Labiaplasty & Porn: What Can We Learn? (Pt 2)

Who doesn't love a beautiful vulva? Why isn't every vulva beautiful? This Naked November, we're thinking about nudity and body image. We think you should be naked more often. In fact, we have ways to help you feel better about your naked body. Sometimes, though, as humans, we compare ourselves to others. This could give us a complex! In the discussion of body image, we're talking about the plastic surgery called labiaplasty. We continue Hylton Coxwell's of Vulva 101's discussion about porn's affect on women's genitals. Here, Hylton jumps into the specifics of his argument.

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First, a word on pubes

Contrary to popular belief, removing pubic hair is not a new thing. We humans have been doing it for at least 5,000 years, and probably considerably longer, for both aesthetic and practical reasons. So why do we start seeing shaved vulva appearing in porn in the mid- to late-1980s?

That’s actually a trick question. Though the 1980s are often cited as the start of the shaved vulva trend, that’s not when we see the first smooth vulva on-screen. Scroll back to 1972, the movie Deep Throat sports Linda Lovelace’s fully shaved vulva. Thanks to Fanpix for the picture. When asked in an interview with Esquire Magazine why she shaved for the film, Linda replied, “I always do. I like it.”

And today, women (and men) answer that question the same way. They remove their pubic hair because they want to, they like it and because they can. Of course, there were porn movies before the 1970s, but by today’s standards they were very difficult to produce, acquire and view, ergo they only had very limited audiences.

In these ‘stag films’ we still find the occasional shaved vulva, even in very early black and white films (silent but with big band soundtracks). Personally, jazz and swing are a little off-putting in terms of porn music, but I grew up in the age of “bow chicka wow-wow” themes, so I can’t be one to judge. Either way, it’s another example of how porn is a reflection of society.

Shaved vulva on film can be traced back to somewhere between 1915 and 1920, coincidentally the same time we start seeing shaved armpits in Hollywood movies. Prior to that we run out of film pretty rapidly, but we have literary evidence, artwork and the existence of the pubic wig, or ‘merkin’ (dating back to the mid-1400s) to show us people have been removing pubic for a very long time.

Clearly, porn isn’t causing people to shave, wax, laser or trim. People shaving, waxing, lasering and trimming are what’s causing hair-free vulva in porn, not the other way around.

The unnatural vulva

What about vulva themselves, does porn on film/video show “unnatural” or “impossibly neat” ones? Many claim the vulva seen in porn don’t appear in nature and seeing these unnatural vulva causes women to feel bad about theirs and incites them to have labiaplasty surgery. That’s simply not true and it’s one of the most mind-numbingly stupid things I’ve ever heard.

We already established in Part 1 the vulva shown in photographic porn are indeed real and actually vulva. No impossibly perfect—I think they’re all possibly perfect—nor surgically altered, dyed or Photoshopped vulva anywhere to be found (except when required by law). Video, of course, shows the same real vulva. With one caveat: there’s surprisingly very little visible vulva on video (say that three times fast!).


The hidden vulva

Even in big-budget, two-hour features there can be less than five minutes of footage in which you can clearly see a vulva. I used a stopwatch, admittedly a strange way to watch porn, and some scenes I didn’t press the button once!

It can vary quite a bit depending on the genre, but most of the time there’s something (a body part or object) in the way, obscuring our view, or the shot is too wide to make out any details beyond their pubic hair style. When we, for a few fleeting seconds, do see vulva, they are naturally diverse. Long labia, short ones and barely there ones, dark and light and every shade in between. They match the complexions of those who have them, no dye or photoshop needed.

The pornographic scapegoat

So this impression that porn is making women shave or making them feel so bad about their vulva they are compelled to get labiaplastic surgery, where is this coming from? It’s coming from sources who aren’t interested in facts and evidence, as they are consumed with their own insecurities and go to great lengths to blame pornography for their problems. It’s the same group which writes things like “porn is cruel and violent” and “porn dehumanizes women and turns them into nothing more than sex objects.” This attitude begs the question: what kind of porn are these people watching?!

Anti-porn hysteria doesn’t reflect reality. It’s a delusion, whether it comes from the mouths of politicians, religious leaders or activists, and it needs to be treated as such.

Many of these rather shrill people want to see porn banned. Their minds, like cement, are all mixed up and permanently set. Their message should be ignored. A better message would be one based on facts: if you’re watching porn and see a vulva (or penis) that looks different than your own, it’s simply because everyone is unique. That uniqueness should be celebrated and appreciated.

With a background ranging from journalism, publishing and photography to computer programming and languages, along with an insatiable curiosity of the world around us, Hylton Coxwell explores a hidden topic in his first book ‘Vulva 101’. Born in 1976 near Belleville, Ontario (Canada), Hylton moved to Hiroshima, Japan in the mid- 90’s to study Japanese and various martial arts. Having returned to the Belleville area, he now teaches self-defense classes, mostly to women, and owns several small businesses. Follow Hylton on twitter @Vulva101. You can also email him at info@vulva101.com, or subscribe to his Facebook page.

