Cuerpo, género y cultura en la medicalización de la hipertrofia labial. De la elongación de labios menores a la labioplastia.

Female genitalia attract a wide range of cultural discourses related to health, hygiene, honour, decorum, beauty, pleasure or sexual success. These discourses reflect and reinforce social structures and contribute to the socialisation of sexuality. The associations they (re)produce change over time and space, often showing opposing explanations. In some cultures, elongated labia minora represent beauty, health and are associated with pleasure, while Western society has historically disqualified protruding labia minora as a sign of depravity, excessive sexuality and lack of civilisation, thus stigmatising women from cultures that practice labial elongation. Since the 1970s, following the same conceptions of beauty, health and pleasure, occidental biomedicine has described labia minora, which protrude beyond the labia majora, as "hypertrophic". Hence, their surgical reduction by means of an operation, known as "la-biaplasty", is often recommended and an increasingly demand in Western societies. From a comparative cultural analysis, more specifically from the anthropology of the body and of gender, and the critical model of medical anthropology, this article delves into some issues; in the first place, the cultural conceptions of sex, gender and sexuality present in the practice of labial elongation in some societies in Eastern and Southern Africa; it also addresses the Western interpretation of these conceptions in Europe, mainly in the 19th century; and finally the current biomedical discourse on labia minora hypertrophy and labiaplasty surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]