FINAL WORD...

Advice from the professionals

Back in Dr Niekerk’s consultation room, I feel tired, confused and, I’ll be honest, a teeny bit concerned that the vagina I’ve been happily housing since 1993 may not, after all, be up to scratch. Dr Niekerk says I’m not the only one. He’s seen a marked rise in the amount of consultations and procedures he’s conducted in recent years. Citing a combination of factors including ‘fashion’ and the fact that women are ‘more likely to be clean shaven’, I get the sense he is alluding to the influence of the porn industry. Either way, he stresses that he prefers to operate on women whose inner labia cause them genuine discomfort when they sit, cycle or wear tight clothing. But if they don’t, he conducts in-depth interviews on why these women feel the need to undergo the procedure, and will only operate ‘on those who are doing it for themselves, and no one else’. Over half of his job is spent reassuring women that their vulva is normal, he tells me.

As he pops the lid back on his felt-tip pen and I pop my pants back on, I think over all the new opinions I have been offered by various experts on a part of my body that, before now, I’d never given much thought to. Sure, I don’t have an inner labia like a rosebud (quite frankly, who does?), and no, my vulva is not millennial pink, but I’d take a healthy, working vagina over a clitoris injection any day of the week.

“DO I HAVE THE wrong colour vulva? IS THERE EVEN A RIGHT SHADE TO BE? SUDDENLY A PANTONE CHART OF HUES FLASH BEFORE ME”