Since then we’ve hunted for the G-spot in bedrooms and laboratories. But enough of us came up empty-handed that it raised the question: Does the G-spot exist?

To find out, the Science Vs podcast visited Beverly Whipple, now a professor of nursing at Rutgers University, at her home in New Jersey.

Whipple told us that she found this magical spot while studying women who thought they were peeing during orgasms.

To study the women, Whipple’s team inserted their fingers into patient’s vaginas to feel around for sensitive areas. “You go all around the vaginal wall,” says Whipple — from 12 o’clock, to 3 o’clock, to 6 o’clock and so on — ‘saying how does this feel? How does this feel?’

“Between 11 and 1 o’clock”, at the front wall of the vagina, we got a lot of smiles.”

She scoured the literature and found one article that described what she’d seen, an that was published in an obscure journal in 1950 by Dr. Ernst Grafenberg.

And so, Whipple named the spot, the Grafenberg Spot, after Dr Ernst Grafenberg. It soon got shortened to the G-spot.

In 1982, she published her first book called, The G Spot and other discoveries of human sexuality. And from there she was invited by television network after television network, to tell the world about the G-spot.

Amid all the fame, a scientific question lingered: What, exactly, is the G-spot?

Helen O’Connell, now a professor of urology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, has dissected around 50 vaginas throughout her career and studied many more alive vaginas. She says her work “did not seem to show anything in the vaginal wall that would be a direct anatomical structure leading to that experience.” That is, nothing special in the vagina, where the G-spot should be.

Other scientists looking for the G-spot, haven’t had much luck either. One review of many studies on the G-spot published in 2001, called it “a sort of gynaecological UFO: much searched for, much discussed, but unverified by objective means.” A decade later, another review of the work looking at dozens of trials concluded that the studies “still fail to provide irrefutable evidence for the G-spot’s existence”.

Looking at Whipple’s original research, it’s far from irrefutable. One of her first studies into this, published in 1981, was on just one woman. A second study of 47 women found that they all had a sensitive spot but pressing it in the lab did not produce orgasms, for any of them. In her book she described 400 woman who had this spot but this sample was never published in a peer- reviewed journal. A later experiment in 1983 tested 11 women and found a spot in only four of them.

Still, pressing something in the vagina is making at least some women smile. What is it?

The consensus that O’Connell and other researchers have arrived at is that what Whipple had identified as the G-spot, isn’t a spot at all. It’s probably the clitoris, working with parts around it, like the urethra and vagina. But the clitoris is a much larger and more complicated organ than many people think. That bit that you can touch, is literally the clit of the iceberg.

In 1998, O’Connell published research showing that the clitoris has two arms that extend down, called the bulbs, and two legs that go back for up to 9 centimetres, called the crura.

Helen also discovered that clitoris, shares some of the same blood and nerve supply with the urethra and the walls of the vagina share. And later preliminary work, suggest that during sex the clitoris, urethra and vagina may push, prod and excite each other, kind of like puppies in a basket. So interconnected are all these parts that O’Connell, and others, now argue that they should get their own name. But, spot is out.

Complex is the new word. This area that women are pressing to get orgasms is now called the Clitoral, Urethral Vaginal Complex, or CUV Complex.

As catchy as the CUV Complex, O’Connell says that we should start using this anatomically correct term, because using the term “the G-spot”, makes it sound like all you have to do is find a spot, press it and whammo, multiple orgasms!

“That somehow if you touch it enough or thrust it harder, that somehow magic is going to occur. Well that’s just a really bad paradigm,” she says.

This infatuation with “finding the G-spot”, is something that Whipple regrets unleashing. “I guess we’ve misled people, because it’s more than one little spot, it’s a whole area,” she says.

In fact, Whipple always advocated for focusing on the fun stuff around sex, rather than hunting for magical spots. “Sometimes holding hands, or touching, whatever it is that feels good to you, is an end in itself,” she says.

Alright team, what’s your G-spot experience been? Have you mastered this mysterious area? Tell us where you stand in the comments section below!

source: news.com.au

The survey of 443 Australian GPs found a third have seen patients aged below 18 wanting to trim or shape their genitalia. Almost all the doctors surveyed said they had seen women of all ages express concerns about the appearance of their genitalia.

“The GPs surveyed said a large proportion of women have some degree of genital anatomy anxiety,” said head researcher Dr Magdalena Simonis, a fellow at The Royal College of General Practitioners, who revealed the survey’s preliminary findings.

The reasons for this anxiety included a “perception of normality based on images seen online”, particularly those in porn.

According to more than half the GPs surveyed, women who request genital surgery may have a range of mental health issues, including anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, depression or eating disorders.

GPs, plastic surgeons and gynaecologists have echoed the findings and say many women have a warped understanding of what is a “normal-looking” vagina, due to the rise of internet porn and photoshopped images of genitalia, and because more women are removing their pubic hair.

Between 2000 and 2011, Medicare claims for vulvoplasty and labiaplasty grew from 640 annually to 1565 per year, according to a Women’s Health Victoria report. Labiaplasty, often marketed as “vaginal rejuvenation”, involves removing excess folds of skin surrounding the vulva.

The US and UK have seen similar increases. The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says that 400 girls 18 and younger had labiaplasty last year, an 80 per cent increase from the 222 girls who had cosmetic genital surgery in 2014. A 2013 British report found the number of labial reductions on girls and women done by the UK National Health Service had increased fivefold over 10 years.

Dr Laith Barnouti from Australia Plastic Surgery, a Sydney clinic where labiaplasty and other “vaginal rejuvenation” procedures are regularly performed, says his practice has seen a 5-10 per cent increase in requests for genital surgery since January 2015. Most of his patients are aged between 15 and 30.

Dr Barnouti says only fully-qualified plastic surgeons, not cosmetic surgeons, should perform the procedure.

“We will not do this on someone with a normal labia, only those with very prominent labia. Many of these women are embarrassed about it and they avoid intimate situations.”

He said women who have the procedure performed by an unqualified surgeon risk permanent damage.

“We see people who have too much tissue removed and we need to do a reconstructive labiaplasty. Some of the doctors don’t understand the function of the labia. If you cut the labia flush with the skin, then the opening of the vagina will dry up and you can get ulcers,” he said.

Women are becoming increasingly insecure about how their genitalia look, says the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Professor Steve Robson.

“With the fad of removing a lot of pubic hair, women and their partners can see the labia in more detail,” he said. “Lots of women don’t think they’re normal because they compare themselves to unrealistic models.”

The best way to improve the problem is to reassure women that there is a wide variation in the way things look.

“If your genitalia look and function normally, you do not require an operation,” said Prof Robson, who only performs “one or two” of these operations a year.

“I would do a labiaplasty if there was really a great degree of asymmetry, or someone had big labia which become inflamed when they ride a bike or do other forms of exercise.

“Often women just want to please their partners. I’ve said to them: The problem is with your partner, not your vagina’.”

Dr Simonis’ preliminary findings come as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued guidelines to doctors last week to assist women who want to have genital surgery, The New York Times reported.

The college urged doctors to reassure these patients and suggest non-surgical alternatives that may alleviate discomfort and screen them for a psychiatric disorder that causes obsession about perceived physical defects.

Last July, the Royal College of General Practitioners issued guidelines for doctors on treating patients who request genital surgery, including recommending that they be directed to images of female genitalia that have not been digitally altered.

Source: news.com.au

What do you think about this new trend? Ladies, would or have you ever gone under the knife for this kind of procedure? Guys, have you ever had issue with the look of a partners parts? Hit us in the comments section below.