“A Minor Inconvenience” by Reece Gritzmacher

A former partner called them my flappies. She meant it affectionately. I called them the reason I didn’t want to take my underwear off. When I was a kid, I’d bend at the waist and gaze at myself between spread legs over porcelain. Little wrinkly elephant ears, I told myself. Back then, it was mere observation. No judgment. Just a fact.

Come time for sex ed during fifth grade at my Southeast Portland elementary school, when the children socialized to be girls and children socialized to be boys were split into different classrooms for their respective lessons, I was thrilled to study my body further. After school one day, probably after scarfing down corn dogs from my family’s basement freezer, a friend and I confessed our excitement. I was eager to hold a mirror to myself in private. Ready, too, for the bleeding that wouldn’t begin for another three years. All of this felt like a celebration of being alive.

A couple years later, during another friend’s birthday party, I climbed from her grandparents’ jacuzzi to the pool, dropping, midpoint, onto the saddle of the dividing wall. Immediately, pain radiated from my core. Had I cut myself inside my bikini? I snuck inside my friend’s grandparents’ house, a ranch-style home shaded by conifers, to the bathroom, where I stood wet and dripping on the floor. I pulled down my bottoms, slow and fearful. I gazed into the nylon for traces of injury.

From the distance of years, I realized: I’d probably just hit my clitoris on a sharp surface, the pointed right angle of a tiled wall.

At thirty, still learning about my body, I’d learn about designer vaginas. By this point, I’d been judging my vulva for years.

I never knew to be ashamed of my vulva until my mid-twenties when my hand was between another person’s legs and I was surprised by what I encountered. Confused by the different texture. Different shape. In her spacious studio apartment in Northeast Portland’s Gateway neighborhood, uncozy with laminate floors and high ceilings, our mostly naked bodies only slightly sheltered from the living-room/dining-room/foyer by the bookshelf near our heads, my confusion was evident. That partner, who was only a partner in terms of our physical coupling—today I know the word “situationship”—also acknowledged our bodies’ differences. Implying: Yeah, ya think? I’d had other sex partners, but never before realized there was such diversity in vulva anatomy.

✶

During my last year of college, I learned of the existence of two kinds of labia due to friends’ names on our university’s radio station: DJ Minora and DJ Majora. Of course, I must have learned this information at least briefly during fifth grade and eight grade sex education lessons. And during tenth grade, when I took health as independent study over the summer and read the entire text book, making notecards for each chapter. But I didn’t learn it in a way that stuck. And honestly, as a queer person who doubted I’d ever sleep with someone with a penis, I probably spaced out a fair amount during sex ed, including on information very pertinent to me.

So, here I confess: I used to think of my labia minora as labia majora. That’s what I figured, after I learned there were two kinds of labia. Surely, the part of me that stuck out had to be majora. I didn’t consult diagrams for clarity yet during college, though, so I didn’t know that what I considered to be part of my pubic mound (they are!) were my actual labia majora. Who knew they had their own name? What labia minora could have referred to, I just didn’t know, and never thought about it. I knew nothing back then, about myself or how I compared to others. I hadn’t yet encountered difference.

✶

Labiaplasty is one of the fastest-growing cosmetic surgeries in the United States, with more and more vulva-bearers electing for a reduction in size of dangly bits. Technically, labiaplasty can entail a reduction or increase in size to labia. For people born with vulvas, however, an increase is unlikely. The number of labiaplasty surgeries performed in the United States grew seventy-two percent from 2013 to 2015, skyrocketing from 5,070 to 8,745 procedures per year.

This growth was nothing compared to what was to come, however. In 2021, exactly 18,831 procedures were performed. The Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Data Bank shares this number in their 2020-2021 statistics report.

A significant reason why so many women and other vulva-bearers seek labiaplasty? Because they’ve learned to be ashamed, too. Some seek surgery to feel comfortable wearing bikinis and other tight-fitting clothes, I was surprised to realize this week when stumbling across more articles. Others seek surgery to match what they’ve seen in porn. Many individuals feel an increase in confidence following surgery, and maybe I would, too, but I wish we’d all been taught that even without serious modifications, we are enough.

