A new study has suggested that women's perceptions of what is considered normal and desirable female genitalia may be influenced by exposure to modified images.
Requests for labiaplasty (reducing and making the labia minora symmetrical) has become the most widely performed female genital cosmetic procedure covered by the NHS over the past decade, increasing five-fold between 2001 and 2010.
Researchers, from Australia's University of Queensland School of Psychology, looked at whether exposure to images of modified vulvas influenced women's perceptions of what is considered normal and desirable by society.
The study included 97 women aged 18 to 30 years, who were randomly assigned to three groups to view a series of images in two screenings.
The first screening exposed one group to a series of images of surgically modified vulvas, one group to a series of non-modified vulvas, and the third group viewed no images.
During the second screening, all groups then viewed a series of mixed images of both surgically modified and non-modified vulvas. The women then rated each image according to their perception of 'normality' and 'society's ideal'.
More From This Section
The study found that women who had initially viewed the modified vulvas identified the modified images in the second screening as more normal than the non-modified vulvas. This was significantly different from the control group, who initially viewed no images, and were 18 per cent less likely to rate the modified vulvas as normal.
Furthermore, when asked to rate the images according to society's ideal of genitalia, women in all three groups rated the modified images as more like society's ideal than the non-modified vulva images. Again, women who initially viewed the modified images were 13 per cent more likely to rate the modified vulvas as more society's ideal than the control group.
The new study has been published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.