is the same," she said. "Women are taught that their vaginas are dirty. In fact, a normal healthy vagina is the cleanest space in the body. It's much cleaner than the mouth, and much, much cleaner than the rectum." She sighed. "The negative training starts early. My five-year-old daughter came home from school the other day and said, 'Mommy, the vagina is full of germs.'" Part of the brainwashing involves a lot of big fish stories. The vagina is said to have a fishy odor, a source of great merriment to male comedians. ''You've heard the jokes," Hillier said. "My favorite is the one about the blind man who passes by the fish store and says, 'Good morning, ladies.'" Ha-ha. I complained once to a male friend about a line in a movie when a gay male character, in the middle of a discussion about fellatio, turned to a woman and said, "Sorry, hon, I don't eat fish."
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Fish! I cried. It's not fishy! My friend replied, "Well, you've got to admit it's closer to tuna than to, say, roast beef." Yes, all analogies to meat must be reserved for a different sort of organ. In any event, men may well think of a vagina as smelling fishy, for as it happens, sperm is one of the ingredients that can make a good thing go bad.
The crux of the vaginal ecosystem, said Hillier, is symbiosis, a mutually advantageous and ongoing barter between macroenvironment and microorganism. Yes, the vagina is full of germs, in the sense of bacteria; it swims with life forms, and you hope it stays that way. But there are germs and germs. When conditions are healthy, the germs, or rather bacteria, in the vagina do a body good. They are lactobacilli, the same bacteria found in yogurt. "A healthy vagina is as clean and pure as a carton of yogurt," said Hillier. (Why do I suspect that we're not likely to see Dannon picking up on this slogan anytime soon?) And so the smell: "A normal vagina should have a slightly sweet, slightly pungent odor. It should have the lactic acid smell of yogurt." The contract is simple. We provide lactobacilli with food and shelter the comfort of the vaginal walls, the moisture, the proteins, the sugars of our tissue. They maintain a stable population and keep competing bacteria out. Merely by living and metabolizing, they generate lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are disinfectants that prevent colonization by less benign microbes. The robust vagina is an acidic vagina, with a pH of 3.8 to 4.5. That's somewhat more acidic than black coffee (with a pH of 5) but less piquant than a lemon (pH 2). In fact, the idea of pairing wine and women isn't a bad one, as the acidity of the vagina in health is just about that of a glass of red wine. This is the vagina that sings; this is the vagina with bouquet, with legs.
Nor is ordinary vaginal discharge anything to be mortified about. It is made up of the same things found in blood serum, the clear, thin, sticky liquid that remains behind when the solid components of blood, like clotting factors, are separated away. Vaginal discharge consists of water, albumin the most abundant protein in the body a few stray white blood cells, and mucin, the oily substance that gives the vagina and cervix their slippery sheen. Discharge is not dirt, certainly, and it is not a toxic waste product of the body in the sense of urine and feces. No, no, no. It is the same substance as what's inside the vagina, neither better nor worse, pulled down because we're bipedal and gravity exists, and
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because on occasion the cup runneth over. It is the lubricant beneath the illusion of carapace, reminding us that physiologically we are all aquatic organisms.
But, gals, there's no denying it: sometimes we stink, and we know it. Not like strawberry yogurt or a good Cabernet but like, alas, albacore. Or even skunk. How does this happen? If you haven't bathed for a week, I'll let you figure it out for yourself. But sometimes it's not a question of hygiene; it's a medical issue, a condition
page_53
Page 53
Fish! I cried. It's not fishy! My friend replied, "Well, you've got to admit it's closer to tuna than to, say, roast beef." Yes, all analogies to meat must be reserved for a different sort of organ. In any event, men may well think of a vagina as smelling fishy, for as it happens, sperm is one of the ingredients that can make a good thing go bad.
The crux of the vaginal ecosystem, said Hillier, is symbiosis, a mutually advantageous and ongoing barter between macroenvironment and microorganism. Yes, the vagina is full of germs, in the sense of bacteria; it swims with life forms, and you hope it stays that way. But there are germs and germs. When conditions are healthy, the germs, or rather bacteria, in the vagina do a body good. They are lactobacilli, the same bacteria found in yogurt. "A healthy vagina is as clean and pure as a carton of yogurt," said Hillier. (Why do I suspect that we're not likely to see Dannon picking up on this slogan anytime soon?) And so the smell: "A normal vagina should have a slightly sweet, slightly pungent odor. It should have the lactic acid smell of yogurt." The contract is simple. We provide lactobacilli with food and shelter the comfort of the vaginal walls, the moisture, the proteins, the sugars of our tissue. They maintain a stable population and keep competing bacteria out. Merely by living and metabolizing, they generate lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are disinfectants that prevent colonization by less benign microbes. The robust vagina is an acidic vagina, with a pH of 3.8 to 4.5. That's somewhat more acidic than black coffee (with a pH of 5) but less piquant than a lemon (pH 2). In fact, the idea of pairing wine and women isn't a bad one, as the acidity of the vagina in health is just about that of a glass of red wine. This is the vagina that sings; this is the vagina with bouquet, with legs.
Nor is ordinary vaginal discharge anything to be mortified about. It is made up of the same things found in blood serum, the clear, thin, sticky liquid that remains behind when the solid components of blood, like clotting factors, are separated away. Vaginal discharge consists of water, albumin the most abundant protein in the body a few stray white blood cells, and mucin, the oily substance that gives the vagina and cervix their slippery sheen. Discharge is not dirt, certainly, and it is not a toxic waste product of the body in the sense of urine and feces. No, no, no. It is the same substance as what's inside the vagina, neither better nor worse, pulled down because we're bipedal and gravity exists, and
page_54
Page 54
because on occasion the cup runneth over. It is the lubricant beneath the illusion of carapace, reminding us that physiologically we are all aquatic organisms.
But, gals, there's no denying it: sometimes we stink, and we know it. Not like strawberry yogurt or a good Cabernet but like, alas, albacore. Or even skunk. How does this happen? If you haven't bathed for a week, I'll let you figure it out for yourself. But sometimes it's not a question of hygiene; it's a medical issue, a condition
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