Exploring Dearth, Dissatisfaction, and (Un)Desirability: Discourses on Female Genital Aesthetics in Japan as Sites of Harm and Healing

Xin Qing, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

In Japan, female external genitalia remain systematically omitted from sex education, framed as the untouchable “delicate zone,” and obscured in erotic media. This void of “pubic realism” contrasts with an abundance of “pubic fantasy” (Allison 2000): metaphors of blooming flowers or juicy, symmetrical fruits, many of which embody unrealistic genital aesthetic standards. These visual tropes, imbued with misinformation, heteronormativity, and misogyny, are often capitalized by beauty clinics to promote a wide array of female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS). While existing studies on FGCS, most in English-speaking, Euro-American contexts, report positive surgical outcomes, questions persist over the sources of genital dissatisfaction, surgical necessity, and the construction of medical knowledge over an "eclipsed" part of body and sexuality. Exploring the thriving FGCS industry in Japan, this study examines how aesthetic genital norms are defined, circulated, and governed in the Japanese mediascape. Beginning with a content analysis of Japanese FGCS providers’ promotional sites, the study uncovers their profit-driven tactics exploiting misinformation and anxiety overshadowing destigmatized understanding of female genital appearance and functionality. This is followed by an ethnography in FGCS-providing beauty clinics in Japan, which reveals the dual roles FGCS surgeons and the women-centered clinics play: contending and indoctrinating genital norms, while enabling care, knowledge, and healing absent in other social settings. The study critically engages with the nature of knowledge produced in female genital dissatisfaction-related discourses in the clinic spaces, in which endorsed “elective” medical practices can foster simultaneously violence, paradoxes, understanding, and reconciliation. The study concludes with a discussion of how the patient-surgeon dynamics at the FGCS department, with both feminist potential and capitalist constraints, blur the lines between patriarchal coercion and liberating technological possibilities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 108. The Impact of Health Interventions