Woman who underwent ‘designer vagina’ surgery after boyfriend’s cruel comments about her appearance reveals her surgery is hell and ‘indescribable pain’
A woman who is left with lasting medical problems after a botched cosmetic surgery for a “designer vagina” says the surgery has made it painful to have sex and she may never have children.
Melbourne’s Venesa Vaughn has detailed her hellish experience in a series of TikTok videos in which she revealed a marital breakdown and cruel comments from an ex-partner led her to believe she needed a labiaplasty.
However, the operation was so amateurish that Ms Vaughn suffered frequent urinary tract infections and severe pain when inserting a tampon.
During the botched labiaplasty, a cosmetic surgery to change the appearance of the vagina, her entire labia minora was amputated and her clitoral hood was removed.
Mr Vaughn said she discovered in 2020 that her then-husband was cheating on her and it led to a deep sense of insecurity about her appearance.
“In my head, I thought there was something wrong with me on a physical level,” she said in the TikTok video titled “Part 1 of my botched labiaplasty.”
“What I was thinking was, ‘I’m not looking straight down there.'”
“It had been bothering me for a while… a long time… when an ex-boyfriend of mine over 20 years ago said it was the worst vagina he’d ever seen.”
Ms Vaughn, who lists her occupation as a pediatric trauma/mental health coach, said she was “not really working” at the time she wanted to have a labiaplasty so money was a factor.
“So all the surgeons I looked at were charging between $6,000 and $8,000, while this particular doctor I found was charging around $3,500,” she said.
“His website was like a ‘labia correction specialist’, he’s the best, he’s this, he’s that and you know, he even spoke to me on the phone and I thought ‘wow, what great customer service’.”
Ms Vaughn said there were a number of red flags from the start.
He told her the operation would be performed in a hospital, but instead it took place at his clinic in a “10×10 foot room,” where Ms. Vaughn said people walked in and out while she underwent the procedure.
“It was so unprofessional,” she said.
The surgeon promised that the operation would be performed entirely with lasers and that no stitches would be required, but she was dismayed to see a fan sitting above the operating bed.
This was “so that the smell of your (lasered) burning skin goes up into the fan,” according to Ms. Vaughn, who was tied to a bed with her legs in the air while a nurse applied numbing cream to her genitals.
“So he’s clamping my labia minora on both sides and it’s going on for a really long time and he’s playing with it,” she said.
‘I don’t feel any pain, but I feel pulling. He continues cutting the skin and I hear the hissing.
“So my legs are in the air, he continues to take my skin off and then he says, ‘Oh, I have to go back to the left side and take more off because it’s a bit longer’.”
Ms Vaughn (pictured) has shared her experience of a botched labiaplasty to raise awareness
At one point, the doctor left the room for about half an hour, prompting Ms. Vaughn to ask one of the nurses to pick him up.
“Then he takes the clamps off and starts stitching me up, and I can see his nervousness,” she continued.
‘Every part of my body was screaming at me and I couldn’t do anything. At this point I’m thinking, why is he stitching me up? He said there were no stitches involved.”
“Then he starts sewing on the left side and I screamed and almost jumped off the bed, I said, ‘I feel that, so the anesthesia was gone’.”
Vaughn said she was in pain too great for words.
‘I can’t describe the pain, the burning of my labia was unbearable. “I’m a very strong person when it comes to pain, extremely strong, but this was more than that,” she said.
Ms Vaughn slept with ice packs between her legs for three weeks and spent one of those weeks in bed while she recovered.
“Three weeks went by and I could see that I had no labia tissue left,” Ms. Vaughn said.
“I now had a hole and the sides because he took it all off.”
Ms Vaughn said the first time she had sex was “horrifying”, adding that it took many adjustments to give her anything of a normal love life.
Vaughn has since sued the surgeon and received a settlement, but says she is now reluctant to have children because of the trauma.
Ms Vaughn said her surgeon disappeared for half an hour during her surgery (stock image)
In retrospect, Ms Vaughan now says there was nothing wrong with her original vagina and that is a message she would like to convey to other women.
“I would like to take this opportunity to let all women know that your vulvas are fine just the way they are,” she wrote in the caption of the TikTok.
“If you’ve ever been cheated on or told you’re not good enough, that’s just a reflection of how the other person feels.”
Dozens of women thanked Ms. Vaughn for sharing her story.
‘Thank you for sharing your story. I had a similar experience and have now been abandoned too, it’s so incredibly devastating,” one person wrote.
“I’ve thought twice about it, but I’m not getting one. Your videos have been incredibly helpful,” a second woman commented.