Gross Anatomy

by Mara Altman

  I was expecting to find 100 percent admiration of vaginal scents—dudes who were connoisseurs and could admire even the deep funk of a crotch that has been stuck in jeans during the entirety of a cross-Atlantic flight—but in actuality, I found a range of sentiments. Most of the men were deeply enamored by the smell, but only if it was from a “clean vagina.”

  For example, I spoke with Julius, a sixty-year-old with a thick European accent. I was trying to keep him on track, but it was hard. “So you’re saying you don’t like it when a woman has little toilet paper balls stuck in her vagina?” I said.

  Julius was obsessed with hygiene. We were already twenty minutes in and still talking about the toilet.

  “Yes, I don’t like that,” he said.

  “But toilet paper balls are a whole different story from the vaginal scent,” I explained for the fourth time.

  Julius said that he wished America would adopt use of the bidet, because he found the true essence of the vagina quite pleasing, but it was hard to tap into the real thing without a lot of prewashing. He spent the next two days sending me links to his favorite bidet models.

  There was also Adib, a twenty-something who enjoyed picking women up at clubs. “If you had a stinky pussy,” he told me, “I wouldn’t fuck you.”

  Unfortunately, I lost my journalistic objectivity for a moment and took what he said personally. “Well, I wouldn’t fuck you at all. Ever!”

  “Lady, chill,” he said. “I wasn’t talking about you specifically.”

  His perspective just seemed so superficial, and I felt a pang of distress for fragrant females everywhere, but I tried to reel it in and regain my cool enough to continue interrogating him. “Right, sorry,” I said, trying to get it together. “So what does ‘stinky’ mean to you, exactly?”

  “That it’s stinky,” he so graciously described.

  On the other side of the spectrum was Michael, whose favorite thing in life is to wear vaginal secretions all over his face. He won’t wash up after going down on a woman because, he swears, the fragrant liquid gives him a superpower. “I get treated better when it’s all over my face,” Michael explained.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “you should see the level of service I get at restaurants.”

  Then there was Adam, who was a little too woo-woo for me. “When I smell and taste a woman,” he said, “I know exactly how her day was and how she’s feeling.” Don’t get me wrong—I liked the idea of vagina as crystal ball, I just didn’t buy it.

  Then there was Jaime, who kept changing the topic—odor—so that he could tell me over and over again how he makes girls squirt. “She was embarrassed about it,” he said, “but I kept telling her that her sacred waters were beautiful.”

  There were such wide-ranging opinions on vaginal aromas that I couldn’t draw a significant conclusion. In essence, my experiment kind of backfired: Instead of learning about vag odor, mostly I had nightmarish memories from my dating days.

  * * *

  Sometimes you can’t truly understand what you have until you don’t have it anymore. In that spirit, I decided to do one more experiment. I know douching is horrible for you: You are committing genocide against your unassuming bacterial allies—WARNING: DON’T DO THIS AT HOME—but this seemed like the only way to understand the role vaginal odors play in modern daily life. Would my husband and dog change their behaviors if I didn’t smell like vagina anymore? Would my dog think that I was a stranger? My husband get hornier if I smelled like air freshener? Would he even notice?

  I told Dr. Jenny Hackforth-Jones, the ob-gyn I had spoken to earlier, that I was going to douche. I wanted to get her read on how dangerous it was. “Nooooo, don’t do it!” she said. “You can buy it, take the stuff out of the box, and look at it, but don’t do it.”

  “I’m just going to do it once,” I said.

  “You’ll get horrific vaginosis!” she warned.

  I told her that I had to take the risk. This was what I could do for humankind. Some people save the whales. I douche in order to contribute to the comprehension of vag smells.

  I went to a Walgreens where I don’t usually shop. My customary cashier at the closer Walgreens already knows that I need witch hazel pads for my hemorrhoids and a cheese grater–like contraption for my toe calluses. I believe in spreading out my issues among various drugstores. I don’t want any one clerk getting too much of a sense of me and my dysfunctions as a whole.

