Women’s experience and perspectives toward genital cosmetic surgery: A qualitative study

Abstract Background Nowadays female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) has become quite popular, which has led to a broad variety of medical and social implications. After these surgeries, most women experienced anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric conditions. The present study was carried out in order to explore women’s perspective and experience toward genital cosmetic surgery based on their context and cultural aspects.Methods This study is a qualitative content analysis and collected data were analyzed through the approach introduced by Graneheim and Lundman (2004) after interview with nine women who experienced genital cosmetic surgeries in the city of Erbil, Kurdistan-Iraq in 2021-2022. ResultsAfter semi-structured interviews which carried out with participants, the main themes, including “husband satisfaction” and “self-confidence” have been extracted. Some relevant subthemes and meaning units like “ugly appearance”, “anxiety related to husband undesirable intercourse”, and “dyspareunia” were retrieved from the participants’ stories, and the related conclusions of each theme were explored.Conclusion Study findings suggest that female genital cosmetic surgery improves the women’s body image and sexual function and the couples’ sexual satisfaction, especially that of husbands. Because of people sociocultural aspects in Kurdistan region, they need to be more aware of female sexual needs and marital relationship. To investigate the issue more, conduction of further studies is recommended.