Kourtney Kardashian and my ‘hoo-ha’: let’s not beat around the bush

Let’s not beat around the bush.

Earlier this year, Beauty Bay, Cult Beauty, Harvey Nichols and more of the world’s biggest beauty retailers decided to take on a range of intimate ‘pampering products’. Which is to say, a range of creams, serums, exfoliators, mist, sheet masks (!) and highlighters (!!!) for your vulva. Yeah, you read that right.

Because this is the world we live in now.

The range is called – wait for it – The Perfect V.

Yeesh. Yikes. Whole lotta nope from me.

Because ladies, once you’ve sculpted out your cheekbones with four shades of contour, titty-taped your boobs to peak perkiness and given yourself organ damage from your control pants, don’t forget that the vulva needs faceting and highlighting like a diamond too.

The Perfect V call themselves “the first-ever luxury range of intimate pampering products”, you know, for the fancier vaginas.  They also claim to be dermatologist and gynaecologist tested. I would like to meet these dermatologists and gynaecologists.

Prices start from €21.50, and the range is “formulated to rejuvenate, enhance and beautify” your vulva. I mean, I don’t really know where to go with that. I’m tired.

You might remember the outrage about the range earlier this year, and I didn’t get involved, because sometimes I remember that when the Internet tries to give me brain damage with infuriating news stories, I can type furious diatribe until steam comes out of my laptop, but I also have the option to get off social media and just hang out with my cat instead. So I let it go.

But today, Kourtney Kardashian decided to give you a guide to “Non-Toxic Feminine Washes That Won’t Harm Your Hoo-Ha” – the real title – on her website Poosh, so here we go again.

The article begins, “Friendly reminder that traditional body washes and soaps are full of chemicals that seep into your skin.” I have a friendly reminder too: traditional body washes and soaps and non-traditional body washes and soaps, and every single other beauty product in your bathroom and mine contains chemicals. I urge the writers of Poosh and beauty fans around the world to research the meaning of the word ‘chemicals.’

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Your vulva is a glorious, self-cleaning, life-giving machine of whimsy. If you think something is going on down there that you’re not sure about, please visit your GP, and not a Kardashian website with affiliated links for lavender-scented soaps. Feminine washes and sheet masks for your vulva are items developed, designed, shipped directly from the patriarchy. Your vagina is fine.

Equally as offensive are the terms used. “Keep your yoni healthy.” “Safe for your precious parts.” “Gift your hoo-ha.” Can we just… Vulva is not a dirty word. Say it with me! Vulva! That’s it’s name!

Lynn Enright is the author of Vagina: A Re-Education, the best book about your vagina which should be made required school reading. “It’s so great that we are becoming more comfortable using the V words – “vagina” and “vulva” – but it’s pretty dispiriting that there are brands ready to hijack that progress to pedal their own – completely unnecessary – products,” says Lynn. “Women need to feel empowered to seek out treatment if their sex life isn’t as good as it could be, if they are experiencing pain or discomfort. The last thing they need is the suggestion that their vulvas aren’t ‘beautiful enough.’ I mean where does it stop? I find these products worrying, wasteful and actually insulting. Vulvas aren’t there to look ‘youthful.’ They’re there to deliver pleasure, grant new life.”

Let’s hear it once more for those in the back! Vulva!

Right, I’m off to the IT department to get the steam coming out of my laptop sorted.

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