In the newspapers we often talk about hymens, about the restoration of virginity, about Italians who increasingly request this type of procedure. In 15 years of intense activity in the genital field, I have only had one Italian patient, who was also suffering from significant mental disorders, who asked me to reconstruct her hymen, which I obviously refused. The patients who come to me for hymenal reconstruction almost always come from North Africa, rarely Asia, sometimes from Eastern Europe (especially the Roma community). Among these populations, virginity is a social value that is often held in high regard. Marriages are agreed upon by each other’s families often at an early age. Life then leads to parting ways until the fateful moment in which he is asked (the only woman!) to account for his purity. A true story: a few years ago a 27-year-old Moroccan girl with a brilliant degree in language in Turin came to visit me in my studio. His family moved to the Cuneo area about 20 years ago. His father was a house painter, his mother was a housewife, his brothers were bricklayers. But she loved studying and was brilliant and her parents supported her choice. Before leaving Morocco the family had agreed on a marriage for her and her brothers. In her case the wedding had been postponed for a few years to allow her to graduate. And she had graduated with honors, found a job in a tourist agency and had set up a happy and independent life. One day the brothers knocked on her door and told her it was time to return to Morocco and get married. Her partner had been waiting impatiently for her for almost 20 years. He had built a house 50 km inland from Essaouira, a beautiful location on the Atlantic. The village had 3000 inhabitants, he was a baker. Amina hadn’t had any big affairs or even boyfriends for fear that the family would revolt. However, she had had intercourse and was no longer a virgin. When she asked me to reconstruct her hymen and she asked me in a kind, polite, affable way, in perfect Italian respecting the subjunctives and conditionals and the most rigorous courtesy formulas, it came naturally to me to ask her her story because I found it hard to believe. that an emancipated woman in my eyes wanted to undergo a procedure that culturally we struggle to understand. Amina replied to me that if she hadn’t married that man, who she didn’t love, but defined as a good Christ, the family would have repudiated her, she would have had to abandon her lifelong affections and forget about family ties. He also told me that neither his brothers nor his father would raise their hands. In short, it was a free and tragically conscious choice: forgetting her degree, emancipation and the Turin gianduiotto to move to a small country village with a man she had met as a child. And all this so as not to lose the bond with the family. “Amina, are you sure you’re doing this shit?” I asked her. The answer was peremptory: “Family bond comes first.” I operated on Amina who got married, lived in Egypt for three years and then fled to Italy.