Selling genital cosmetic surgery to healthy women: a multimodal discourse analysis of Australian surgical websites

Abstract

The multimodal nature of web pages enables them to interweave text, images, colour and other graphical material to create discursive contexts which may be difficult to identify or challenge. Multimodal discourse analysis provides a tool for deconstructing such websites. This paper examines websites that promote the growing practice of female genital cosmetic surgery, in particular labial reduction or labiaplasty. We examine the ways in which four Australian cosmetic surgery websites normalise unnecessary surgical intervention. From our multimodal critical discourse analysis, three themes emerged – ‘pathologising the normal’, ‘normalising modification’ and ‘cosmetic surgery is easy’. All were embedded in a neoliberal discourse of individual choice, self-improvement and objectification, through text and images that medicalised normal women's bodies, normalised the use of surgery to fit a cultural ideal of beauty and stressed the rhetoric of choice, empowerment and agency, thus creating an ideological foundation and justification for cosmetic surgery.

Keywords:

• cosmetic
• labiaplasty
• Australia
• qualitative analysis
• neoliberalism
• women

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the two cosmetic surgery clinics that gave us permission to use images from their websites for this paper.

Notes

We use the term ‘vagina’ throughout this paper when referring to female genitalia and in relation to FGCS procedures such as labiaplasty. Although the term ’vulva’ is anatomically correct, ‘vagina’ is widely used colloquially and on medical websites to refer to the external genital organs including the labia and clitoris.

The location of this research.