age of 14.
"I think I wanted it to be smaller", She told the BBC.
"People around me watched porn", said the teenager. Perhaps influenced by these images, "I got the idea that it should be symmetrical and should not stand out".
"I thought everybody looked like that, because until then I had never seen normal and ordinary images of that area".
Anna says she considered undergoing the operation because "I did not want to be different, to be abnormal. And I really thought that my body was different from other people".
"I remember looking at magazines and seeing that there were different options for surgery. And then I thought, ah, if there are different options for this then clearly I'm not the only one who wants to operate".
"And I remember thinking that it should not be that bad: you cut aside so they look the same and symmetrical, then you take a lot of painkillers and that's it".
The perspective at 20
In the end, Anna, who is now in her twenties, decided not to operate.
"Over the years I stopped worrying so much about my physical appearance and realized that there are many versions of what is normal".
"Now that I can see it from the perspective of time, I'm glad I did not have surgery because I did not need it!" I'm totally normal. "Completely and absolutely normal", She said in an incredulous tone.
International experts unanimously discourage labiaplasties in minors because the body of girls and adolescents is still developing.
But in several countries, the number of operations for girls under 18 has grown in recent years, as BBC World reported a few months ago in a special report.
In 2015-2016 more than 200 girls underwent a labioplasty through the NHS, the UK public health service, 150 of them under 15 years.
In the United States, 560 under 18 years of age did so in 2016, according to data released to BBC World by the Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery of the United States.
Experts say that the images of vulvae that young women can find on the internet are often retouched and do not represent the normal variety of shape, color, size and asymmetry that exists in reality.
The referent is pornography
The BBC spoke with three teenage girls from a school in England about the expectations that are formed today on the appearance of the body.
They all agree on the pressure they feel when compared to the stylized images of social networks.
"A few weeks ago there was something about snapchat that said, "There are four types of vulva", and they categorized them into a few sections. And then you think, oh, and what if you do not fit into those categories?".
"The boys have a certain image of the girls and believe that you have to work hard to achieve that image", says one of the high school students.
The BBC asked them if they were concerned about the impact that the consumption of pornography among the boys has on the expectations that are created around the body of the woman.
"It's not realistic, they have fake breasts or operations... and then when a couple starts having sex, you think your body should look like this", said another young woman.
Girls admit that there are certain "expectations" about female genitalia, "like there should not be pubic hair, that you should shave", another said.
"There is a perception that pubic hair is something dirty", all three agree.
A few months ago BBC Mundo spoke with the spokeswoman of the Spanish Society for Plastic Surgery, Repair and Aesthetics, Dr. Ainhoa Placer Lainez, who in effect said that the growing trend towards integral hair removal makes everything more exposed in the genital area and See details about the aspect that previously went unnoticed.
FUENTE: BBC
