Embarrassing Bodies

Although I can hardly bear to watch some of the surgeries, I think Embarassing Bodies is by far the best medical show on TV, providing help and hope to a wide variety of people who haven't found it elsewhere.

Patients fall largely into two categories. The first are those whose general practitioners have not yet referred them to the right specialists (or, sometimes, to any). Since insurance isn't usually a barrier in the U.K., I chalk that up to the inevitable range of competencies of doctors.

The larger group are people who have been too embarrassed to seek help, until they can no longer tolerate their situation. We do see efforts to help folks with rotted teeth, bad odors, fungus-ridden feet, or odd scars, but a lot of segments deal with the "private" parts. And no wonder the patients haven't sought treatment, since so many of us, both here in the U.S. and those in Britain, were trained to be embarrassed and ashamed to talk or even think about breasts, genitals, and the rear end -- anything remotely sexual or excretory.

The three "host" doctors occasionally treat cases or offer advice, but more often refer patients to specialists. Surgeries, when needed, are shown in full gory detail. The doctors also travel the nation, using wild visual aids to educate people - especially teens and 20-somethings - about counterproductive habits from binge drinking to tanning to unprotected sex. In my mind, they do a tremendous service, and televising helps get the word out.

Some of the conditions treated are life-threatening, but many are not: giant facial scars, massive rolls of flesh on persons who have lost 150 pounds (11 stone) or more, odors, and yes, the grossly asymmetrical labia. But all these folks are suffering, from the one whose boobs are sagging to the man missing half a face. They're suffering emotionally or mentally, as well as physically.

Surely by now we can strive for parity between mental health and physical health. Each person's sense of self is bothered, in a way that I imagine is not qualitatively different from the dysphoria felt by transsexuals. And similarly, all these folks deserve our sympathy and our help, and Drs. Dawn, Christian, and Pixie should be damned proud to be part of it.

The show is very, very gory. It's also very educational, especially to those of us raised like mushrooms and kept in the dark. And it's fascinating. Well done!

A woman comes in with normal labia that are slightly larger than average and the doctor just recommends unnecessary plastic surgery. Labia come in all shapes and sizes. It is not ethical to advocate plastic surgery to fit some cookie cutter mold. I guarantee your partner will not care about the size of your labia. The entire show feels like an infomercial for plastic surgery.

i was shocked that the doctor told a woman to have her labia cut off! that is beyond damaging and unprofessional! there was nothing wrong with her vagina! my lips are longer than hers and its perfectly normal. i would never cut myself and never tell someone they were abnormal. this show supports unhealthy body image and unrealistic expectations. patients with labia on the larger side should be encouraged to go to counseling and learn to love themselves.

This show shouldn't even be allowed to exist. They lure people in with the intention of helping them just to show their bodies before giving them horrible recommendations before sending them away. I was horrified when they told a woman to have surgery on her perfectly normal labia. I turned it off right there.

It's terrible how a show that claims to want to destigmatize things does just the opposite, for example in the episode in which a woman doubts whether her inner labia are normal. This woman literally said she just wanted to know if her labia are normal or abnormal. The first sentence the "doctor" says the moment she looks at the labia is "Allison, you've got quite a lot of excess skin around here". On the standing observation she says "from here I can see straight on that they're sticking right down and normally you wouldn't get that appearance". In the few sentences the doctor has said, she calls something that is absolutely not unhealthy and also absolutely not rare, abnormal. The fact that the woman herself had the choice to have the surgery or not does not alter the fact that not one attempt was made to normalize something normal (on the contrary). The media spreads a certain image of the vagina causing many women and men to no longer have a realistic image of the great diversity that actually exists in that area. Because of that many women are ashamed of their own normal, natural, healthy labia and undergo surgery. As a result the group of woman with large labia (and a lot of them with larger labia than the woman in this episode) shrinks. Functional complaints are often used as an excuse while the reason in most of the cases is actually purely aesthetic (to get rid of insecurities). This is not a complaint against the woman who undergo this kind of surgery. I understand them very well. This is a complaint against media starting and fueling insecurities and then making money out of them. Embarrassing bodies has done this too. With this episode, embarrassing bodies only managed to make a lot of women feel bad over something that is absolutely normal and supported the industry that makes money from peoples insecurities. I do not believe that this program serves the purposes it claims to serve, quite the contrary.