Everywhere you go, you'll find someone or the other telling you exactly how you should be more ladylike. You'll find specifically designed razors for women in a shopping aisle letting you know that female hair is okay only on their heads and not on their bodies, you'll find waxing strips and fairness creams everywhere and last but not the least, specially designed products to clean, freshen and cover up the actual smell that a female body carries with her, like vaginal odor.
Women are often reminded that their natural smell is actually something bad and should be masked. There are a number of douches everywhere you go nowadays to remind you that the odor you have down there is actually unhealthy and shouldn't be there.
Is a douche really required?
What is funny is the fact that these products are actually not even required in the first place. If you're surprised by this piece of information then you're deep in the web of the commercial traps. Douching is a very well known practice which requires spraying liquid into the vagina in an effort to make the vagina feel fresh and clean. However, it isn't really required and if someone asks you ‘can you douche when your pregnant’ tell them not to invest in stupid things.
The web of commercialization
The thought process is simple when it comes to how manufactures project their products. If something smells, it's definitely unclean and needs something to make it smell better. Everything that smells should be washed. This is how deodorants have been selling since ages making people feel that if you smell, there is definitely something wrong with you, so you might as well fake it and cover up the smell.
Douching is something that is still used widely. 4 years ago, 20 percent of the women in the United States of America, was reported to be still using douching.
The vaginal odor is natural and important
Feminine odor is thought of as bad bacteria which must be removed and is considered unclean and unhygienic.
However, there is a lot more to this than you would guess. The vaginal odor isn't something that's bad and most importantly it isn't something that you should or can, was clean. The vaginal odor that is so stigmatized actually has a name. It's called vaginal flora and it's not really the problem but it's an end, it's a solution. The vagina is a battlefield where both friendly and unfriendly bacteria fight to dominate. When you wash your vagina very often, there is a high risk of making the vagina extremely vulnerable for unfriendly bacteria to grow and dominate. When the unfriendly bacteria does that, it will result in an infection that causes itching, odor and will leave your vagina feeling dry.
This is a complete contradiction because douching is supposed to be relieving these symptoms and instead is the propagator of it. When the bad bacteria grows it is called bacterial vaginosis (BV) and it is the root cause of-of any and every vaginal odor problem. So the cycle is simple. Basically, the douche will create the problem that it's supposed to be relieving you from, thereby making you think that you're getting relief when you wash the area down there but it comes back in a few hours time. The only solution to this is to stop douching, especially douching pregnancy and to embrace your vaginal scent.
