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loise had hated her
vagina since she was
eight years old.
She was in the bath
with her step-sisters
one summer’s day when
her step-mum pointed out she had an
“outie” while they all had “innies”. Her
sisters began teasing her incessantly.
“I realise now that it’s not such an
irregular occurrence, but back then
I only wanted to look like my sisters,”
says Eloise, now 23.
“I was so unhappy and broken about
it, from that point onwards I literally
didn’t let anyone see me naked.”
High school was a constant battle
to avoid change rooms and intimate
encounters. After puberty, it became
uncomfortable to wear a swimsuit and
participate in sports because of chafing.
Sex education classes only made
things worse when they showed labelled
diagrams of supposedly perfect neat
vulvas that looked nothing like her own.
Eloise thought she must be so abnormal
that she was too scared to even tell girl-
friends or her mum about it.
“I thought if I talked to my mum
about the problem she’d take me to
doctors to get poked and prodded like
a freak,” she says.
When Eloise was around 15 she
discovered that her “problem” might
have a solution. Labiaplasty – surgery to
alter or remove part of the labia minora
(the inner vaginal lips) so it more closely
resembled textbook images of vaginas.
She stored the information away.
Shortly after, Eloise fell in love
PHOTOGRAPHED BY GETTY IMAGES. NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED for the first time and trusted her
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