  I walked through the fluorescent-lit store until I reached the feminine-hygiene aisle. I didn’t want anyone to see me—not because I was afraid they’d think I had a smelly vagina, but because I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t liberated enough to handle it. I crouched down and saw that there were a surprising number of douches to choose from. Ultimately, I went with a classic, Sweet Romance from Summer’s Eve. The pink polka dots on the packaging spoke to me. I turned the box around and read the warning, “An association has been reported between douching and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), ectopic pregnancy, and infertility.”

  Perfect.

  When I got home, I brought the douche kit into the bathroom. Dave was due home from a short business trip later that evening. My dog, meanwhile, sat on the furry white bath mat. As I took the squeeze bottle out of its packaging, I projected concern onto her little face—wide eyes with her brows bunched together. Presumably, I was about to wipe out one of her favorite pastimes. In a few minutes—if all went as expected—my private parts were going to smell like a Strawberry Shortcake scratch-and-sniff storybook.

  Douching was way easier than I thought it would be. It was like squirting mayonnaise onto a sandwich; only the sandwich is actually your vagina. Douche companies make it simple by attaching a nozzle to a disposable transparent bottle preloaded with the liquid. The directions said that the liquid should “flow freely out of vagina.” I’m glad they said that because, as a douche novice, I would have thought you’d leave it in there for a bit to slosh around. I wanted to hate every part of this backward practice, but the sensation—drinking an ice-cold beverage from the wrong end—wasn’t entirely loathable.

  I toweled off, stepped out of the tub, and immediately tried to sniff myself, which is always complicated because, well, ribs. I was concerned about how the perfume would mix with my natural odors. Think about it: No one is fooled when a match is deployed to overcome a particularly fierce bathroom episode. Rather, they combine to make their own unique miasma.

  After a substantial time spent contorting and getting my paws down there, I still didn’t catch a whiff. After a few hours, I resolved that my smell—rather than transforming—had actually been canceled out. Oddly, I smelled like nothing at all.

  Despite the fact that I’d just willingly done something that might cause a “death-associated odor” to develop in my groin, I felt pretty average. I slipped on some pajama bottoms and lounged around the house, waiting to see if my dog would notice anything different. Not much later, she trotted by and sniffed me. I can almost swear she did it with less finesse and joy than was typical, but my vaginal myopia might have been biasing me.

  When Dave arrived home several hours later, he did not stop everything at the threshold and say, “Something is amiss—I can’t smell my wife’s genitals!”

  The next day, he didn’t notice anything, either, but he probably shouldn’t have, given that I had pants on most of the day. The day after that, we were together and while we were still in bed, I said, “Notice anything different?”

  He got that oh-shit-I-was-supposed-to-notice-that-something-was-different look on his face.

  “I douched!” I said.

  “I guess there was maybe something a little different,” he reluctantly agreed.

  “Did you like it better?” I asked. “Did it turn you on?”

  This time he played the diplomat. “I like you both ways,” he said.

  I got a little defensive. I wanted him to say, “Babe, it’s always better when you’re funky
.” So I said, “Don’t you like it better when I’m funky?”

  He just sort of shrugged. He was not at all invested in this experiment. It was as if vaginal odor did not even take up the tiniest slice of his pie chart.

  Over the next few days, I found that vaginal scent was important not only because it serves as the best indicator of whether or not that random pair of underwear hanging around is clean or dirty (it was a confusing week for laundry), but also because of something deeper. Back when I talked to Dr. Jenny, she told me that when women reach menopause, their vaginal smell changes because of hormonal shifts. “They are always surprised,” she said, “that their scent is something they miss.”

  At the time, that reaction seemed incomprehensible, but after a few days, I understood. With my eyes, I can see my reflection in the mirror, but my scent is another kind of self-portrait. When reflected by a nose, it’s just as vivid and familiar. Without my normal scent—a thing I didn’t even realize I registered on a daily basis—a part of me felt foreign.

  I thought my odor would have the most profound impact on my husband and dog, but it was on me—I actually missed myself.

