The BBC writeup of the report — which was originally published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology — should be required reading for anyone considering cosmetic surgery to their reproductive organas. The BBC says some women seek such surgery because "they are embarrassed in front of a sexual partner," but the reports authors argue that this embarrassment is really caused by ads that promote a "homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance" (a claim borne out by the fact that some genital plastic surgeons employ PR firms to get the word out about their, um, services). They also say that any discomfort caused by protruding labia may be psychological rather than physical, and could be treated with therapy instead of surgery. This recommendation isn't without its annoying aspects — after all, women have been told their problems are all in their head for a long time. However, it seems reasonable that women who are convinced their labia are weird would be more likely to experience pain, and that a first step might be helping them understand that when it comes to female genitals, there's a wide range of normal.

The real kicker of the report, though, is its examination of the risks involved in labioplasty. The authors mention a potential loss of sexual sensation, which we've heard before. But they also say that the procedure may cause some of the same childbirth problems as female genital mutilation does, including bleeding and tearing in labor, and even the death of the infant. Anyone eating breakfast might want to skip this part, but a commenter on a an earlier post shared some first-hand experience with the problem:

[I]n nursing school I helped out at the delivery of a woman who'd had labiaplasty several years before, and holy shit. It sort of, um, shredded. One of the most horrific things I've seen in my career. It took them a really long time to sew everything back together, and I have a feeling she would have happily gone back to some slightly asymmetric or (gasp!) flappy labia if she could have.

Beyond the gross-out factor, what's upsetting about this news is how closely it links plastic surgery to forms of ritual violence done to woman's body. Some cosmetic procedures — such as female circumcision reversal, or sex changes for those who want them — can improve people's quality of life. But in many cases plastic surgery can be simply another form of misogynist mutilation, based on the notion that there's something inherently wrong with a woman's body that only slicing and cutting can fix. It's disturbing that we've come to a point where women will pay £3,000 (about $5,000) for what is essentially mortification of the flesh — and their most intimate flesh at that.

British plastic surgeons are contesting the report with ultra-persuasive arguments like this one:

Lads' mags are looked at by girlfriends, and make them think more about the way they look. We live in times where we are much more open about our bodies - and changing them - and labioplasty is simply a part of this.

But Professor Philip Steer, editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, says,

Commercial images and social pressures often serve to distort public perceptions about what is physically normal. Healthy messaging about the normal variation in female genitalia, as well as body shape and size more generally, is needed and important.

Amen.

New Warning On 'Perfect Vaginas' [BBC]
"Designer Vagina" Surgery May Be Unsafe, Say Experts [Times Online]

Earlier: Experts Agree: Vaginoplasty Is Stupid, Unnecessary, & Dangerous
Pimp My Vadge: A Woman's Opinion

