Labia stretching

Elongated labia are perceived to facilitate orgasm and female ejaculation, and are considered to enhance sexual pleasure for both partners. One review concluded: The opposite of labia stretching is labia reduction or labiaplasty, which is performed as a surgical procedure for women whose genitals cause them discomfort or pain, or for aesthetic reasons. ==Controversy and legality==

Although the World Health Organization previously included labial stretching within the context of "mutilation" (see Genital modification and mutilation), Children in the African diaspora practise this too, so it occurs within immigrant communities in, for example, Britain, where a BBC report labelled it a hidden form of child abuse. ==Historic context==

The "apron" designation was apparently gained from the tendency of early European descriptions to misidentify the pair of labia as a single, wide organ, which they called, in French a tablier, or "apron". The characteristics of this trait were known as early as the 1680s, the first European note on the subject being made by Anderson and Iverson, who visited the Cape of Good Hope in 1644, in relation to the Khoisan of that region, but became extensively documented in the late 18th and 19th century. The case of Sarah Baartman was significant. For many years, the identification of Baartman was questioned because she demonstrated this feature. Historically, elongated labia minora were said to be portrayed by a "Negro". So it is because of this trait that Baartman was considered to be part of the so-called "inferior race". When Captain James Cook reached Cape Town in 1771, towards the end of his first voyage, he acknowledged being “very desirous to determine the great question among natural historians, whether the women of this country have or have not that fleshy flap or apron which has been called the sinus pudoris”; eventually a physician described treating patients with labia ranging from long. In an obstetric textbook, Barton Cooke Hirst, the founder of the University of Pennsylvania Women’s Hospital wrote “In Hottentots the [labia minora] are uniformly enormous, projecting far beyond the labia majora. As an exception this condition is sometimes seen in the Caucasian race.” In Eastern Africa, Monica Wilson recorded the custom through her fieldwork with the Nyakyusa people in the 1930s, and in Southern Africa Isaac Schapera worked with the Nama people, the largest group amongst the Khoikhoi, early in the 20th century, publishing The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa in 1930, in which he documents labia stretching. According to Schapera, some females were observed to exhibit elongated labia minora which sometimes projected as much as 10 cm below the vulva when standing. There was debate among these early anthropologists as to whether and in what circumstances such instances of elongated labia should be considered a physiological feature or the result of artificial manipulation. ==Rwanda==

In Rwandan culture, female family members teach girls at puberty how to pull their labia to lengthen them (gukuna, "pull", imishino "labia" in Kinyarwanda language), using local medicinal flora to ease the process. Women continue the practice into adulthood and through marriage. ==Uganda==

Some human rights activists in the country, including feminist scholar Sylvia Tamale, support labia stretching. ==Zambia==

According to a report in the Global Press Journal, labia stretching is common in Zambia, but such a social taboo that it is rarely discussed. It is defended by traditional marriage counsellors and challenged by feminist activists. ==South Pacific==

Labia modification is documented as having existed in cultures outside Africa, particularly in the South Pacific. ==Links to other practices==

Scholars link labial elongation with genital tattooing. Elsdon Best wrote about the Maori (published in 1924, but apparently referring to a historical custom he had not witnessed himself): "Women were occasionally tattooed on the private parts, and this was a custom among Fijian women. It was alluded to as a tara whakairo." Belgian missionary Gustaaf Hulstaert wrote about genital tattooing in 1938 in Le mariage des Nkundó, about the Mongo people of the Congo: "Both women and men wear tattoos, but it is more common among women. For women, it is considered more sexual and often located near the sex organs." Quoted on the overview of the Mongo people by the Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution at the University of Missouri. Bronisław Malinowski wrote about the Trobriand Islands in The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: File:inverted.apron.jpg|Closeup of enlarged labia, spread File:khoisan.apron.jpg|Khoikhoi women with enlarged labia ==See also==