Why All the Plastic Surgery on Girls' Sex Organs?
"I don't think it looks good."1 The national fixation with cosmetic surgery has found a new market: teenagers. Thanks to the rise in reality shows and the number of celebrities who openly talk about their enhancement, teens are joining the body modification trend.2 In 2014, nearly 64,000 teens opted in, and so, by proxy, did their parents, whose consent is required. Cosmetic surgeries on adolescents include rhinoplasty, otoplasty (ears), liposuction, breast augmentation or reduction for girls, and breast reduction for boys. The latest addition to the list is jarring.
Earlier this year, Time magazine reported a sharp uptick in genital plastic surgery on girls under age eighteen.3 This is not gender transition surgery, but a procedure designed to make one's lady parts more attractive to boys. Adolescent girls obsess about their appearance. The perceived scrutiny of others encompasses not only a girl's face and body shape, but also what has heretofore been hidden: her private parts. Taking their cue from the unrealistic images of porn, these girls are willing to go under the knife so that the boys who have sex with them will not mock them.
Overall, the demand for genital surgery is growing, particularly in Brazil. Emulating Barbie dolls, girls as young as nine have undergone the surgery.4 In the U.K., 156 girls under age fifteen had labiaplasty surgery in 2015-2016.
Risks
Pediatric and adolescent gynecologist Dr. Naomi Crouch observes that she has never seen a patient under fifteen who needed that kind of surgery. Even though it is not permitted by the NHS, it seems that some girls in the U.K. are able to get the surgery they want.5 Are they aware that genital surgery on healthy tissue bears risks? Most surgeries advertised on Instagram are not performed by a qualified plastic surgeon.6 Because her body may still be growing, the adolescent may "need" future surgeries to maintain the desired results. There is a possibility of scarring, infection, numbness, and even permanent loss of sexual function. Moreover, there is no clinical data on the safety of these procedures, let alone their long-term effects. Hardly a Barbie-doll outcome.
Professional & Legal Caution
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons cautions that if surgery is being contemplated for "purely aesthetic reasons," the patient should wait until she is eighteen or older. The patient, not her parents, must initiate the request. Even more pointedly, a report from the Committee on Adolescent Health of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that "surgical alteration of the labia that is not necessary to the health of the adolescent, is a violation of federal criminal law."7 The law in question bans female genital mutilation. How does the worldwide campaign against FGM done for religious and cultural reasons square with permissive approaches to excision of adolescent genital tissue for aesthetic reasons?
Cultural Currents
Cultural pressures drive this dangerous trend. Social networks are among the chief culprits spurring adolescents' desire for cosmetic surgery.8 Boys who visit social network sites with the same frequency as girls express the same desire to change their appearance as girls do.9 But unlike boys, who can try diet and exercise to add or lose weight and increase muscle mass, girls must resort to surgery to add curves or reduce breast size. Girls are thus much more likely to undergo painful or risky procedures for the sake of their appearance.
One-click internet porn intensifies teens' dissatisfaction with their looks. By the time they get to college, about 90 percent of males and nearly one-third of females have viewed porn.10 Adolescent girls compare themselves to the porn stars, whose bikini-waxed genitals present an unrealistically narrow picture of the range of normal and natural variation among female bodies. Adolescent boys can be cruel when their sex partner's body falls short of porn-star images.
Where Are the Parents?
Where, you may ask, are the parents, who should provide a wise counterbalance? Presumably, they pony up for the $2,800-4,000 cost of labiaplasty, which is not covered by insurance. Understandably, there are some kinds of plastic surgery that parents will readily consent to, such as surgery to correct their infant child's cleft palate. Some may approve surgery to "pin back" their son's large ears to stop merciless bullying.11 When their daughter hits puberty and remains flat-chested, they may even be willing to foot the bill for breast augmentation. These decisions relate to visible features that are often the object of bullying and shaming. But what is their rationale for consenting to genital surgery?
Parental approval of modification at a young age sets their daughter up for a lifetime of dissatisfaction. I wonder what else is wrong with me? Once cosmetic surgery on normal, healthy tissue has been accepted in principle, there is no clear place to draw the line. Breast implants and a nose job may be her next stepping stones on the path toward an idealized, but ultimately unrealizable, image of perfection that is itself captive to the latest whims and fads concerning physical desirability.
Christians & the Purposes of Medicine
Christians rightly wonder, Is this okay? But the more important question is, Why do you want to know? If the answer is, I hate my body, then serious issues are at stake. How did your daughter come to think that her body is unacceptable? Simultaneous obsession with and rejection of the body is a cultural given, but it is also a paradox. As Beth Felker Jones writes, this obsession with the human body is indicative of body worship, but "at a deeper level, we live in a profoundly anti-body culture."12
To exercise technological and surgical control of the body is to treat it as something separate from the self, as an object to be refashioned according to an aesthetic ideal. It also moves medicine away from its foundational purposes of treating disease and addressing pain. The correction of pathologies and disabling conditions is historically the central aspect of the physician's calling. To expand this calling to encompass purely aesthetic procedures reflects a significant transformation in medicine.
The traditional understanding that "the limits of the human are biologically fixed"13 is being subsumed by a project that treats the body as infinitely malleable. There seem to be no intrinsic moral limits to this project, as evidenced by the decline in stigmatization among plastic surgeons toward those who perform aesthetic labiaplasties.14 Contrast that with the theological understanding that our physical bodies—their shapes, structures, and myriad variations—as well as our limitations and finitude, are gifts, not mistakes.
One might claim that cosmetic surgery does address suffering. In fact, cosmetic surgeons may justify their practice "as a form of psychological healing," and therefore as a legitimate practice of medicine.15 But surgery may not be the best resolution for an adolescent suffering over the appearance of her genitalia. Parental intervention should come first. Shielding one's daughter from porn and limiting her use of social media are healthy protections. But the core responsibility is affirmation of her body as good, her physical characteristics as normal, and her precious value as female. Sons, too, should be shielded from toxic culture, trained to respect all women, and inspired to keep their hearts, their eyes, and their own bodies for one woman alone.
The task demands courage, persistence, and dependence upon God. In their daily, ordinary interactions, can Christians be a leading of example of what it means to have a body created by a good and great God? These responsibilities are relevant for all parents, but if Christians do not model them well, how then shall the rest of us live?
Paige Comstock Cunninghamis the Executive Director of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity in Deerfield, Illinois.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #45, Summer 2018 Copyright © 2026 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo45/bod-mod-fad