  A Field Guide to Vaginal Discharge

  Discharge cleans the vagina in a similar way to how saliva cleans the mouth—the fluid flushes out dead cells and bacteria. In a healthy vagina, the discharge is white or clear and varies in quantity and texture throughout the cycle. There is often a spike in production just prior to ovulation. During that fertile time of the month, the discharge becomes clear and viscous like raw egg white. If the discharge is elastic—it can stretch without breaking, like hot pizza cheese—it is said to have “good Spinnbarkeit.” What a wonderful world—there exists a word with the sole function to describe the stretchy properties of cervical mucus.

  The amount of discharge can also vary from woman to woman. One woman told me that her underwear, at the end of each day, is akin to a thrice-used Kleenex. I did not resonate with that metaphor. When I heard that, I was concerned that I didn’t discharge enough. Am I a good discharger? Do I discharge right? We all, it turns out, discharge different.

  Discharge isn’t there only to clean, lubricate, and protect; it is also the vagina’s way of sending out an SOS signal. If something is amiss, the discharge may change color, consistency, and/or odor. Discharge, then, can also be the vagina’s way of etching H-E-L-P into its desert-island underwear.

  This field guide to vaginal discharge is inspired by the long-running practice of comparing women’s body parts (and the size of their fetuses) to edibles—melons, buns, tacos, clams, etc.

  COLOR: Thick and white

  FOOD DOPPELGÄNGER: Cottage cheese

  ODOR: Low

  CAUSE: Yeast infection

  PAIRS WITH: Cotton underwear

  COLOR: Brown

  FOOD DOPPELGÄNGER: Bone broth in its chilled gelatinous form

  ODOR: Mild

  CAUSE: Though there are other reasons, it is most common at the end of menstruation.

  PAIRS WITH: Pizza and Netflix

  COLOR: Green and frothy (but sometimes yellow)

  FOOD DOPPELGÄNGER: Matcha latte foam

  ODOR: High

  CAUSE: Trichomoniasis, an STD that causes itching and burning

  PAIRS WITH: An awkward conversation

  COLOR: Grayish white

  FOOD DOPPELGÄNGER: Mushroom soup

  ODOR: High

  CAUSE: Bacterial vaginosis*

  PAIRS WITH: A round of antibiotics

  *Bacterial vaginosis is diagnosed with a method called the Whiff Test, which is no more sophisticated than it sounds. The doctor takes a sample of your mushroom soup, mixes it with a few drops of potassium hydroxide, and then takes a big, brave whiff. If she smells fish, then you have BV.

  COLOR: Cloudy yellow

  FOOD DOPPELGÄNGER: Lemon butter sauce

  ODOR: Medium to high

  CAUSE: Gonorrhea (or if you’re feeling fun, the clap)

  PAIRS WITH: Not pairing

  9

  The Butt Paradox

  Butts are a paradox. They are where poop comes out, which is gross, yet they are also one of the most sexualized parts of the human body. When I see a snug pair of jeans on a nice round rear and say, “Look at that ass,” it’s really not very different from fawning over a garbage truck.

  We enjoy the ass—put photos of them on the front of magazines, show them off in tiny bikini bottoms, and work hard at the gym to maintain them—despite the fact that those two cheeks seem to be little more than an overglorified welcoming committee, designated to stand still and steadfast while giving yesterday’s dinner its last respects.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly happy that people don’t look at my behind and immediately think sewage, but how is it that a society so easily turned off by bodily functions is able to overlook the less savory bits of the rear?

  To investigate, I first went to Los Angeles to speak to Cindy Thorin, a fifty-nine-year-old aesthetician with the warmth of a grandma mixed with the rawness of a drunk cast member on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I thought she’d have some insight into the paradox because she is famous in anal-bleaching circles for her anal-bleaching creams. By erasing the pigmentation around the anus, she attempts to do for the butthole what an interior decorator does by hanging a fancy curtain around a water heater—hide the inner workings. Her salon, Pink Cheeks, was decorated like a cozy living room, replete with fireplace, and there were small signs for sale that said things like “Sweat is fat crying” and “When life gives you lemons, a simple operation can give you melons.”

