Designer Vagina? OMG What Next?

One of the world's most prestigious health journals has lashed a fast-growing trend in the United States and Britain for "designer vaginas," the tabloid term for cosmetic surgery to the female genitalia.

The fashion is being driven by commercial and media pressures that exploit women's insecurities and is fraught with unknowns, including a risk to sexual arousal, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says.

Known as elective genitoplasty, the surgery usually entails shortening or changing the shape of the outer lips, or labia, but may also include reduction in the hood of skin covering the clitoris or shortening the vagina itself.

Taking the quest for ideal beauty to the nether regions, more and more women are undergoing labial surgery. Doctors, though, warn that the procedure could have negative effects.

When women opt for elective vaginal cosmetic surgery, are they taking the obsession with physical beauty too far? The sharp increase in women wanting "designer vaginas" has prompted the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to warn women seeking the surgery to find alternative solutions to a procedure they say could have unknown risks.