Earlier this year, a report found that labiaplasty is on the rise among Gen Z, with vulva anxiety plaguing one in six young people. Published by Women’s Health Victoria (WHV), it found that one in six respondents were anxious or embarrased about how their labia looks.
Almost a quarter of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they feel anxious or embarrassed by the appearance of their labia, and 35 percent further associate their labia with negative words like “ugly” or “disgusting.”
Photographer and former school teacher Ellie Sedgwick was one of those people. Comments from boys at her school on Sydney’s Northern Beaches when she was only 14 made her feel like something was inherently, anatomically wrong with her. “We grew up on the beach, so we were in bikinis all the time,” she says. “I have the outer labia that you can really see, so boys would say it looked like I always had sand stuck in my swimmers.” One day at school, one of the boys tapped her on the shoulder. “He asked me if I had an innie or an outie”, and he wasn’t asking about her belly button.
“Two of my school friends have since had labiaplasty, so we talk now about how much schoolyard bullying there was,” Sedgwick says. “I built up an incredible disconnect with my vulva and a hate for it.” She went to two labiaplasty consultations, and not once did anyone look at her vulva or query the state of her mental health and self-esteem. “They were just ready to book me in and take it all off. It’s so concerning, they encourage everything,” she says. They even tried to upsell her — with a chin extension. “I always say I walked in with one insecurity and came out with two,” she says, laughing.
Overcoming Vulva Anxiety
Sedgwick didn’t go through with the surgery. On her third consultation, a doctor finally spoke to her about what she really wanted. “The one good piece of advice the doctor gave me was to find out what other vulvas looked like,” she says. Sedgwick took her homework to the extreme and decided she would photograph 500 of them. It was 2018 when she put up her first Facebook call-out for vulva models, doing shoots around her teaching schedule.
She originally took photos in Byron Bay, but quickly got requests to visit vulva-owners across the country. So, she bought a van and up and left, cross-crossing her way across Australia for two years, taking photos between the legs of people from all walks of life: young, old, people who have and haven’t given birth, people who’ve transitioned.
It was during those shoots that Sedgwick and her models got the type of sex education you don’t get at school. Conversations about herpes, vaginismus, thrush, STDs and pleasure all started happening. “There’s such a lack of education,” she says. “People are all experiencing these things.” Another huge educational gap is how the vulva and labia change throughout a person’s lifetime, for example, “we know that in menopause, the labia can shrink”, Sedgwick says.
“The amount of people who come to me who’ve had labiaplasty is deeply upsetting. It’s such a big topic that’s not discussed,” she continues. “I’ve worked with quite a lot of people who tried to cut their labia off when they were younger. They have scars from getting trying to do it themselves with the kitchen scissors. It’s something that’s really sadly not uncommon and it shows the huge lack of education women get about their vulva.”
Reclaim Your Vulva!
Then there’s the issue of pleasure, the male-gaze, the pornification of beauty standards and the orgasm gap. “There are also so many nerve endings in your labia, so to cut them off to fit these beauty standards that are so unrealistic is devastating,” she says.
Seven years after that first vulva photoshoot, Sedgwick as compiled more than 500 photos into a gorgeous coffee table photobook called Flip Through My Flaps. The idea is that having a compendium of beautifully photographed real-life vulvas, rather than an anatomically ‘correct’ textbook illustration or the ‘perfect’ vulvas in porn, will assure women that they are perfect as they are. With so many variations, it’s hard to feel insecure knowing that everyone looks different — something that not many women, especially heterosexual women, know.
Sedgwick is also the founder of Comfortable in My Skin, a movement that encourages people to “love the skin they’re in”. On her website, Sedgwick also sells sex toys, candles, and even a water bottle. You can pre-order her book now, and it will be available in late October.
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