Maybe it’s in the wake of #MeToo and #TimesUp – women want to reclaim their bodies, and their stories. “The hunger for this was fierce,” she recalls. That said, within a couple of weeks of putting a call out for volunteers, she had over 100 willing participants from all over the UK. “I hadn’t knelt before a woman with her legs spread before.” The idea that girls and young women think their vagina is ugly and want to change how it looks is just wrong, and sad Laura DodsworthĪlthough Laura admits to being nervous at the beginning. “Some people will be shocked by my images, but I think they form an educational purpose.” “I thought perhaps the rise in labiaplasty wouldn’t be happening if people understood more about what other women looked like,” she says. But it can be hard to find accurate information about this.” “The labia minora are usually first, and sometimes more prominent during the early stages. “The vulva takes many years to develop,” she says. She believes a cultural change amongst adolescents and young women, who now choose to remove or style the pubic hair, coupled with a lack of understanding about vulval anatomy, is fuelling the rise. And if it’s impacting your daily life, that’s when a gynecologist consultation is recommended.”ĭespite the expert assurance, Dr Athanasias believes labiaplasty is “on the rise.”ĭr Naomi Crouch, chair of the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology, has also noticed a “marked increase in girls and young women seeking labiaplasty” over the last few years.” The key is not concentrating on the size or shape but whether it affects your physical or emotional wellbeing. “Labia can be thin or thick, darker or lighter and sometimes longer on one side. “Studies have found that the labia majora (outer lips) length varies from approximately 6 to 12cm, and labia minora (inner lips) length varies from 2 to more than 10cm,” he explains. There’s also a misconception that the labia is supposed to be a certain length. “The idea that girls and young women think their vagina is ugly and want to change how it looks is just wrong, and sad.”Ĭonsultant gynecologist Dr Pandelis Athanasias says “there’s no such thing as a normal vagina – they naturally vary in size, shape or colour.” Later, a BBC report about girls as young as nine seeking labiaplasty – surgery that involves the lips of the vagina being shortened or reshaped – because they were distressed by its appearance, had Laura reaching for her camera again. The correct language and understanding of female genitalia is so important to me: the vulva is the whole external package, the vagina is a muscular tube which leads from the cervix (the neck of the womb) down to the vulva.” Shortly after, I came across a PDF health leaflet that disrespectfully referred to the vagina as ‘a front hole’. “I read a report about how 200 million girls and women around the world have suffered female genital mutilation (FGM), which angered and sickened me. In short: I’d have to confront the big stuff.” And although I’ve had pleasure, I’ve also experienced bad sex, traumatic birth and deep shame. You can’t go into a project where you interview women about their vulva, and not think about your own. I think a part of me was shying away from that intimacy because I would have to address my own related experiences. I also didn’t want to do it because I hadn’t faced myself in that way. “In my mind, I’d already covered women’s stories through breasts. At least, that’s what Laura set out to achieve. Now, her latest work puts vulvas and vaginas in the spotlight thanks to her new book Womanhood: The Bare Reality and forthcoming Channel 4 documentary: 100 Vaginas.Īnd when 100 women share intimate photos and deeply personal experiences relating to their vaginas, the result is a tender yet taboo-exploding message of women reclaiming their womanhood. In 2017, she focused her lens on penises to examine the concept of masculinity. The campaign reached its crowd-funding target of £10,900 in a day and featured powerful, untouched images and stories of anonymous participants aged 19 to 101. I first met Laura, a photographer from Surrey, in 2015 following her exploration of 100 women’s relationships with their breasts. We really need to talk about them because many women haven’t looked at their own. It’s so important for women to know what vulvas look like. But there’s a world of difference between how you see vulvas in porn – and how you see them in real life. “Where would you normally see another vulva?” photographer Laura Dodsworth asks me. Contains adult themes, explicit imagery and very strong language
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