Vulvar reconstruction. The exploitation of an ignorance

At the very end of the 20th century, the clinical reconstruction of the morphology of the vulva became a widespread fashion. Going well beyond the context of classic dysmorphophobia, requests to practitioners have to do with submission to a stereotypical concept: recreating general appearance of the female genital organs as there are in childhood. Based on ignorance as well as on very old justifications – rejection of animality and the depreciation of the female body –, such submission, dismissive of the adult state of these organs, is a trespass against elementary ethical imperatives. Moreover, this moral issue poses two types of problems. On the one hand, there are medical ethics considerations for practitioners. On the other, and more broadly, it is a cultural issue that reaches down into the foundations of Western civilization.