Evaluations of Black and White Female Genitalia by Labiaplasty Status: A Pre-Registered Contextualization, Replication, and Extension of Findings on Labial Perceptions

ABSTRACT

Labiaplasty is an increasingly common form of cosmetic surgery involving the removal of portions of the labia minora to achieve a smaller, more symmetrical labial appearance. Labiaplasty is inextricably linked to the colonial medicalization of Black women’s labia, necessitating examination of labiaplasty and race in concert. Participants (N = 4351, M_age = 26.58; SD_age = 8.89) were shown 12 randomized images of White and Black female genitalia – unaware that they were “before and after” images of labiaplasty procedures – and evaluated them on their alignment with societal ideals, personal ideals, perceived normalcy, and disgustingness. As hypothesized, postoperative labia were rated as more normal, more societally ideal, and more personally ideal than their preoperative counterparts; preoperative labia were rated as more disgusting than postoperative labia. Preoperative Black labia were perceived as more normal, more societally ideal, and more personally ideal, as well as less disgusting, than preoperative White labia. Postoperative White labia were perceived as more normal, more societally and personally ideal, and less disgusting than postoperative Black labia. Gender trends were inconclusive. Our findings point to the need for greater examination of how White bodily ideals shape evaluations of bodies, and for greater historical contextualization in research on labiaplasty.

Acknowledgments

Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2021).

Disclosure Statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplementary Material

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Notes

¹ Herein, we confine medicalized terms such as labial “elongation” and labial “excess” to scare quotes, given these terms have no medical definitions but rather are medicalized representations of cultural ideals which ignore natural human variation.

² A particularly striking example of the fascination with Black women’s labia – and indeed with racial difference – can be found in the story of Saartjie (Sara/h) Bartmann, which has been detailed in depth elsewhere in connection to the colonial legacy (see, Chubak, 2020; Fausto-Sterling, 1995; Gilman, 1985; Nurka & Jones, 2013; Strings, 2020).

³ To more directly examine the role of the dominant White gaze, we reran all primary analyses including only White heterosexual participants. Though we recognize that this contradicts our goals of representation and diverse sampling, we believe it appropriate in the current context, given our goal of more directly examining the role of the dominant White gaze. These analyses were not preregistered, but results are available in supplemental materials. Notably, effects of race remained stable from the primary analyses.