Recently published research at the Australian National University (Porn Studies, January 2015) has failed to find a supposed connection between women’s pornography consumption and labiaplasty procedures. Popular perception and some prior research tended to support a linkage between pornography, genital satisfaction and motivation to have the surgery.
The online survey of 1,083 women did not turn up any statistical connection between pornography or demographic characteristics and an openness to labiaplasty, and only 8.7 percent of the sample indicated any likeliness to consider the procedure, according to Bethany Jones, a Postdoctoral Fellow at ANU’s National Institute for Mental Health Research. Rather than support a pornography linkage, these results suggest that, despite some hype and buzz owing in part to the pornography topic, labiaplasty is an “extremely unpopular” procedure, and that motivations to consider it are more complex and warrant further study.
Ms. Jones told Cosmetic Surgery Times, “There has been some level of surprise that we did not find a relationship between pornography consumption and genital satisfaction. Our future research will be examining this relationship more closely. We will attempt to investigate finer levels of influence, such as partners of women whose preferences for vulvar morphology may be influenced by pornography. In addition, we will be modelling a range of psychological and mental health indicators to investigate their association with genital satisfaction to determine if there are other influences that may be modifiable to prevent genital dissatisfaction.”
The article, "Labiaplasty and pornography: a preliminiary investigation," was published online January 13, 2015, in the academic journal Porn Studies.
