I’m Here To Tell You Your Vagina Will Get Longer As You Age

In 2012 I was 36. My then-husband and I went to the theater to see Wanderlust. While I don’t remember much of the movie, there’s a scene I can’t unsee and it involves mature women and their lady bits. In fact, it’s with me 14 years later. It still haunts my dreams because it showed me something I didn’t know was possible, but I’m here to tell you just how possible it is because it’s happened to me.

I’ll get to the point: I was comfy in my chair watching Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux visiting some free-spirited community, and on the big screen was a bunch of middle-aged and mature women running naked. In slow motion.

My eyes were wide as I watched their vaginal lips — which didn’t have much hair I might add — flopping as they ran. They were long lips, too. Very long. Much longer than mine were.

Naturally I asked my mother about it. “Is this just what … happens?”

“Yes,” she replied, expressionless. The hair falls out and the labia majora kind of gets … stretched out. It definitely gets longer.”

I’m here to tell you that elongation doesn’t discriminate. Now, as a 51-year-old woman who is dating, I’ve heard men tell me their balls have dropped and they now look between their legs and see something that resembles a lava lamp. Their tight balls have come, well, unhinged if you will. As luck would have it last year I noticed my vagina had gotten longer. I’d been waiting for this to happen and the wait was over.

Clothes that used to be comfortable started feeling different. At first I thought maybe I’d put on a few pounds or my weight had shifted or maybe even my pants had shrunk.

But I’d actually lost some weight and was always tugging on the crotch of my jeans. They just felt too short in that general … area.

The biggest realization was when I caught a glimpse of myself in my leggings at the gym. For the first time in my life, I had a camel toe. I’m certainly not shaming a camel toe by any means. But when something shows up on your body that wasn’t there before, you notice.

Naturally I ran home to examine myself closer and sure enough it looked like my lips had dropped.

I sucked in a breath — it had happened. But, much to my surprise, I was fine about it.

Over a decade ago I was petrified for my body to change and look different. Especially down there.

Just like all bodily changes, I’ve accepted it. Especially after talking to my gynecologist who told me it’s completely normal, some women have more sagging and stretching in that area, and it’s caused by collagen loss due to aging, hormones, and weight fluctuations.

Instead, I went out and got bigger pants and embraced my larger vag, because the alternative is to obsess about it, be uncomfortable and make it my second job to hide my lovely lips, which I’m not going to do after hiding parts of myself for so long.

I might even rock a camel toe at the gym once in a while and I couldn’t care less.

I’m certainly not going to have any kind of surgery to correct it, although that is, apparently, an option. (One of my friends had a labia majoraplasty and is so happy with the results.)

It’s comforting to know a quick surgery can take care of it if you’re uncomfortable. So far, my new length is more than tolerable and not as frightening as I thought when I first found out about it in my mid thirties.

For now, I’ll just do my due diligence and let you ladies know what’s to come. Like it or not, we stretch and grow in all our places.

Diana Park is a writer who finds solitude in a good book, the ocean, and eating fast food with her kids.