Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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Gross anatomy???!!! yeah definitely FUCK YOU CBS!! and to broadcast this in the absence of real sex information is double shitty. Sounds like she has a clinical need to reduce her labia though  if sitting is uncomfortable. Testicles aren't sat on :) (the thought of that makes my eyes water :) ha ha  The consultation did seem more like a beauty consultation where the clinician will never say you really need nothing but acceptance of a beautiful labia. Or 'sure I'll book you to see the surgeon but from this surgeon I have a free ticket to give you to see the stateside 3D print of the great wall of Vulva before your 1st consultation with them" 
That would be proper considerate service.

I'm afraid to say it's also been featured on a medical programme here in England (named 'Embarrassing Bodies' - y'know, people who are too embarrassed to see their doctor about a problem so they go on a national tv programme instead. Yeah).

A girl saw one of the doctors complaining that she didn't like how her labia looked and that she has to hold them apart when her boyfriend first penetrates her. She also mentioned discomfort, but the cynic in me thinks some girls might say this to get the procedure done. I have large inner labia (bigger than the girl in question on the English show. Hers didn't look especially long at all to me) and never, ever, ever have I experienced any kind of discomfort or pain from them.

Anyway the girl dropped her knickers, revealed her perfectly normal vulva and the doctor agreed that yes, they perhaps were a bit long and some simple surgery would sort that out. Now, I know programmes like this are heavily edited, but I really wish they'd shown her teling the girl that longer inner labia aren't abnormal and that vulvas are all different, and also explaining the dangers and seriousness of surgery. The show was on in the evening and for any young girls watching, all they'd have seen was a doctor agreeing with a teenage girl that her labia were too long and that she should have surgery. Imagine the insecurities that could have created in any girl watching, who knew she had labia like that. They then proceeded to show the surgery taking place and suffice to say, I could have cried and thrown the television out of the window - I was saddened and royally pissed off.

After suffering throughout the first 36 years of my life with an imagined genital deformity due to my long inner long, this issue hits close to home. I believed I'd stretched my inner lips from too much childhood masturbation. Watching this TV show made me furious. How dare those so-called professionals prey on young sexually uninformed girls by supporting their fears just to promote surgery for profit. Shame on Dr. Laura Berman and CBS. Money talks while the Truth walks.

When we make women insecure about their vulva, we are on the road to insidiously supporting more violent and aggressive forms for FGM.  Shame on this show!  Sick to my stomach right now...

I've just watched the clip from The Doctors (it wasn't loading when I made my first post). Did that doctor really just call large labia an "anatomical abnormality?". Isn't this type of thinking the very thing we're trying to abolish? :(

Well, perhaps the woman in question really is experiencing discomfort, but I can't say I've had experience of any of the things she mentions (trouble during sex, lots of UTIs, pain when sitting for long periods of time, anything popping out of bikinis etc.)

The list of things for a woman to feel insecure about and conform to just seems to be ever-growing and I dislike this push for some sort of homogeneous look immensely.

to bad it was on network tv and they didnt show it ,see if it was as bad as she said it was.as they say when you have 2 of anything on your body one will always be different,ears,boobs,balls etc etc

hey. looks don't matter. however, when the structure in question causes pain, sexual dysfunction, it would plead for a second opinion. Dr. Berman is not an aesthetic surgeon. If, given her evaluation, this patient would benefit from labial surgery, i wouldn't rush to "kill her off."  There really are times when minimizing the labia is probably defensible. This case sounds like one of those times.
The male doctor i agree is a scarey spokeman. But, Dr. Berman and the patients description of her problems does have merit. Let's not just dismiss it as doctors looking for fees and a big name.
If you had a huge nose that inhibited your social life  you might consider having a nose job.. If you couldn't breathe, bigger reason to have rhinoplasty.
not every surgery for labia deformity is a sham or a plot.

It makes me feel sick to see how people earn money by making women
feel insecure about their own bodies and have them mutilated because of
that. Not only do ruthless physicians advertise their procedures by
claiming that big labia are something pathological and ugly, but all
kinds of media take this point over without ever questioning it or
thinking about what effect it has on women. Worst of all, the variation
of genitals (male and female) hardly ever seems to be mentioned during
sex education at school or in books about the human body for non-medics.

