Shaping Sexual Behaviors & Sexual Scripts

Open Access: No.

Abstract

We present a thematic discourse analysis of 94 Australian women’s written comments about women’s presumed dissatisfaction with their genital appearance. Two themes emerged: ‘from natural to normal’ and ‘the difficulty of resistance’. In the first theme, participants discuss genital dissatisfaction with reference to hegemonic constructions of femininity and to postfeminist, neoliberal discourses that position the natural female body as inadequate, with beauty practices necessary to achieve acceptability. The second theme addresses the difficulty of challenging this positioning, referencing discourses that position the vagina as unpleasant and discussion of it as taboo. We consider implications of these constructions for women’s well-being.

Relevance

Many women have a ‘narrow model’ of of a normal vagina that is partly “baed on a limited exposure to unrealistic pornographic…images.” The pornographic representation of the vagina has “led some women to genital cosmetic surgery such as labiaplasty. Despite no relationship between the size of the labia minora and either sexual pleasure or physical comfort…surgery is presented as a solution to a problem which is grounded in cultural, rather than medical, issues.”

The responses by the women in this study “tended to resonate with feminist views of the ‘normal’ female body – and by extension, the vagina – as socially constructed in ways that emphasise the male gaze and that reinforce views of women and women’s bodies as in need of correction.”

Citation

Moran, C., & Lee, C. (2018). ‘Everyone wants a vagina that looks less like a vagina’: Australian women’s views on dissatisfaction with genital appearance. Journal of health psychology, 23(2), 229–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105316637588