✶

A later partner had the most beautiful vulva I’d ever seen. Pretty, I thought for the first time in my life. Not something I’d ever thought about genitalia before. At first glance, she seemed to not even have labia minora. Just smooth, soft labia majora. The cutest little mound. In contrast, I was a monster. A barbarian, for sure. Labia-er, hairier. And, I had a mole. I was probably in middle school or early high school the first time I asked a doctor to examine the mole. It was just…distinct. Multicolored, and, if we are to be honest, a little big. Probably two-fifths the size of a pea.

Not cancerous, I’ve been told every time I’ve been examined. Convinced of my hideousness, ashamed of anyone seeing me. Afraid of that person beholding exactly how pretty I’m not. As someone who’s nonbinary, who generally presents androgynously, I’ve long shrugged away from pretty. But something about taking off my underwear obliterates my uncaring. Renders me desperate to be either pretty down there or invisible.

Between the mole and my labia, I’m only confident when clothed or at least underweared. During my last check, the dermatologist told me that if I wanted it removed (I’d asked), the mole would basically need to be hole-punched, and I’d have to limit my movement for days. This wouldn’t be easy, I realized; the mole falls exactly on my bikini line. Which, by the way, makes shaving in that particular spot impossible. I can’t win. I’ve shaved my armpits just a handful of times since 2012, and my legs meet the razor just a few times a year, but I groom. Shave the bikini line otherwise. Trim. That mole area though—tricky.

One night this month, I decide to measure the length of my labia, after consulting the internet for statistics. Google serves up a scientific study published by BJOG, An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2018. First, I reach into my desk drawer for the paper ruler that binds brand new Moleskine notebooks together; I’ve used this paper tool for the entirety of the 2.5 years I’ve lived in Arizona. The paper ruler fails, though. The end is torn, and my labia just won’t stand for it.

I switch to the tape measure I finally bought two weeks ago. The metal tape tells me: My labia fall right into the “average” range found at a Swiss hospital during its study of 657 white women from 2015 to 2017. I tell my labia how cute they are. And I wish I didn’t need to be average to begin to tell them so.

✶

During my twenties, as a forever diligent student, I went to porn to study mechanics and learned more than I bargained; bodies like mine don’t end up in pornos. Can I get some labia minora around here? Nope and nope and nope. Beyond the lack of hair that distinguished the actors’ bodies from mine, I couldn’t see what I recognized as labia minora. Instead, upon my laptop screen, all I saw were pretty pubic mounds without protruding parts.

I’ve spent over a decade willing myself into someone comfortable with their body as is; uninterested in weighing myself outside the doctor’s office, disinclined to paint my lashes blackish-brown or black with mascara, or line my eyes with any black or charcoal or brown or blue green purple. My leg hair is wilder than many men’s. My armpits are unruly. Unlike many friends who are also nonbinary, I’ve chosen to forego any surgery or hormone replacement therapy—this renders me far more likely to be misgendered as female, but I will continue to be misgendered all my life, so have just decided to dress and groom myself however I prefer.

By these metrics, I’ve stepped rather far from common societal notions of beauty. To look at me, I’m uncertain one would guess I’m ever preoccupied with my appearance; my face is spotted with acne scars, I pass most days in cargo pants or shorts or men’s jeans or running shorts, unfitted tees, thrifted fleece sweaters, and hiking shoes or colorful Saucony sneakers. I dress for comfort. And though I have no training to cut my own hair—my attention span forbids me from watching YouTube tutorials or reading directions—I do cut my hair, often closing my eyes as I snip. Pulling locks and shearing at will. I justify my actions by saying I’m a scrub queer and who expects mullets to be tidy anyway?

But I’m more vulnerable when my legs are spread. In part because, all those other features—the hair on my head, my legs, beneath my arms; the nakedness of my face; my casual attire—these are far more visible in the day-to-day. If someone chooses to be intimate with me, I know they have already seen these sides of me and liked me enough to move forward. What if they see what’s between my legs and everything else ceases to matter?

What I learned in my twenties: Even when a partner tells me they like or love my parts, I’m too entrenched in shame about my labia to believe I could be desirable. I was ashamed of my need for affirmation during my last relationship, though my partner gave it freely, so I tried to hold onto my shame in quiet. Ashamed of my body and my discomfort, I often simply vacated myself.

Occasionally, I know a reprieve from this shame. Sometimes, when I look away from screens and block out all memory of trolls and porn, when I shut my eyes and am once again alone, I know what none of my research has ever shown me: the loveliness of labia.

The delight of velvet, wet and slick.