More than half of all girls and women do not bleed when they lose their virginity. However, this loss of blood is still important in cultures where women are supposed to preserve their virginity until marriage. So women have found ways of meeting their environment's expectations.
Karima, a Dutch/Moroccan woman in her early twenties, has a secret: she had hymenoplasty, or hymen reconstruction surgery, shortly before her marriage. The hymen is the membrane which encloses the vaginal area.
"In my culture you cannot tell your parents or your family that you were not a virgin when you married. My mother would not survive it," she says. She only allows herself to be interviewed with a distorted face and voice so that she cannot be recognised.
Gynaecologist Ineke van Seumeren has doubts about the procedure. "I have always found it a problem to do something that really isn't necessary. It is not a disease." A few years ago she thought up a different solution. She wants to inform people that the correlation between an intact hymen and virginity is a myth.
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