The hymen cannot reveal virginity, whatever tradition claims
For centuries the hymen was treated as proof of virginity, and so-called virginity tests persist in some cultures today. Anatomy tells a different story: this thin membrane varies enormously between people, often stretches rather than tears, and says little reliable about sexual history. International health bodies condemn such testing as harmful.
The hymen is a thin fold of mucosal tissue that surrounds or partly covers the vaginal opening and forms part of the vulva. Its name comes from a Greek word for a thin skin or membrane, and many other mammals have one too, because their reproductive development follows a similar path. It is densely supplied with nerves.
It takes shape in the womb. The genital tract develops from the third week of pregnancy into the second trimester: by week nine the Müllerian ducts have moved down to meet the urogenital sinus, by week twelve they have fused into a primitive canal, and by month five the vagina has opened and the fetal hymen has formed where those structures meet. It normally develops an opening before birth or shortly afterwards.
Its appearance changes throughout childhood. In newborns, still influenced by their mother's hormones, it is thick, pale and folded, and the baby's own hormones keep it that way for two to four years. In young children it is often crescent-shaped, although many forms are normal and each has a Latin-derived name. The opening widens by roughly a millimetre per year of age, and at puberty oestrogen makes the tissue far more elastic. Adult variations run from thin and stretchy to thick and fairly firm, and occasionally there is no hymen at all.
Older medicine assumed first intercourse must always damage it, and even misread it as a sign of female hysteria. Sources now disagree on how often tearing or bleeding actually happens, and small injuries can heal by themselves. The only variant that typically needs treatment is an imperforate hymen, which blocks the vaginal canal completely and affects about 1 to 2 in every 1,000 infants; minor surgery lets menstrual fluid escape.
Source: Hymen