• Iranian police warned shopkeepers today not to use any mannequins with visible curves. Mannequins are also barred from appearing in windows without a headscarf. • In response to an abysmally low conviction rate for reported rapes, British officials have ordered a review of how rape victims are treated by authorities from the moment they report the assault onward. • Elizaveta Mukasei, who, with her husband, Mikhail, spied during the cold war for the KGB, has died at 97. The New York Times calls the Mukaseis "one of the most famous husband-and-wife duos in the history of espionage." • A new study reveals that more adults than previously thought (three out of five) have suffered from depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol addiction or marijuana abuse at some point in their lives. Previous studies had placed the number much lower, but they also did not follow participants over time, which doctors believe has lead to a more accurate picture of American's mental health. • Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who is a Yankees fan, is scheduled to throw out the first pitch on Saturday before New York's game against the Boston Red Sox. • A three-year custody battle over Dexter the pug has finally come to a close. A judge ruled that the dog will spend five weeks at a time with each of his owners. • Swedish female soldiers are demanding that the military provide them with combat-tested bras because the sports bras they're forced to buy unhook too easily. Men are provided with military-issue underwear, but there are no military-issue bras, so women have to buy their own. • According to the Census Bureau, 27% of gay couples say they are in a relationship "akin to husband-and-wife." This number is much higher than the number of gay couples who have been legally married, and analysts say it reflects the couples who would get married if they were granted equal rights. However, there were fewer same-sex couples reported this year than last, but that may be because fewer straight couples checked the wrong box on their forms. • Researchers have found that mice who are fed alcohol at a young age are more likely to make stupid decisions when they reach adulthood. Although this does not mean people who drink as teens grow up to be risk-takers, it does open up the possibility that the two things are related. • Tanning salons generally do not allow minors to visit without parental permission, but once they are in the door, they do not limit the number of tanning sessions allowed, a recent undercover operation found. •  A girls school in Pakistan was the target of another terrorist attack this Tuesday. Authorities believe the building was blown up by Islamist militants. • Researchers say when people are stressed they actually choose less familiar foods rather than "comfort foods." Study participants were asked to rate the level of change in their lives, then choose between American potato chips and British chips with odd flavors like Camembert and plum. Those experiencing more change were more likely to choose the unusual chips. • Australia's parliament will debate a bill that will decide whether two Kenyan woman can stay in the country as refugees, or if they will be forced to return and undergo female genital mutilation. Grace Gichuhi is seeking asylum because the Mungiki sect that killed her mother for refusing FGM wants to murder her for the same reason. She and fellow Kenyan Teresia Ndikaru Muturi both fled the country, but they'll be deported unless the parliament votes to expand refugee protection laws. • Researchers say people who are dieting should beware of naturally skinny friends who eat too much. 210 students participated in experiments in which a thin or overweight researcher ate snacks with them while watching a movie. The subject's portion choices mimicked the researcher's, but they adjusted and took a smaller portion if the researcher was overweight. • British Attorney General Baroness Scotland has been fined £5,000 for employing a housekeeper who wasn't allowed to work in the U.K. She didn't know it when she hired the housekeeper, but didn't keep a copy of her documents as required by law. • More women are murdered by men in Louisiana than anywhere else in the United States, according to a report from the Violence Policy Center. The national rate of women being murdered by men is 1.3 per 100,000, but in 2007 Louisiana's rate was 2.53 per 100,000. Alaska and Wyoming had the second and third highest rates. • A 19-year-old Indian girl confessed that she and her 20-year-old boyfriend strangled seven members of her family who opposed their relationship. They are charged with murdering her mother, father, grandmother, and four other relatives after lacing the family meal with a sedative. The family wouldn't let them marry because they belong to the same gotra, a group descended from a common ancestor. • Ron Paul on his appearance in the film Brüno: "I don't feel good about it because I was the subject of a trick, and nobody likes to be tricked. I understand they're not making a tremendous amount of money off this movie, so maybe the American people aren't as cynical as they assumed." •

Pittman is being held without bail. The women were all African-American and believed to be prostitutes. Police are still investigating the murders of the other four women and three missing women who fit the profile. • The persistent rumors that Chelsea Clinton was getting married in August on Martha's Vineyard obviously weren't true, as it's September and she's not married. The rumors got so bad that at one point the Clintons offered a $1,000 bet to any journalist's source that there would be no wedding. Hillary Clinton's reps issued a statement saying that they were, "sick of this insane environment where nobody bothers to heed the denials of the actual individuals involved and where facts and truth are a distant afterthought... So, if we're all going to be stuck together in this endless unfounded rumor loop through at least 8/29, let's at least make it interesting." There were no takers. • The wife of Yukio Hatoyama, who is expected to be voted Japan's next prime minister later this month, claimed in a book published last year that she rode a UFO to Venus 20 years ago. "While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," said Miyuki Hatoyama. "It was a very beautiful place and it was really green." • Six women have been awarded the $25,000 Jaffe award for emerging women authors including poets Vievee Fancis, Janice Harrington and Heidy Steidlymayer; fiction writers Lori Ostlund and Helen Philips; and nonfiction writer Krista Bremer. • French doctor Pierre Foldes has developed a simple reconstructive procedure for victims of female genital mutilation that removes the painful tissue and reconstructs the clitoris by cutting ligaments to expose the root. "The results are getting better and better," he said . "Seventy two to 75 percent [of patients] are back to normal sexuality after 18 months." He has operated on more than 3,000 women in his hospital in France and is developing a program that would follow up with the women for months, giving them psychological treatment as well. • Though many teen sections in newspapers have been cut for economic reasons, the Yakima Herald-Republic's "Unleashed" section will return this fall due to an agreement with the local school district in Washington State to provide $11,500 to pay a part-time coordinator and student contributors. • Christina Aguilera, Christina Applegate, Maria Bello, Anne Hathaway, January Jones, Sherry Lansing, Sigourney Weaver, and Laura Ziskin will be honored at Variety's Power of Women luncheon on September 24 for the contributions they have made to charitable causes. • A study of nearly 30,000 people in the former Soviet Union found that binge-drinkers, and particularly women, who consumed four or five pints of beer or a bottle of wine in one day were more likely to have a "beer belly" than those who drank the same amount in a week. • The publishers of the New International Version Bible will release a revised edition that will "undo the damage" of an earlier version that tried to be more inclusive by substituting words like "he," "father," and "son" with more gender-neutral terms. Many didn't like the version, which came out in 2005. Wayne Grudem, a Biblical scholar at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona, says, "I'm delighted to see they have realized the TNIV was simply never going to be accepted by the Christian public who value accuracy in translating the word of God... I'm thankful for their honesty." • To promote the Ultimate Pole Dancing Competition, there are mobile pole-dancing units bicycling around Manhattan today. • On Sunday 71-year-old Dawn Fraser, who won swimming gold medals in three Olympics, fought off and helped capture a man who tried to rob her in her home near Brisbane, Australia. "This guy came out of the gate and grabbed me and I grabbed him by the ear and I kicked him in the groin," she said. "So he had to let me go. He threatened my life and I got really annoyed about that and just grabbed him by the ear and the hair." A male friend made him lie on his stomach until the police came. • Are men really more likely to brag online? MIT researcher Philip Greenspun theorizes that men are more likely than women to participate in behaviors associated with high social status but little practical return, such as bickering over details on Wikipedia or commanding raids in World of Warcraft. • We're not sure if the front page of this newspaper is a "fail" just because it runs a photo of a woman pole dancing under the phrase "Boob bitten, woman busted," or because it also labels pole dancing "fun for the whole family."

