Speaker 1: Picture this a sterile, softly lick clinic, a syringe filled
Speaker 1: with hyluronic acid, a practitioner saying this will restore what's
Speaker 1: been lost. Now, imagine realizing they're not talking about your face.
Speaker 1: They're talking about your labia. Not surgery, not reconstruction, just
Speaker 1: a few subtle injections to make things look smoother, fuller, younger.
Speaker 1: And here's the part that should make you pause. Most
Speaker 1: people didn't even know this was something they were supposed
Speaker 1: to worry about until it was already being sold to them.
Speaker 1: Welcome to a brand new episode of Beauty Unlocked, the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you're new to Beauty Unlocked, I'm Carissa, host of
Speaker 1: this circus. Welcome friends. If you've been a long time listener,
Speaker 1: you know all about the shenanigans and utter fuckery that
Speaker 1: is Beauty Unlocked. All labia fillers are one of those
Speaker 1: trends that slips in quietly, no big headlines, no mass panic,
Speaker 1: just a slow drip of clinic websites, before and after
Speaker 1: photos and language that feels almost suspiciously reassuring confidence, rejuvenation,
Speaker 1: restoring volume, and suddenly a part of your body that
Speaker 1: existed perfectly fine without commentary is being reframed as something
Speaker 1: that can age wrong, because this isn't really about anatomy.
Speaker 1: It's about what happens when beauty standards run out of
Speaker 1: obvious places to go and start expanding downward inward. I
Speaker 1: don't know, let's just get into it. Beauty standards used
Speaker 1: to live where people could see them. Your face, your body,
Speaker 1: your hair, the visible stuff, the stuff you could point
Speaker 1: to compare, critique fix. Now they're getting microscopic, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: they're moving into places that were never part of the
Speaker 1: conversation before. Labia fillers use the same hyaluronic acid injections
Speaker 1: you'd find in lips or cheeks, but placed into the
Speaker 1: labia majora to create volume, smoothness, and what clinics love
Speaker 1: to call a youthful contour. And if that phrase sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: it should because it's the exact same language that was
Speaker 1: used on your face. First it was wrinkles, then it
Speaker 1: was volume loss, then it was facial aging. Now the
Speaker 1: same framework has quietly expanded to include parts of your
Speaker 1: body you probably never once thought to evaluate this way.
Speaker 1: And yes, they say youthful, not healthy, not functional, youthful
Speaker 1: because apparently even your vulva now has an expiration date,
Speaker 1: and that's the shift. Over time, the body changes, fat
Speaker 1: distribution shifts, skin loses elacicity, hormones fluctuate. That's not controversial,
Speaker 1: it's biology. What is controversial is what happens next, because
Speaker 1: instead of saying this is normal, the industry says this
Speaker 1: is correctable. And once something becomes correctable, it very quickly
Speaker 1: becomes something you're expected to notice, then question, then fix.
Speaker 1: And the wild part a lot of people didn't even
Speaker 1: know this was something they were supposed to think about
Speaker 1: until there was already a solution waiting for them. Here's
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable question, where did this ideal even come from?
Speaker 1: Because unlike your face, your vulva isn't something you grew
Speaker 1: up comparing in mirrors, magazines, or casual conversation. There was
Speaker 1: no baseline, no universal reference point. So if an ideal
Speaker 1: exists now, it had to be built, and it was.
Speaker 1: Researchers in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and other body
Speaker 1: image studies have consistently linked exposure to highly curated genital imagery,
Speaker 1: especially through pornography, to increase dissatisfaction with natural variation translation.
Speaker 1: The more people see a narrow version of what vulva's
Speaker 1: should look like, the more they start to believe theirs
Speaker 1: is wrong, not different, wrong, and that version small inner labia,
Speaker 1: smooth outer contours, minimal variation, almost simplified, almost edited. And
Speaker 1: here's where it gets a little eerie, because this isn't
Speaker 1: just about preference. It's about repetition. When the same version
Speaker 1: shows up again and again and again, it stops looking
Speaker 1: like one option and starts looking like the standard, even
Speaker 1: if it never was, even if it doesn't reflect reality.
Speaker 1: And once that standard settles in, it doesn't announce itself.
