Personal hygiene

[Pepperedbeef]

I read a twitter exchange arising from an article about poor female genital hygiene. One user said, “unperfumed soap and water, it’s not hard girls”. Lots of people responded saying you should never use soap on your vagina. The reply was “not inside it, no but on the folds”. This left some dumbfounded. Do some females really think that no cleaning agent should be used in the area at all?!

Sorry, I meant that for spam

Sparkling my general approach is that if I don’t feel something needs discussing, I don’t visit and comment on the thread, I leave it to those who clearly do.

Well it seems you really want to discuss this.

Well deduced sparkling

We're 6 pages in and I just want to know what the assertion is? That women should indeed wash their vulvas or what?
I'm not clutching my pearls at the mention of vaginas and douching but what's the issue here? That as women we should be more mindful of our vaginas, smelly or otherwise?

Vlad, not really. I think all women know they should wash their genitals but it’s the not knowing that the pubic area and vulva generally need more than water, whereas neither soap nor water should go in the vagina. I think some see the whole area as the vagina. Based on the responses to the twitter exchange I mentionned.

Someone mentioned up thread that vaginas do have an odour but shouldn't smell like death. Yes, of course but I have myself sometimes worried about this as I don't know what's normal. I wash daily, sometimes twice but even so by the end of the day there is a musky smell. I'm well into middle age but still sometimes feel insecure about this. And no, I don't have an infection.

Someone mentioned 'smells' at a smear test - I'm more worried in case my feet smell! They are just as much 'in her face' as my bits, and in the 'heels together, knees apart' position it's prob difficult to determine which smells. Hopefully neither.

onlyconnect I think 'musky' is normal.

Hope so anyway.

If nothing else, this thread has given normal people something else to worry about.

What the hell is this doing back, and in the sex topic of all things? I will accept the op has been around for a while, doesn’t stop this thread being creepy and unnecessary. Or is MNHQ now encouraging these type of extremely personal threads/replies on their forum? Do they no longer care for encouraging the perverts and story lifters?

only me too. I like to shower the muskiness away but to me it sounds a perfectly normal odour for the end of a day. The woman I was talking about had a strong fish odour

edmund this is publicly accessible forum that allows anonymity, hosting a multitude of discussions. It’s not a .org.

The pervs and misogynists are going to be all over this one.

Edmundcleverclogs one if the things I love about Mumsnet is that things can be discussed that are difficult to approach in real life. You don't have to join in or even look at a thread if you don't want to.

If this thread was so important to discuss, why has it been hidden in the Sex topic? Why on earth does even qualify for sex, female hygiene has nothing to do with sexuality (in this context).

I have no issues with discussion - however this thread isn’t helpful to anyone. All I see is yet more oversharing of intimate stories (that posters will then be horrified somehow ended up in a newspaper or on some daytime shitshow) or just general scare stories that will make women once again worry about their own bodies unnecessarily. The chances of a woman’s genitalia actually smelling that bad is minimal, perpetuating the idea you can smell them as you’ve described earlier in the thread is ridiculous. The fact it’s only speaking about women is misogynistic, the whole thread is giving some pervert somewhere plenty of material.

but it’s the not knowing that the pubic area and vulva generally need more than water,

do you know OP, I would be interested in discusing this, except that several people have come on and said NO you don't need more than water, the advice is water only, and water is fine, and you have simply not engaged with that at all, you have decided, all on your own that everyone needs to use soap/showergel on their pubis etc.

edmund That’s some overthinking.

steppe I haven’t failed to engage. The issue is that when the advice is water only, I believe that is generally relating to the vagina, and I agree with that advice. Other women don’t seem to realise this so fail to adequately clean. But don’t take my word for it
www.nhs.uk/Livewell/vagina-health/Pages/keep-vagina-clean.aspx

Yesterday we had that vile finger-in-mouth thread. Then someone reanimated a zombie thread about garlic-smelling foofs; and now this. It's obviously a theme this month.

How is it overthinking? MN has been inundated with perverts wanting stories about bodily functions recently. Many stories also end up in papers or even discussed on tv programmes. I fail to see how this thread is an informative or balanced discussion, especially with the language used and facts presented. As I also said, if it was a discussion worth keeping, it would still be in AIBU, not Pervert Forum Central.

I agree, @EdmundCleverClogs.

I have no idea why

a) it's been reinstated
b) it's been put into the sex topic

So MN is only for balanced informative discussion? I watch newsnight for that Edmund.

And zzzz no confusion over vagina/vulva. I used the word “folds” in place of vulva, another poster stepped in