It's believed that Suman suffers from a hormonal imbalance, but her family has been unable to afford to travel to Calcutta for expert medical treatment. WWKAD? What Would Katy Abram Do? • Margaret Bush Wilson, a civil-rights activist and head of the Missouri NAACP, has died in St. Louis at the age of 90. • Jose Garcia-Perlera, who tied up and gagged widows living alone in a series of attacks in 2007 and 2008 in Maryland, was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole. • The mom in North Dakota who was busted (heh) for breastfeeding while intoxicated can't stay out of trouble: She's been arrested twice since her sentencing. • Poor Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones. They paid a Utah newspaper to run their wedding announcement, only to have it rejected. The same-sex couple were legally married in California in June and wanted the announcement to run in Jones' hometown before a family get-together next week. "After all, our marriage is just as real and legal and entitled to celebration as any of the others that are announced each week in the pages of The Spectrum," Jones wrote to publisher Donnie Welch. Welch replied: "This simply is not true. While that may be the case in some states it is not the case in the state of Utah. As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah law, I have made the decision not to run the announcement." • Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota has asked a judge to prevent the state from suspending its license to perform abortions in Sioux Falls. • A 35-year-old woman known only as Carole — a convert to Islam — was banned from her local pool in Paris for trying to go swimming in a "burquini." She bought the garment because: "it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends." But officials claim the "burquini" is a possible public health risk. Daniel Guillaume, a regional official in charge of swimming pools, says: "These clothes are used in public, so they can contain molecules, viruses, et cetera, which will go in the water and could be transmitted to other bathers." • "Everybody used to say how radical I was. I just thought I was pragmatic." — Billie Jean King, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday, the "the highest honor a civilian can receive in the U.S." • Scary, but not surprising: Pregnant women who underwent female genital cutting as girls are at increased risk of needing an emergency Cesarean section or suffering serious tears during childbirth. • Filament, a UK magazine for women featuring semi-naked men, is have problems pleasing its audience, which wants pictures of erect penises; its printers, which refuse and object to working with such content; and distributors which won't handle a women's magazine with a man on the cover. Writes Kristina Lloyd, "When set against the plethora of men's lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: Men can look at women but women cannot look at men… The sexism is in the inequality. • Wow: Women's boxing will be added to the 2012 Olympic Games. Boxing was the last all-male Olympic sport.

Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.

Because, lest you forget, the immigration court judges are some of the many people Alberto Gonzales's minions — Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson — helped get onto the bench based on a thorough vetting of their loyalty to George W. Bush and a not so thorough vetting of their immigration law background. In fact, many of them had no immigration law qualifications whatsoever when they began to serve as immigration judges. Some had previously attempted to get non-immigration judgeships and failed, due to a lack of qualifications in the field of law they'd actually practiced, but Gonzales, Goodling and Sampson ran the immigration court appointment process with little attention to pesky details like that. In fact, when they were running the immigration courts as a loyalty-reward outlet center, only 4 seats on the immigration courts were open to a competitive application process. Studies have shown that those who were hired while the Three Musketeers were at the helm (most of whom remain on the bench) are significantly more likely to reject asylum applications than judges hired under competitive application processes that actually have an immigration law background.

So, really, Mukasey wasn't doing anything more than he was hired to do — which is clean up the shit at the Justice Department that Alberto Gonzles, left behind. So, hooray for doing the right thing, eventually and under pressure from Congress! At least this asylum seeker will get to stay. The other ones the Bushies have been busy deporting, well, good luck to them.