Speaker 1: It doesn't say this is the ideal. It just quietly
Speaker 1: shifts how you see yourself until normal starts to feel
Speaker 1: like something that needs correcting. And that's the part no
Speaker 1: one really says out loud, because when clinics talk about rejuvenation,
Speaker 1: what they're actually describing gets a lot more specif and
Speaker 1: a lot more uncomfortable. Let's sit with the word for
Speaker 1: a second, youthful, because it sounds harmless, right, soft, aspirational,
Speaker 1: completely normal in beauty language, but when you apply it here,
Speaker 1: it stops feeling neutral, because what does a youthful vulva
Speaker 1: actually mean? It's not about glow. It's not about collagen.
Speaker 1: It's not even something most people were actively analyzing in
Speaker 1: their day to day lives until very recently. What's being described,
Speaker 1: very quietly is a specific visual less volume loss, smoother texture,
Speaker 1: minimal protrusion, tighter contours, and if you strip away the
Speaker 1: marketing language, what you're left with starts to look a
Speaker 1: lot like a body that hasn't gone through time yet,
Speaker 1: a body untouched by age, childbirth, hormonal shifts, by adulthood itself.
Speaker 1: And at a certain point we have to stop pretending
Speaker 1: that's a neutral preference, because it isn't. I came across
Speaker 1: a clip from the podcast The Tea with Miriam francois
Speaker 1: one of those moments that just kind of stops you,
Speaker 1: where Jamila Jamille was talking about beauty standards and she said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, I just think we have a beauty
Speaker 1: standard that's been set by pedophiles, end quote. And that
Speaker 1: kind of statement doesn't just disappear once you hear it.
Speaker 1: It sticks, because whether you agree with how blunt it
Speaker 1: is or not, it forces a question that beauty culture
Speaker 1: usually avoids. Why are we consistently rewarding traits that remove
Speaker 1: visible signs? Of adulthood from women's bodies, and this isn't
Speaker 1: just a viral sound bite. Writers like Taylor Parcilla Smith
Speaker 1: have explored this more directly, pointing to a long standing
Speaker 1: pattern in Western beauty standards that favor infantilization, smaller features, hairlessness, smoothness,
Speaker 1: a kind of visual innocence that edges closer to adolescence
Speaker 1: than adulthood. And once you start looking for it, you
Speaker 1: see it everywhere. Bigger eyes, softer features, hair removal, baby
Speaker 1: smooth skin, and now rejuvenated genital aesthetics, different areas of
Speaker 1: the body, same direction, less age, less variation, less evidence
Speaker 1: of a lived in adult body. And that's where this
Speaker 1: stops being just about preference and starts looking like a pattern.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sarah Crichton, who has worked extensively in this field,
Speaker 1: has pointed out that many women seeking genital procedures have
Speaker 1: completely normal anatomy but believe something is off because their
Speaker 1: reference point has narrowed so dramatically, not because their bodies
Speaker 1: are wrong, because the standard moved. And when that standard
Speaker 1: consistently leans towards a simplified, minimized, preaging version of the body,
Speaker 1: it's worth asking what exactly we're being asked to move toward.
Speaker 1: Why are we idolizing a version of the adult body
Speaker 1: that removes signs of adulthood. Why is aging something to
Speaker 1: correct everywhere? And why are we extending that logic into
Speaker 1: parts of the body that were never meant to be
Speaker 1: standardized in the first place. Because once you follow that thread,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just lead to labia fillers. It leads to
Speaker 1: a much bigger conversation about what beauty culture rewards and
Speaker 1: what it quietly erases. And once you see that pattern,
Speaker 1: you can't really unsee it because it's not just happening.
Speaker 1: It's being packaged, refined, sold back to you, which brings
Speaker 1: us to something even more revealing how this gets normalized
Speaker 1: in the first place. Labia Fillers sit in a very
Speaker 1: convenient gray zone. On one side, there are legitimate medical
Speaker 1: or comfort related reasons someone might seek treatment, especially after menopause, childbirth,
Speaker 1: or significant weight loss. That part is real. But on
Speaker 1: the other side there's marketing. And marketing is where things
Speaker 1: start to shift because the language is never aggressive. It's
Speaker 1: never you need this. It's softer than that. Enhancement, comfort, rejuvenation,
Speaker 1: confidence in tight clothing. Nothing sounds urgent nothing sounds extreme,
Speaker 1: but put it all together, and it quietly builds a
Speaker 1: narrative that your body has changed, that change is noticeable,
Speaker 1: and that noticeable change is something you might want to correct,
Speaker 1: not because something is wrong, but because something could be better.