I grew up myself believing that only small labia minora were
normal and when I entered puberty, I started wondering whether there was
something wrong with me. I looked for reliable sources on the topic but
I did not find a single book that showed drawings or images of big
labia minora or that gave information about that. The only information
that I could find was that labia minora could get longer at old age or
that they could be a sign of hormon problems. Both things were painful
to read of course. Fortunately I never trusted the books completely and
after some years I read on the internet that big labia minora were
perfectly common and nothing odd at all. That made me feel very happy
and at the same time I got angry at all the books, magazines and
teachers that never mentioned this! What is so difficult about telling
young people that genitals can have all kinds of colours and sizes? It
would make people feel so much better about their own bodies, about
their partners' bodies and about sex.
The nonsense that one has to be embarassed in front of men
because of big labia has to stop as well. Firstly because most men
probably don't even care, and secondly because they have no right to
decide about female bodies, anyway. Why should one even consider having a
part of the body cut off just because someone might complain?
And
even for women who really have pain because of big labia minora, there
should be much more information about what they could try before they
consider surgery. What about wearing panties and jeans that are suitable
for big labia? Most men wouldn't squeeze into pants that hurt them, so
why should women? It is certainly a good thing to help a woman who feels pain and discomfort, but surgery should not be first choice.

lsjb I agree it may be that she does need a procedure. but many TV execs are notoriously exploitative and dishonest in their sellection of material and facts and dishonest about what they omit and are misleading to people who appear too, and only interested in what money they can make not the subject their work is covering. My geuss is she is a patient who has already had satisfactory surgery when interviewed and was given a part refund for doing the show. If she signed a standard release form then CBS and the production company can do as they please with the clip and edit it how they want. I'd be livid if I had genital surgery and it ended up on a show called gross surgery. That disrespectful title is my main issue with the clip and is a indicativeof the makers moral compass, so I am ditching the whole clip as greedy enough to be as irelavent as any unsolicited ad. Why do people wave their medical confidentiality. They usually have to be bought and for me that process invalidates their testamony because now just like a celebrity they're paid to endorse who ever has paid them, and if they think they're not then who ever edits their on screen words generally is.  Sorry I know there are women who need surgery but a genuine show where people share their medical confidentiality and are treated with respect looks very different.

The part for me that really did it was when Berman asked "How long have you been ashamed of this?" Why do we need to jump to 'shame' immediately when referring to female genitalia? And why is she using a ridiculous clay model to illustrate the anatomy? If you're going to talk about the subject, respect that your audience and patient is/are adults...we can handle seeing a vulva!!! The feel of this clip, for me, was that she was treating the whole subject and patient like a child, in a dis-empowering manner. It reminded me of a post Lawrence had a while back about how we treat grown women like girls. Btw, I loathe this program, though I've never seen Berman on it before. It's too slick and sensationalist.

this is just terrible! shame shame shame on all involved in this misogynistic propaganda! ERRG! and carlin was so right when she said, "a man would never cut off his balls"; i'm sure having balls 'gets in the way' when sitting and stuff but men get used to it w/o resorting to surgical removal... yikes! 
p.s. all labia are lovely, in my oh-so-humble-opinion 

There are lies, lies and damn lies and women who say that looks don't matter are damn liars and they know it.  They take the moral high road with lip service but when it comes to their lifestyle, be it money, comfort or some frivolous emotional issue that suits their fancy at any particular point of time they will sellout like a drug addict needing a fix.  Women are not logical and there is no feminist movement now or forever that will change that biological fact.  Money and fantasy is their religion and they will shuffle along that road to the perdition seeking out any incremental parts of that veiled quest they can manage. 
It would seem that a woman's bible as a devotee of the D&R website must be "The Wife of Bath" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Note: this is only one point of view of which there are many and may not apply to all women but then again it may in some primal form.  It is always nice to have the ability for possessing the broad point of many views without intended malice.
 

Soap you've just described some people of both sexes. Gender isn't absolute with characteristics divided between either men or women. Looks are important but people have a huge variety of beauty and hotness, not a narrow definition that's constantly represented in media. A media that for many reasons won't show a variety of Vulva and that's why many people who have perfectly beautiful vulvas feel the need to submit to surgery.  

Plus you know your simply trolling with sexist generalisations, and so does everyone else. If you engage your genuine points in a way that other people can take seriously, then rather than angrily rejecting them people will consider them and  if they are genuine points you have a chance to persuade and make a real difference to a debate. 