AG: Don't Deport Genital Mutilation Victim [CNN]
Genital Mutilation Victim Gets A New Chance At Asylum In U.S. [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Lack Apt Backgrounds [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties [Washington Post]
Vetted Judges More Likely to Reject Asylum Bids [NY Times]

Yup, it's the Raelians. Maybe you've heard of their support for human cloning and free love, or the fact that they think humans were the creation of extraterrestrials who also created religion — the very religions that gave us the wacky practice of circumcision. Did you know women and men were originally circumcised because the Pharaohs believed the clit was the center of female masculinity and the foreskin was the center of male femininity and removing them differentiated us from the gods and thus offered up some sort of sacrifice that would in turn provide them favors over the generations? (Funny how history did all those favors for the cultures most closely associated with circumcision!) But yeah, anyway, think too long about it and Raelism or whatever will start to make a certain kind of sense. And like, who wouldn't like to clone Jon Stewart for a husband? Except I might leave him uncircumcised. I hear sex is better that way.

Raelians Rocket From Clones To Clitorises [Wired]
Earlier: Clitoral Circumcision Will "Make This Baby More Beautiful In The Eyes Of Her Husband"

That sentence comprises the first 45 of over a thousand words devoted to female circumcision in Sunday's NY Times. (Sorry guys, this is the last of our Blue Monday-type stories for today.) According to Lukman Hakim, a (male) chairman of an Indonesian foundation that sponsors mass circumcisions, the benefits include the "stabilization" of a female's libido and balancing "her psychology".

The article, written by Sara Corbett, also features a series of upsetting photographs by Stephanie Sinclair (a slideshow, including the newly-circumcised, teary 9-month old girl pictured above, can be found here). Asks Jezebel reader Elizabeth: "What kind of person can stand there and photograph little girls screaming while parts of their genitalia are removed? This isn't a question of religion, or yearning to understand another culture more — it's recording barbarity with an objective lens, which somehow makes it okay."

A Cutting Tradition [NY Times]
Inside A Female Circumcision Ceremony [NY Times]

• A new study indicates that women who keep quiet during marital disputes have an increased risk of dying from heart disease compared to women who speak their minds. Oh Katie, you're so doomed. [LA Times]
  
• Thinking about getting pregnant? Want a baby girl? Get stressed. Want a baby boy? Get fat. [DailyMail, ScienceDaily]
  
• Nearly 96% of all women and girls in Egypt are subjected to some form genital mutilation. Though the country's Health Ministry outlawed the practice over a decade ago, they created a massive loophole for "emergencies". [NY Times]
  
• Cervarix, HPV vaccine alternative to Gardasil, has been approved for sale across the European Union. Hopefully the US will be next, as Cervarix is available for women above the age of 27, unlike Gardasil. [Wall Street Journal]

• We didn't realize stuffing ourselves with burgers, beer, and mac 'n' cheese on the weekends and then fasting during the work week had a name but apparently "Alternate-Day Fasting" is a major diet trend. [Science Daily]
• We knew it — Britney sucks as a mom because she lacks the super important Mommy Gene. Too bad she also lacks the "Smart Enough to Wear a Condom" gene too. [Science Daily]
• So, if you don't drink much milk, your chances of getting osteoporosis (i.e. brittle bones) greatly increases. However, if you're not a milk drinker, you're probably also a bit of a fatty, which also protects you against bone loss? [Reuters]

• We are sick and tired of reading about women beaten, shot, stabbed, raped and injured by men they know. But we don't know that pairing purplish scars with Italian knitwear is the best way to raise awareness about domestic violence. [Feministing]
  
• Activists in Africa are turning to the Koran in an effort to cease female genital mutilation. [Feministing]
  
• Researchers have made a "landmark breakthrough" in breast cancer research with the discovery of a genetic mutation that often causes the disease. [CNN]
  
• No matter how you play it, eating too much or too little is bad for the bones. [CNN]
  
• British nurses aren't getting any. [The Sun]

Did you ever have a boyfriend that even though he went off and slept with five hookers, came back and gave you the clap, stole all your drugs and money and then slept with another three hookers before dumping you, somehow, in the aftermath, it was all about HIS pain? (Quiet there at the back, Britney!)

Well, we think he's popped up on Metafilter. You'd think that the call for the ending of female genital mutilation by one of Islam's most respected theological centers would be the occasion of some back-slapping for the many thousands of little girls who won't have their clitorises hacked off with a rock. But you're ignoring the real issue here, featherbrains.

Yet again, it's all about the boys and their immensely more important pain.

"I look forward to the day when similar fatwas are made against male genital cutting. It probably won't be for a couple hundred years, but I may be wrong - cultural consciousness has been shown to undergo radical and rapid shifts in the past. Perhaps by that time, we'll have female mullahs who can add their voice without the bias of being cut themselves."

Because there's absolutely no difference between circumcision, and slicing off a clitoris, then sewing up the wound with twine. Uh-huh. Yup.