Porn is
the likely culprit in the alarming increase in surgeries
When Maya
Bernstein, 18, first became sexually active in high school, she was nervous.
How would she know what to do? “But my friends were like, ‘Oh just watch porn
and you’ll learn how to do everything,” the New York City high school senior
recalls.
By
college, a third of women and 90% of men have viewed porn, which some experts
say has become a main source of sex ed for millions of American teens. “A lot
of girls watch porn to learn how to have sex,” Bernstein said. “What they see
there influences the way things should go, and how they think things should
look.”
Especially,
it seems, how things should look. Between 2014 and 2015, there was an 80%
increase in the number of girls 18 and younger receiving genital plastic
surgery, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The
numbers shot up so quickly that the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists (ACOG) issued new guidelines this month for doctors who perform
labial and breast surgery. Among the recommendations: physicians are now
encouraged to screen girls for body dysmorphic disorder, an obsession with an
imagined or slight defect in appearance.
While the
rise in requests for labiaplasty remains relatively small—with an increase from
220 to 400 girls overall—the data suggest more girls are becoming ashamed of
the most intimate parts of their bodies. And the increase in this procedure is
part of a larger boost in cosmetic surgery for teens. More than 8,000 teen
girls received augmentation breast surgery in 2014, nearly double the number
from just four years earlier, according to the American Society of Plastic
Surgeons, which officially recommend girls wait until they are 18 to go under
the knife.
Some
doctors say girls want genital surgery to alleviate physical irritation in that
area, but Dr. Julie Strickland, chair of the ACOG’s Committee on Adolescent
Health Care, said doctors were “kind of baffled” by the surge. But the only
thing “baffling” here is widespread ignorance of porn’s impact on girls’ sexual
confidence —and its likely role as a culprit in the alarming increase in
surgeries.
When girls
watch porn, they see an idealized version of female genitals on display. Just
as magazines teach girls they have to be skinny to be considered attractive,
porn teaches girls that to be sexy their genitals must look a certain way.
“There’s an unspoken standard that there is something people want,” said Nancy
Martinez, 22, a college senior. “There is even a beauty standard for labia.”
“When
girls watch pornography, they see a very limited range of what other people’s
bodies look like,” said Dr. Emily Nagoski, author of Come As You Are: The
Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life and Director of
Wellness at Smith College. “That’s happening in the absence of any education
from their parents, or any sort of positive [messages] from their parents about
the shape of their vulvas.”
Meanwhile,
boys who use porn to learn about female genitals may recoil when they actually
encounter them in real life, damaging a girl’s sexual self-worth. Not
surprisingly, many girls come to believe there is something wrong with their
bodies. Some seek surgical correction. “Girls are worried about feeling
rejected or ashamed,” Martinez said.
Long
before they know what porn even is, girls hear confusing messages about their
genitalia. On the one hand, they live in a culture oversaturated by sex – girls
see thousands of references to sex each year on television, and girls on screen
are four times more likely to be portrayed in a sexual manner than boy
characters. Yet many girls are taught to believe that female genitalia is
“dirty and dangerous and disgusting,” says Nagoski. Parents often teach boys
the correct terms for their genitals, yet neglect to do the same for girls.
For boys,
genitals – their size, and their fitness — are a source of pride. For girls,
genitals, and the things they do (remember hiding that tampon up your sleeve as
you snuck out to the bathroom during class) are a secret. And secrets
invariably become a source of shame.
Many
girls avoid looking at their genitals at all. A video called “Women See Their
Vagina For The First Time” has over 4 million views on YouTube. In it, adult
women explain why they refused to lay eyes on their vulvas. One young woman
says, “the first time a guy went down there, he told me it was hideous, and
that it was disgusting and that he never wanted to see me again.” Another says,
“I don’t think it looks good,” while another adds, “I’m afraid it’s going to be
ugly.”
Over 70%
of girls ages 12-20 now waxing or shaving their pubic hair—a phenomenon
attributed largely to porn, where female genitals are hairless. The trend in
hair removal, writes Peggy Orenstein, author of the new book Girls and Sex, is
a sign that women have “opened our most intimate parts to unprecedented
scrutiny, evaluation, commodification.”
But this
“cosmetic” procedure can do much more than change appearance; labiaplasty, as
it is known, can cause loss of sexual sensation, numbness, pain or scarring.
That girls would risk the loss of their own sexual pleasure in to appear
attractive to others doesn’t surprise Deborah Tolman, professor of psychology
at the City University of New York, whose research has found that girls
regularly ignore their own sexual needs in favor of (often male) partners.
Girls,
she says, “are still focused on sex being for someone else’s pleasure, and not
for themselves and what they want, and how they feel. It’s about what they
think someone else thinks they should be like in order to be wanted, as opposed
to focusing on their own wanting, or the lack thereof.”
In other
words, the pressure to be a “good girl” doesn’t evaporate when a girl lies
down. The same unwritten rules are in play on the horizontal: put others’ needs
before yours, be liked, be nice, and don’t make people mad. “They worry about
doing it well, doing it right, and doing it in a way that’s pleasing for the
other person,” Tolman says. That’s why, as Orenstein reports in her new book,
Girls and Sex, one in three girls ages 15-18 have given oral sex to avoid
having intercourse, and as many as 70% of girls fake orgasms.
As if
girls didn’t have enough to be self-critical about— a study last year found
that 80% of girls have dieted by age 8— they can now add female genitals to the
list. “It used to be there were parts of girls’ bodies that were not exposed to
public opinion,” Nagoski says. “There’s hardly any body part left that girls
are allowed to be not critical of.”
Rachel Simmons is the author of The Curse of
the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence.
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