Scarleteen

hello! i have a health related question i was wondering about, but it’s kind of embarrassing.

even though i’m in my 20s, i only recently started masturbating, and i’m scared that maybe i messed something up in my vagina because of it. i dont look down there with a mirror very often, but when i did look a few years ago, it was pretty much smooth inside.

the other day, however, i felt a little sore after using a sex toy penetratively (body safe silicone vibrator, used with lube, and i was definitely turned on and loose enough, so i don’t think that was the problem), so i took a close look again, and now there’s extra skin there that wasn’t there before?

i’m not talking about the inner labia either, i mean like actually inside of that. it looks sort of like the texture of a brain, pink and squiggly, coming out of + covering the actual vaginal hole which goes up deeper. i don’t know if maybe my hymen broke and all this tissue was in there already and now its just more visible because it’s not being held back, or if i have abnormal tissue growth or an infection or something. there hasn’t been any blood or anything, and i am pretty sure it’s not an STD either because i’ve never had partnered sex before and have never even kissed anyone.

i did actually go to the obgyn, but i got too embarrassed to explain it very well, and she just did a swab and said my labia looked normal and that i didn’t have any labial skin tags and that everything was fine, but i wasn’t talking about that!

even in all the pictures i’ve seen online of vulvas + vaginas, i can’t find any reliable sources where someone is holding their inner labia apart so you can see what the actual inner vagina tissue is supposed to look like. it seems smooth on all the medical diagrams, though, so i don’t think what i have going on is normal and im pretty scared it could be an infection or even cancer or something that the doctor missed because i didn’t explain it right. help!

Hi there, Katya, and welcome to the boards.

Only someone who could examine you in person could say for sure, but it's sounding to me like you're describing is one common way corona/hymenal tissue can tend to look as that tissue gradually erode4s and changes over time, as it nearly always will. The hymen rarely breaks: instead, what that issue usually does is wear away over years and decades (which is why it can look different from one year or phase of life to the next), until there's usually just a ring of it left that you can feel the texture of with your fingers, but often won't see unless you're really up in there.

It's not on you to explain something "right" to a healthcare provider so they can do their job, don't worry! I feel certain, given what you have described, the fact that you had a full exam, and what your provider said, that this is not something you have to worry about.

I'm happy to speak more to details as I can or answer more questions this answer might bring up.

hi heather,

thank you so much for answering me, it’s good to know its probably not something to worry about for dangerous health reasons.

ig i do have some more follow up questions, tho, and sorry for so many, because i still don’t like the look of it visually or the feeling of touching it. it’s sort of seems like it gets irritated or sore easily. (re: soreness, the doctor said to try hydrocortisone on the vulva, but if it hurts internally can you use that there too or are you just out of luck since you aren’t supposed to get even water or soap up there? and if you do get some up there by accident, how long do you wait til the vagina has cleaned itself out naturally and you will feel normal again?!)

i’ll even feel wet but not actually have anything come out, since i wonder if maybe the corona tissue blocks it? i don’t get really naturally wet near my vaginal entrance when i touch myself anyway, even when I’m turned on and have come from clitoral stimulation already; i only feel wetness when i stick my fingers or a toy much further up. so i just end up using a lot of water-based lube and feeling like sticky chemicals there instead, but even then still sore/irritated sometimes too.

also i sometimes have cramps for a few days before i actually start bleeding when i get my period, so i wonder if maybe the extra tissue is slowing blood from actually getting out too?

speculating aside tho, is there anything you can do to get rid of that extra corona/hymen skin? would it wear away to be less disruptive if i just keep masturbating even despite the soreness, and eventually have sex someday too?

or alternatively, would there be a way to medically get it removed? i don’t care about preserving it for “virginity” reasons, since i know that’s all basically fake. i’d just rather not have that tissue if it’s not serving a purpose, will just decay anyway eventually, and might even be a hindrance.

Will hop on these for you in a bit!

So, I suspect some of your discomfort around it probably is more psychological than physical, like, more about discomfort with how the vulva and such actually looks than your idea of how it should, especially since it' yours. In other words, I suspect some of this is a body image issue that's more likely to be "solved" by some work that supports that than any kind of cosmetic or medical approach to your actual physiology.

This anatomy won't be getting in the way of lubrication. I feel certain that if it did have that capacity, your description of it would be very different and that the OB/GYN you saw would have noticed that. It also should not be causing you soreness, especially since that tissue doesn't even have nerve endings of its own to feel soreness of it. It also is not going to be getting in the way of menstrual flow like you are imagining. It's not uncommon to have cramps before flow starts, and it's not like days of flow could just be hanging out in your vaginal canal, because gravity, and this tissue not being something sealing your vaginal opening. Make more sense? (There are medical accounts of people literally having babies with septate hymens that *do* partially block the vaginal opening and for some of them, that issue even REMAINED after the birth -- it's very stretchy tissue that generally just moves out of the way of things.)

If, though, in fact, this part of your anatomy is actually causing you physical problems, like playing some part in dryness, causing infections or causing you physical discomfort, by all means, I'd suggest following up with a healthcare provider about that. Could one of them remove some of it for you surgically? Yep. And cosmetic surgeons will do that for people without there needing to be a medical reason (though it obviously is something insurance or national health isn't likely to cover).

But since I do feel like this is probably more about your head than your vag, my personal advice would be not to go to an elective surgery as a first-line response. Again, if there are health issues, then by all means, see what a specialized healthcare provider says and you probably will want to follow that advice and guidance. You can also ask a healthcare provider about any of this even if it is more about your emotional feelings than physical ones. Seasoned OB/GYNs have usually encountered many, many patients with vulvovaginal body image issues: this is, unfortunately, a very common issue thanks to the misogynist culture we all have been soaking in all our lives. . A therapist is someone else you could talk to. Or here: happy to keep talking with you myself.

If you choose not to do anything, perhaps because there isn't anything medically to be done or that needs doing, it will just often continue to wear away (not decay, like you said -- that's not what happens: it wears away with the cells just wearing off rather than dying). There's no telling how soon or in what shape it will though, so if you have it in your mind there is a "right" way for it to look or a right amount, again, that sounds more like a body image issue that is probably best addressed by working on that, be it with a therapist or on your own with reading books, working through your own feelings, etc.

There are a lot of great lubes out there, and lube is something most folks will either need or just want, so if you want some help finding better lubes, just as part and parcel of being on a sex ed site, since it's a nearly universal thing, happy to do that, too!

I also wanted to offer you some things to look at since it sounded like you had a hard time finding them. It's much harder to try and put our bodies in context without...well, context.

I wanted to be sure you saw this piece of ours, here: https://www.scarleteen.com/article/bodi ... urround_it It has some illustrations.

But also:
• You'll find a bunch of medical pieces on hymens here, and this page includes some medical photos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/im ... logy/hymen
• More: https://medizzy.com/feed/6072826 (Again, for anyone in a not-private place or who gets some kind of way about anatomy, there are anatomical close-ups here)