A very personal question.... have I been washing my bits wrong my whole life?

[ettieb]

As I am now heading towards the menopause I have been reading a few articles and one of them said that you should only wash your vagina/vulva with water and nothing else. (I'm a boy mum and not entirely sure what the difference is between a vagina and vulva and my mother never used either of these words!). I could never ask my friends in real life about this but I'm really keen to know if I'm doing it wrong. When I have a shower I wash with soap inside the vagina lips.. is this wrong?! I don't think I would feel clean doing this but in the article it said the vagina is self cleaning

Nah I don't do that. It would dry out my flaps

Just checked, the fem washes also have SLSs, so don't take my word for anything!!

^this.

I'm a boy mum and not entirely sure what the difference is between a vagina and vulva

If you can use MN, you can use Google.

Do you want women to describe in detail how they wash their genitals?

If you’re pre menopause you might get away with using soap etc but after menopause and you possibly start to get a bit “dry” and sore, soap might add to your soreness?

Water is ok for the vulva.
Gentle soap if you must for external/pubic areas.
Try it, nothing to lose.

Water only unless I’m on my period or it’s particularly sweaty. The tiniest bit of soap can cause immediate thrush (can’t use scented loo roll for example) so I’m extremely careful. I also don’t like making the skin feel ‘tight’

sparkling foof 😂😂😂 #goals

I've used shower gel or soap down there my whole life. Never had thrush.

Always used soap or shower gel - no problem.

There was a "vaginal deodorant spray" marketed in '70s that I tried, but was told it tasted foul so I stopped using it.

To those women that say they don't smell ; how can you be sure unless you're a contortionist & can get your nose close to your vulva ?

🤣🤣

If you were a girl mum would you have read the manual they come with?

Always give mine a good scrub with shower gel! Never had a uti or thrush or anything else wrong.

No soap on anything that doesn't grow hair.

Shower gel on other areas.

Fresh as a daisy and less risk of irritation.

Wash your genital area with proper soap not gels or overpriced products thought up by a marketing think tank who high fived themselves when they realised they had thought of a brilliant way to sell their product by telling anxious women their vaginas smell.

For those using soap… what soap do you use? I’ve always found it very drying but I think perhaps I need to look into “better ones than supermarket own brand”. I tend to just use my shampoo! (Which is off topic because I’m not just talking about my vulva now.)

If you were experiencing regular thrush or any other kind of infection or irritation it would make sense to stop using soap and see if that's the cause.

But the blanket advice not to use it seems OTT given there are obviously millions of women (and I'm one of them) using soap for decades with no issues at all.

I use epaderm, as I find soap irritating. It took some getting used to after a lifetime of soap, but definitely 'feels' clean still

I don't live in the UK, but I use Lactacyd for the vulva. It's a liquid gel with an acidic pH, adapted to the intimate region. There are other similar products in different European countries (and they are not douches).

At least five women have said they don’t have a smell from their vagina on this thread. Bullshit

It’s bloody normal. Can we all stop pretending ‘not me’ so our daughters don’t feel disgusting with inevitably it is them! Ffs.

Water only, give it a blast with the shower head. 70 here, my fragrant fanjo has never seen soap.

I recently had to have my bladder removed and now wee through a stoma.

After recovering from the operation I have noticed that my vulva now smells and gets sticky. I only ever wash with water as I did before. It occurred to me that normally it gets washed with urine several times a day too - which doesn't happen to me now. So a couple of times a day I soak a bit of loo paper in wee and wipe around - the smell and stickiness are gone.

My conclusion - if you have normal plumbing and no infections plain water is fine.

Always use soap or gentle shower gel (sanex) on the area between my legs - hairy bits and groin creases at top of legs (as well as bum). It’s an area that gets very sweaty when exercising!!

Some probably gets inside but I don’t deliberately put it there. Rinse thoroughly including inside vulva.

Never had an infection of any kind in my 49 years.

All this flaps and holes chat is making me titter 😂

I'm in the "wash the flaps with shower gel and no issues" camp

What's a "boy mum" OP?

This is going to sound a bit silly because, well, my nan was silly. But she was also trying to raise me as a previously abused child in the 1990s and 2000s when she was already in her 60s/70s.

Anyway, she told me, imagine where ‘the sun don’t shine.’ If you were a “naturalist,” standing around naked with your feet walking-width apart. The area between your legs that is completely open and hit by light can be washed normally with soap, shampoo, however you like. But the area that’s closed up, so that includes the area of the vulva where the clitoris and urethra are (separately) some or all of the labia minora, and the entrance to the vagina. And, as I’m sure most of us know our bodies by now - you can feel the skin there; it’s thinner and more sensitive than the rest of the vulva. Her answer was to keep soap away from these places. But use A TON of water. And it makes sense - areas that are open to the air 24/7 aren’t going to have a delicate pH balance. It’s the ones that are NOT constantly open to the air, like regular skin, that have to have their own pH balance.

And unfortunately, I definitely know that in the 80s, soap back then caused horrible stinging (part of my abuse; it may be a lot better now).