Speaker 1: And that's how a standard takes hold, not through pressure
Speaker 1: that feels obvious, but through suggestions that feel reasonable. This
Speaker 1: isn't new. Social critic Ivan Ilitch called this process medicalization,
Speaker 1: turning normal human experiences into conditions that require treatment. Aging
Speaker 1: becomes something to manage, natural variation becomes something to refine,
Speaker 1: and entire parts of the body become projects thanks to
Speaker 1: monitor a just maintain. And once that shift happens, you
Speaker 1: stop asking whether something is normal and start asking whether
Speaker 1: it's optimal. And that's a very different mindset, because normal
Speaker 1: allows for variation, optimal does not. Optimal always has a direction,
Speaker 1: a goal, an end point you're supposed to move toward.
Speaker 1: And once your body is framed that way, there's always
Speaker 1: something else to improve, something else, to smooth, something else,
Speaker 1: to restore, something else that needs fixing. Not because your
Speaker 1: body failed you, because someone figured out how to make
Speaker 1: you see it that way. Let's slow this down for
Speaker 1: a second. Because this is the part people think they're
Speaker 1: hearing clearly, but usually aren't. Labia fillers are almost always
Speaker 1: described the same way quick safe, minimally evasive, which sounds comforting,
Speaker 1: but those words do a lot of heavy lifting, because
Speaker 1: minimally evasive doesn't mean risk free, it just means no
Speaker 1: one is cutting you open. We're still talking about injecting
Speaker 1: a substance into a highly sensitive, highly vascular area, an
Speaker 1: area with a dense network of blood, vessels and nerves.
Speaker 1: This isn't your cheek, it's not your jawline, and even
Speaker 1: with experienced practitioners, things can go wrong. The most common
Speaker 1: side effects sound manageable at first, swelling, bruising, tenderness, asymmetry,
Speaker 1: but even those can last longer than expected, and in
Speaker 1: a part of the body that's constantly in contact with
Speaker 1: clothing movement, heat, healing isn't always as simple as clinics
Speaker 1: make it sound. Then you get into the complications that
Speaker 1: aren't always front and center in the marketing. Infection, which
Speaker 1: in this area can be more difficult to manage and
Speaker 1: more uncomfortable than people anticipate. Lumps or uneven filler distribution,
Speaker 1: which can require dissolving, meaning more injections, more appointments, more cost.
Speaker 1: And then there are the rare but serious risks vascular complications.
Speaker 1: If filler is accidentally injected into or compresses a blood vessel,
Speaker 1: it can restrict blood flow to the sur tissue. In
Speaker 1: facial procedures, this is already something practitioners are trained to
Speaker 1: watch for very carefully. In the vulvar area, there's less
Speaker 1: standardized data, less long term tracking, less collective experience, and
Speaker 1: that matters because here's what doesn't get said often enough.
Speaker 1: We have decades of research, refinement and complication management. When
Speaker 1: it comes to facial fillers, we do not have the
Speaker 1: same depth of data for this area. This is a
Speaker 1: newer application, which means the long term effects, how the
Speaker 1: filler behaves over time, how repeated treatments interact with tissue,
Speaker 1: how the area ages with intervention, are still being understood.
Speaker 1: And yet the marketing language hasn't caught up to the uncertainty.
Speaker 1: It still sounds polished, predictable, routine like this is just
Speaker 1: another quick tweak, and maybe for some people it is.
