What exactly is Cosmetic gynaecology about?
Gone are those days when women used to think in the lines of others, live upto the expectation of others, try to shape her mind and body according to the social standards only. The Gen X woman has attained the right to speak for them, to scoop out ‘Me Time’, to come out with their unspoken problems and seek treatment for the same.
It has been truly said that there is no strict criteria to define as to what should be regarded as the normal appearance of the external genitalia of women as there are various shapes and sizes of labia majora and minora which all can be taken as normal and women have been accepting this since ages. Many a time it has happened that a mother brought her teenage daughter with a unilateral large labial fold or labia minora to us seeking advice and we have turned her down saying “ it is normal .. nothing needs to be done”…. Completely ignoring the mental distress the young girl is going through regarding the cosmetically unpleasant body image. A woman may have a larger than normal size of labia majora which may lead to the appearance of a camel toe when she indulges in tight leggings… she might come for correction of those and it has been an age old policy on our part to completely disregard this as abnormal and directing her to wear loose clothing. We have seen girls with exceptionally large labia minora of both sides which impede their flexibility during running, jogging, dancing or even during brisk walking…. and we have ignored them as normal… even after knowing that it is not only of aesthetic concern but functionally disabling. If a girl is born with an extra bit of fat in her mons pubis it is not her fault and neither can she be forced to live with it announcing that to be normal. What is normal from aesthetic point of view of one might be abnormal from that of someone else. These may not always be designated under Gynecological problems in day to day life … yet they are.
With the surfacing and assertion of Cosmetic Gynecology as a subspecialty of gynecology, it is high time to accept these demands of women as there are cosmetic surgeries to correct them. Labia plasty ( minora plasty and majora plasty ) and mons plasty are the surgeries available to correct these asymmetries and hypertrophies of the labia. These are day care procedures can be done under regional anesthesia with minimal post-operative pain which can be easily controlled with oral medications. They do not require any removal of stiches as these are essentially cosmetic Gynecological surgeries. With the expanding vistas in cosmetic Gynecology, women are not to suffer in silence accepting what they got by birth but to remodel and reshape as they wish according to their own aesthetic standards.