Elongating the labia

Sexual practices vary per culture, even from tribe to tribe. Some practices are harmful, others are intriguing. How does Valentine respond to elongating the labia?

‘My friend has grown up in Kenya and currently lives in Uganda with the Buganda tribe and is about to get married. She realized that all women enlarge their labia with local medicine until it covers the whole private area. The reason is said to be to give more pleasure to the man. Is this really true? Do men in Uganda only love women with elongated labia?’

Well to start with, I wish ‘she’ had written to me instead of you, a very concerned friend.

Short, boring labia?

So let’s look at your ‘friend’s’ issue. She is about to marry a Buganda man and she is wondering whether he will love her with her short, boring, non-pleasuring natural labia? The kind of labia that has literally brought pleasure to billions of men on the planet. Well, frankly, only he can answer that, but I think a proposal and intent to marry might mean he cares for her, no?

Loving yourself

Another thing is that the Buganda have done this for years, but I do not know that it actually enhances male pleasure during sex in any measurable way. In fact, what I have heard is that the process of stretching the labia is very enjoyable and it makes young women get used to sexual pleasure at an early age. While women in other cultures are taught not to touch themselves and are shamed if they do, Buganda girls have the opposite experience and this allows them to participate in their sex lives more fully and without shame.

Measuring pleasure is hard

Measuring increased male pleasure in a scientific way would involve having men report how they felt during sex with women with elongated labia as opposed to regular labia, and as you can imagine that is hard to do. Reported sexual pleasure is hard to measure as it is largely influenced by culture.

Many Kikuyu women, for example, find the idea of sex with an uncircumcised man abhorrent and taboo so they might report that the sex was bad even when there might be no real physical difference.

Do make permanent changes for the sake of someone else

But back to your ‘friend’, is this man asking that she stretch her labia? Is she considering it simply to keep him? I urge that she thinks long and hard about this as it is a permanent change, very much like getting a tattoo of his name on her thigh. She should also consider that all this might not matter to him.

Do you think some cultural practices are outdated? Are there similar or different sexual practices in your tribe? We would really love to hear them on Love Matters Africa and Naija.