  “Hello,” Thorin said, bringing me into one of her treatment rooms, empty save for a waxing table covered in tissue paper. Even though she has spent her career trying to create the illusion that butts don’t poop, it turned out after a brief conversation that she herself was mystified by why people go gaga over the body part. “I’ve worked with butts for thirty years and I don’t get it,” she said. “They don’t do anything for me.” She told me that she thinks many people actually bleach because they are misinformed about the pigmentation. “They think they didn’t wipe well and got a stain.” As she explained this fact, she shrugged. “I tell them it’s just genetic. I say, ‘Your grandpa or grandma probably had a dark one.’”

  After talking to her, I didn’t feel any more enlightened, but since I was already there, I had her assess my butthole. (When else would such an opportunity arise?) I took off my pants and then did as she instructed: got up on all fours on her waxing table. While she took a gander inside, I looked at a poster on the wall of a callipygian pin-up model.

  “You’d be a good candidate,” Thorin said. “You’re pretty ashy.”

  I don’t know why, but I’d had the feeling I came from dark-anus lineage.

  When I left Thorin, I knew I had to look at this issue from a different angle. I soon got a tip from an evolutionary theorist; he told me to call up Melanie Shoup-Knox, a behavioral neuroscientist at James Madison University. When I posed the question to her, she gave me something I could work with; she told me that there’s a lot more to butts than meets the consciousness.

  Researchers have found that men are more attracted to a butt if it and the hips it hangs on are larger than the waist. Estrogen, which begins circulating during puberty, causes fat to collect on our backsides. “It is a cue to how fertile the female is,” Shoup-Knox said.

  Fertility isn’t the only factor for being drawn to an ass; the fat that is stored on our hips and butt is also specialized. This fat—long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid—is stored preferentially on our lady hindquarters. These fats, Shoup-Knox said, are reserved and recruited and burned only during the third trimester of a pregnancy and during postpartum breastfeeding.

  “There has been a reevaluation of why men prefer big butts, and we believe that’s because those are females who can produce the most intelligent offspring,” she said. “Those special fats are baby brain food.”

  That made me th
e tiniest bit self-conscious. “So, like, how big does a butt have to be to make smart babies?” I asked. I have some flesh back there, but not nearly enough for Sir Mix-a-Lot to worry if I started doing side bends or sit-ups.

  “Well, it’s not so much about the size of the butt, but more about the ratio between the hips and the waist.”

  “So a small tush can still make a smart baby?”

  “Exactly,” she said, “as long as the waist is smaller than that butt.”

  She went on to tell me that extra-large asses, like Kim Kardashian’s, won’t up a kid’s IQ any more than a typical butt. “There’s a point when you stop getting returns,” she explained.

  According to this research, males who prefer that feature—a big, perky bottom (or to be more specific, the waist-to-hip ratio of 0.72)—will be more likely to choose a fertile mate and have offspring that are more intelligent. If his babies are more intelligent, they are more likely to survive, and therefore the dude who likes big butts gets his genes spread onward and outward into the horizon of human existence.

  “It’s not just the butt that’s being selected for,” Shoup-Knox said, “but the preference for the butt is also being continuously selected for.”

  In other words, as much as a big butt is passed down from mother to daughter, Shoup-Knox believes the attraction to big butts is also passed down through the generations.

  “So this is enough to make people overlook the less pleasant aspects of the butt?” I asked.

  “Reproduction is so essential to our survival that we can overlook anything if the reproductive benefit of that feature is that great,” she said, “and in this case, it is.”

  We are all probably destined to look back on this big-butt science skeptically—isn’t it a bit too convenient that everything always comes back to procreating, and how do we explain women’s enjoyment of the male derriere, which will never yield “brain food” for our young?—but for now it’s what we’ve got and Shoup-Knox was convincing. Even so, I wasn’t sure she had the whole story.