It is not all about looks I know but about a person's individual taste whatever that be and maybe why but I cannot tolerate convention. I always like to look at things in a different manner whatever it is.  It is like the old TV series "The Naked City."  There are 8 million stories in the naked city and this has been one of them.

I agree, I think very often convention is a terribly missed oportunity to express ourselves as human beings, and the world with out that expression and all those alternative expressions is less diverse and interesting and vibrant. That's why I love the internet. Much TV however is subliminaly coersive and as to the very fact it's a broadcast is to some degree influencial or advertisers wouldn't adverstise on it. TV however is a huge waste of time :) it is :) I haven't had a TV for 9 years. I watch video on demand Like Betty and Carlins vlog and TED and the Daily show and the future is 3D blog. But my net meanderings are to my own agenda or interesting  tangent, not whatever TV execs think is important. So I get to see some of those 8 million stories you've mentioned. that's why I see the clip as an opitome of a convention that's unaware of it's insensitivity, uninformed by all those other voices and so doing some harm to all those people who need the chance to see the diverse beauty of genitals before deciding if they want to change theirs perminantly. 

Who claimed that looks don't matter? Quite the contrary in fact, the claim around here is that looks do matter but presently in our culture they matter TOO MUCH. No faulty logic there and no damn liars either. You seem to have some irrational resentment towards women...do you have mummy issues? 

Back to the topic though, breast augmentation, labiaplasty, rhinoplasty, rhytidectomy etc etc it's all surgical cosmetic alteration. I don't think one procedure is okay where another is not. I seriously considered having a breast lift after breast feeding for a year but opted not to as I could loose sensation in my nipples. They all stem from the same root cause that is the importance of appearance in our culture. Documentaries like The BodySex Documentary with the 'Genital Show and Tell' will help women who are looking to cure their insecurities about labia without surgical intervention. The great wall of vagina/vulva is another good one. I wouldn't judge a person for getting plastic surgery and I won't judge a doctor for providing a service that is demanded. All cosmetic surgeons are about money...whatever procedure they're performing. It would be exceptionally ethical (whilst probably counterproductive to their bussiness) of them to provide unbiased counselling to those who approach them for surgery. 

The biased dissemination of what information gets out there to people in the media is indeed problematic. Indeed the more women see varied images of women's naked bodies the less they scorn and ridicule their own. The push should be to end censorship and to get more images out there for women to see that reflect the beauty in our diversity of shape, colour and size rather than extolling the virtue of an unattainable cookie cutter image. So, on that note, what I will judge as amoral is CBS whose obscurantism won't allow the term clitoris mentioned and censor real sex information and positive body information whilst happily presenting genital cosmetic surgery as a benevolent medical service. 

On that note I join in saying ...

FUCK YOU CBS! 

i hated my long inner lips!!!! i researched labiaplasty as well. however after i dated a guy that didnt understand y i was so weirded out about my lips, i changed my mind. he explained to me that its actually more normal than i think. and that im beautiful. thank god for him. because now i LOVE my long inner lips. :)

its a shame that "the doctors" are sending the wrong message to young ladies out there. i actually love watching that programme, but now i will take some of what they say with a grain of salt. 

Yeah make it sound official as significant labial redundency. Asholes $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ 

 I had to have my balls removed after an accident and I can confirm two things. Balls do sometimes get in the way (sometimes painfully) and most men would never elect to have them cut off.

That said, equivocating labiaplasty with castration is not fair. The consequences of losing both testicles are severe and require a lifetime of taking testosterone therapy. That's just the physical. Emotionally there's also the feeling that no longer having balls means you are no longer a man.
I'm sure looking that for a women with even the largest of labia the sight of it is less disturbing than a castrated man looking at his ball-less empty sack dangling like a deflated balloon.

BTW - I do love large and full labia. And, it seems that most women don't mind my empty sack.

LIke, who doesn't have problems with their cunt? That is so normal!
This Dr should try, oh, giving information about UTI prevention, lubricant, wearing cotton panties instead of synthetic fibers, explain that it's normal to manipulate the skin on your clitoral hood and labia when you're having sex or masturbating, and mention that a lot of porn stars have had this procedure, which is why the only cunts she has seen represent this idea that labia is awful. Maybe, dare I say it, the Dr should mention that FGM is an atrocity in other countries and people come to the US for asylumn to escape it? I can't even imagine being someone who was forcibly mutilated, who then came to the US to spare their daughter that fate, then flip the TV on to see this crap.