Ladies — Please Stop Douching, Steaming, and Powdering your Vagina
By: Carlyn Beccia
Tags: Humor, Women, Feminism, History, Self

Flash forward one week after my douching experiment. My legs are splayed over the edge of an examination table as I silently count the ceiling tiles in my gynecologist’s office. I hear the crank of her cold speculum and her calming voice, “this might be uncomfortable.” Sure. It always is. But this time was different. Because it was not a routine Pap smear.

I had gone and messed up my lady bits.

After my exam, my gynecologist spoke to me in that pedantic tone reserved for women who didn’t pay attention in third-grade biology. She explained that by douching, I had flushed away good bacteria, which led to an overgrowth of bad bacteria. Not only did I drop a napalm bomb on my vaginal ecosystem, but douching put me at a higher risk for ovarian and cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, reduced fertility, bacterial vaginosis, and contracting HIV.

I folded my arms over my paper gown and nodded my head in silence. I didn’t need to be doc-splained bacteriology. I needed a therapist to knock me on the side of the head and convince me to ditch the misogynist lover.

I turned to my friends instead.

I was surprised to learn how many of my female cohorts douche regularly. 1 in 5 women douches and more than 50% of women do so because they have been encouraged by their partner. One well-intentioned friend explained I was “doing it all wrong.” Apparently, douching is “ghetto.” For ultimate freshness, I should be “steaming my vagina.”

“Excuse me? Steam….what??”

For those of you who are not familiar with the practice of treating your vagina like a wrinkled shirt, vagina steaming or “V-steaming” is squatting over a steaming pot of fresh herbs to cleanse your vagina. Although it is marketed as “vagina” steaming, it really should be called vulva steaming. (If we are going to do stupid shit to our body, let’s at least name the correct body part.)

This spa treatment might sound harmless, but steam can burn. One woman learned this the hard way when she experienced second-degree burns after steaming her vulva.

Do me a favor — go ask your male friends if they would risk second-degree burns to cleanse their scrotum and penis. I think you know what the answer will be. So why do women torture a body part that is already pretty darn perfect?

To answer that question, let’s examine the complex history of female hygiene.

A brief history of vile vaginas

Dangerous female sexuality is nothing new. Mermaids drowned sailors in their amniotic fluid. The succubus ravaged men while they slept. In Russian folklore, women scared bears away by flashing their genitalia. And my personal favorite, the vagina dentata — a vagina with teeth — castrated men. (Sidebar that is not helping my argument: a toothed vagina is a real medical condition in which a woman’s vagina has Ovarian Teratomas — dermoid cysts composed of hair, teeth, and bone. The condition is very rare.)

If a vagina could sprout canines and have enough erotic power to tame bears, the vagina needed taming too…or at least a strong industrial solvent.

What do toilets and your vagina have in common?

The word “douche” is French for “wash.” Throughout antiquity, douches with honey, wine, olive oil, or vinegar were used to wash away pregnancy. (No, douching does not prevent pregnancy. If only wine slowed sperm…)

In 1832, the father of American birth control, Dr. Charles Knowlton, also recommended douching after sex. Macbeth’s witches would have cackled at his concoction — pearls, alum, salt, and ‘sulfite of zinc.’ Although this did have a contraceptive effect, it did so by damaging both sperm and delicate vaginal tissue.

By 1880, physicians turned to a mixture of carbolic acid and water to annihilate the girl cooties. Carbolic acid was used in embalming fluid, so this probably worked best on a cadaver’s vulva.

By the 1920s, Lysol hopped on the shame train and marketed its disinfectant as douching contraception. Lysol contained cresol — a corrosive compound used today in crude oil, wood preservatives, and explosives. Cresol caused burns in lucky women and death in the unlucky ones.

But if you didn’t pickle your vagina with toilet bowl cleaner…your husband might leave you. Your choice.

Lysol was not the only disinfectant promising to cleanse the cesspool between your legs. In the 1930s, Zonite was the “germicide” solution to destroy “odor-causing waste substances.”

Methodshop on Flickr

Clearly, ladies could not be blamed for their smelly crotches if they didn’t know the “physical facts.” But what 1930s women really didn’t know was that Zonite contained sodium hypochlorite — a weak bleach. Ouch.

A sprinkle of cancer

If fumigating your vagina with bleach didn’t celebrate your femininity, then Johnson & Johnson had the solution — talcum powder. In the 1950s, women were told to use baby powder to absorb moisture and odor. Decades of advertising fed fears of women’s freshness and resulted in a far more odious crime — baby powder caused ovarian cancer.

In February of 2020, a jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay 750 million dollars in damage. Johnson & Johnson recently agreed to stop selling baby powder in the U.S. and Canada.

Fear is sometimes stronger than science

While “scrotal soap” will never find a market, douching continues to be a multi-billion dollar industry. In a recent survey, 50% of women who douched believed it was good for their health. When asked why they said it made them feel “fresh” and “clean.” Most of these women were unaware douching causes severe health issues like cancer and reduced fertility. And most did not know it would aggravate the problem they were trying to alleviate — smell.

Men are also not lopping off their too big bits. Between 2002 and 2012, labiaplasty increased by 500 percent. When a man’s anatomy bulges out of his jeans, he is a virile stud. But a labia poking through yoga pants…that’s disgusting “camel toe.” Why? Perhaps if women learned how marvelous their vaginas were, then we might stop punishing them. That’s at least my hope.

Culture is catching up. For years, we valorized the phallic at the penis museum, but this year, the first vagina museum opened. Museums like this not only glorify the feminine but also dispel myths.