“Clean and Fresh”: Understanding Women’s use of Vaginal Hygiene Products

AbstractWe explore Canadian women ’s use of vaginal hygiene products including feminine washes, douches, sprays, deodorants, wipes, and powders. Vaginal hygiene products in North America are part of a two billion dollar industry, which focuses on cleanliness and freshness in their advertising toward women. In interviewing women wh o were currently using or had previously used vaginal hygiene products, we found that vaginal cleanliness and freshness were also frequently brought up as reasons for using these products. Using an inductive thematic analysis informed by Braun and Clarke (2013) we explore how attaining a clean-and-fresh vagina has become a subjective physical need for the participants in our study. In a society where female genitalia are constructed as unclean, we argue the marketing of vaginal hygiene products contributes to the problematization of women ’s genitalia by suggesting women need to use these products to attain an ideal (i.e., clean and fresh) vagina. The reliance on vaginal hygiene products reported by participants in attaining sensations of vaginal cleanliness and freshness raises concerns in the context of medical literature suggest ing adverse health risks that may result from using some of these products. Potential risks include bacterial vaginosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and a higher susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections, among others. We believe that companies that advertise these products as beneficial fo r vaginal health a...
Source: Sex Roles - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research