Speaker 1: But that confidence you're hearing it's coming from an industry
Speaker 1: that benefits from making this feel normal, low risk, and
Speaker 1: easy to say yes to not from decades of deeply established,
Speaker 1: long term evidence in this specific part of the body.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean no one should ever do it,
Speaker 1: but it does mean the full picture is a little
Speaker 1: more complicated than the consultation makes it sound. This is
Speaker 1: the part where things get a little uncomfortable, because labia
Speaker 1: fillers aren't responding to a widespread medical crisis. They're responding
Speaker 1: to a cultural one. A moment where beauty standards have
Speaker 1: become so detailed, so specific that even the most private
Speaker 1: parts of the body aren't exempt. A moment where aging
Speaker 1: isn't allowed to exist any more, not your face, not
Speaker 1: your body, not even here. And a moment where choice
Speaker 1: and pressure start to blur together, because yes, people choose
Speaker 1: these procedures, but choices don't exist in isolation. They're shaped
Speaker 1: by what we see, what we're told, and what we're
Speaker 1: quietly made to feel. Sexologist and researcher Leonora Teifer has
Speaker 1: written extensively about this, describing the way industries expand definitions
Speaker 1: of problems in order to sell solutions. What starts as
Speaker 1: variation becomes framed as dysfunction. What was once normal becomes
Speaker 1: something to correct, and you can see that shift happening
Speaker 1: here in real time. Vulvas, historically diverse, variable, and largely unstandardized,
Speaker 1: are now being filtered through the same esthetic lens as
Speaker 1: faces and bodies smooth, refined, optimized, even when there's nothing
Speaker 1: medically wrong. Doctor Sarah Crichton has repeatedly pointed out that
Speaker 1: many patients seeking genital cosmetic procedures have completely normal anatomy
Speaker 1: but believe something is off because their reference point has
Speaker 1: narrowed so dramatically, not because their bodies changed, because the
Speaker 1: standard did. And once that standard exists, it doesn't just
Speaker 1: sit there quietly. It gets reinforced repeated. Monetized advertising scholar
Speaker 1: Rosalind Gill talks about this as the confidence culture, where
Speaker 1: empowerment language is used to sell increasingly specific forms of
Speaker 1: self surveillance. You're not being told you're inadequate, You're being
Speaker 1: told you could feel better, more confident, more comfortable, But
Speaker 1: the end point is the same. You're still being asked
Speaker 1: to look at your body and find something to fix.
Speaker 1: And when an entire industry profits from expanding the list
Speaker 1: of things you can fix, that list rarely gets shorter.
Speaker 1: It gets more detailed, more specific, more personal, until even
Speaker 1: the parts of your body that were never meant to
Speaker 1: be evaluated this closely are suddenly up for critique, And
Speaker 1: once beauty standards reach this level, it's not about improving
Speaker 1: the body anymore. It's about managing it. Here's what lingers.
Speaker 1: For years, we've been told beauty standards are becoming more inclusive,
Speaker 1: more flexible, less rigid. But trends like this suggest something
Speaker 1: else is happening too. They're not disappearing, they're spreading into
Speaker 1: smaller details, more private spaces, parts of the body you
Speaker 1: were never meant to analyze this closely, And once a
Speaker 1: standard reaches that level, it doesn't feel like beauty anymore.
Speaker 1: It starts to feel like surveillance, Like you're being asked
Speaker 1: to look at yourself from the outside, constantly checking, adjusting, refining,
Speaker 1: and to leave in your most private, unexamined self isn't
Speaker 1: off limits. And that's the shift, not just what we're changing,
Speaker 1: but how much of ourselves were expected to monitor in
Speaker 1: the first place. So the next time you hear about
Speaker 1: a subtle enhancement you didn't know existed, pause, because sometimes
Speaker 1: the most revealing question isn't does this work, it's who
Speaker 1: benefits from me? Believing this needs fixing. Friends, we have
Speaker 1: come to the end of the episode. I would like
Speaker 1: to apologize for maybe rushing through the episode, but my
Speaker 1: allergies today there was a lot of sneezing involved. I
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe properly. I couldn't breathe through my nose. There
Speaker 1: was some mucus involved. I mean, it's kind of gross.
Speaker 1: It's disgusting. I'm sorry that I shared the details with you,
Speaker 1: but this is the reason why this this episode seems
Speaker 1: a little bit I don't know, rushed through, and I
Speaker 1: didn't mean it to be. Sometimes you just got to
Speaker 1: get things done and today was one of those days
Speaker 1: where I needed to get this episode done. But anyway,
Speaker 1: if you enjoyed this episode of Beauty and Long, pass
Speaker 1: it along to your friends, your group chat, your co workers,
Speaker 1: your family, anyone who would benefit from listening to something
Speaker 1: like this, and don't forget to rate and review the
Speaker 1: show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps more
Speaker 1: people find the podcast. Until next time, my love buckets,
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves and each other, and stay curious always.
Speaker 1: You'll hear from me again next week, and hopefully I
Speaker 1: won't have allergies. Ye clock. Make kick tample clap like
Speaker 1: tick tack. You should kick tamp. Tap up kick tam tap.
Speaker 1: Please kick tam