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Vulvas & Porn: Why Their Relationship 'Is Complicated' (NSFW) (Part 1)

At GetLusty, we feel like porn can be beautiful. Feminist porn that is. What about mainstream 'traditional' porn? At GetLusty, we like to talk about erotica of all kinds. We've touched on the potential negative affects of too much porn for men. but now we want to take a look at how porn might be skewing the perceptions of women. We're glad to have the perspective of Hylton Coxwell, author of Vulva 101. The first in a two part series, Hylton defends the porn industry against what he calls "quasi-feminist" blogs.

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It’s porn’s fault! 

At least that what we’re often told. Whether about corrupting morality, or the more recent hot topics of pubic hair removal and labiaplasty, the notion that pornography has the ability to manipulate human behavior has been assumed to be the truth. But is this really the case—can it actually compel people to shave daily or have parts of their genitals surgically removed?

Though I’ve read it in medical literature, today quasi-feminist blogs are the biggest pushers of that idea. I say ‘quasi’ as there’s a big difference between believing women have sole control over their bodies, choices and sexuality, versus simply being angry with individual men. The latter also presume women are gullible and easily manipulated, by those evil male pornographers, into doing things like shaving their pubic hair or having parts of their labia removed.

Here’s a few direct quotes:

“Sometimes they are influenced in these views by having seen misleading pornographic magazines or videos – in which the ‘heroine’s’ vulva appears impossibly neat and tidy!” “Often times the only point of reference women have is what they see in porn. And what they see is dyed, shaved, airbrushed and sometimes surgically altered. What they see does not occur naturally.”

That sounds good on the surface, except it’s not true. That’s not what you see in porn, and is so far from reality I must question whether the authors of those statements have ever actually viewed porn. It’s not based on evidence. They just made all that up, or repeated something someone else made up.

Don’t believe me? 

Just google the words ‘vulva’ or ‘pussy’ or any of the other common slang terms and what you’ll find is a real cross-section of how vulva actually look. You’ll likely end up on thumbnail gallery posts (pages of small images which when clicked view the full-sized pictures). And probably, you'll encounter more than a few blind links. But you’ll see long lips (labia minora), short ones and barely there ones, shaved, trimmed, hairy and a respectably wide range of body types and ages.

In essence, you’ll find the same range of vulva appearance, labia size and pubic hair in porn as you do in the general population. While researching for this article, I viewed thousands of random vulva images, and not a single vulva would be out-of-place in Vulva 101. All were naturally occurring—not one was dyed, Photoshopped or manipulated to alter the shape, size or color of labia. The only ones I found that were surgically altered were those of transgender women.

It’s important to note: virtually every image you see (of any subject, in print and online) has been “Photoshopped” to some degree, mainly to ensure the image looks good color-wise on-screen or on various combinations of ink and paper types. I spent more than a decade Photoshopping hundreds of thousands of images, and ‘darkrooming’ them before that, in my career so doctored images are pretty easy to spot. If there are misleading vulva images in pornography, I’m having a seriously difficult time finding any.

Pornography is not a manipulator, it’s simply a mirror of what exists. There’s no agenda, no one is trying deceive you as to what vulva actually look like.

Illegal vulva

No one at least, except for some governments. There are countries with strict laws prohibiting the sale of images showing vulva (and penises too). Japan, for instance, forces porn producers to blur out vulva entirely and Australia requires on-the-shelf erotic magazines to not show any inner lips. Producers comply, not because they want to or because they think lips are obscene—in fact they hate the laws and the expense incurred by all that retouching—but because they have to in order to sell their products.

Prepubescent myth

Another argument often thrown around regarding the lack of pubic hair in porn is that it makes women look like little girls, and men want women to look prepubescent. This concept is as absurd as it is insulting. It ignores the fact that adult, shaved vulva don’t look like those of little girls and it totally disregards women’s motivation for shaving, and their right to do so.

While working on Vulva 101, I spoke with hundreds of women about this. When asked why they chose to remove some or all of their pubic hair the answer was a resounding, “I like the way it feels, and it’s easier to keep clean.” Coincidentally, these are some of the same reasons humans have been removing pubic hair for thousand of years.

Vulva Puppets

And then there’s the Vulva Puppet, and other abstractly colored vulva trinkets, sometimes regarded as the antithesis to the “unnatural” images of vulva in “male-centric” porn. Well-meaning as they may be, as teaching tools they are worse than useless and border on the comically ridiculous. They only serve to illustrate what real vulva don’t look like and sadly reinforce the perception that actual vulva are too graphic or obscene to be viewed.

So where do people get the idea that porn causes women to believe they must shave their pubic hair, or that their labia are too long and need to be surgically removed? They certainly don’t get the idea from viewing porn, that much is clear. Instead the idea comes from not viewing porn. It’s an idea based not on fact but on ignorance and fear.

It’s a lie, often repeated and easily believed. In Part 2, we delve deeper into the subject of porn and vulvas. Our two favorite topics.

With a background ranging from journalism, publishing and photography to computer programming and languages, along with an insatiable curiosity of the world around us, Hylton Coxwell explores a hidden topic in his first book ‘Vulva 101’. Born in 1976 near Belleville, Ontario (Canada), Hylton moved to Hiroshima, Japan in the mid- 90’s to study Japanese and various martial arts. Having returned to the Belleville area, he now teaches self-defense classes, mostly to women, and owns several small businesses. Follow Hylton on twitter @Vulva101. You can also email him at info@vulva101.com, or subscribe to his Facebook page.

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