Remember when beauty blogs were about eyeshadow looks you couldn’t do without three specific $87 palettes, or yet another contouring tutorial that still wouldn’t stop you looking like a rubbish tiger from the school fete face-paint stall?
Now they’re about what’s wrong with your vagina!
Yes, the influencers have stealthily crept south from your cheekbones, like Vietcong forces armed with expensive and mysteriously shaped brushes, and they’re now in your Mekong Delta.
The content team for Huda Kattan, arguably the biggest beauty influencer out there, has published lightening guides before, including one in February about lightening the dead or darkened skin on knees and elbows. But a few days ago they published an ill-advised and worse-received new installment, saying it’s a response to all the questions they’ve received about how to lighten your vagina.
“My labia are totes discoloured!”
What they mean is vulva, or more specifically, the labia majora (that’s ya flaps, for the more casual reader). You get a bump in your melanin levels around your genitals and butt when you hit puberty, and you also have lots of hair follicles around there, so the skin can appear darker.
And given that most straight women would mostly see two kind of naked vulvas – professional on-camera-sex-havers with legit pube-grooming budgets, and those older ladies in the gym changerooms who have zero f**ks left to give and walk around with their bushes proudly out while you pretzel yourself out of your Speedos – it’s easy to get a warped idea of what’s “normal”.
Perhaps some of the questions are coming from younger women – and there may also be some insecurity arising out of the newish, f**king horrid term “roasties”, where horrible little men and literal teenagers on the internet who have seen maybe one actual vulva up close and in person in their entire lives* post pictures of slices of roast beef stuffed into sandwich rolls, with the implication that some woman whose opinion they don’t like has similar-looking genitals from “overuse”, which is not a thing, or age, which is a perfectly normal thing. Everything stretches a little, or a lot, eventually. Everything.
What’s not f**king normal is literally anything Kattan’s post suggests, including slopping the following on it: yoghurt (well, fine if you’re trying to battle thrush itch while you wait for the Canesten to kick in), coconut oil (wholesome!), lemon juice (ow ow ow ow), prescription brightening creams (whyyyyyy), a chemical peel (WHAT THE FLAPS, PEOPLE?).
This is not your only option!
Butthole bleaching has been a thing for ages – it’s such an established thing, in fact, that there’s a line about it in an Ed Sheeran song. While it seems like a ridiculous thing for someone who’s not in adult films or sex work to spend money on, I kind of get it – the darkened skin reminds you of poop! – so you do you.
But let’s be clear: there is absolutely no need to be so mean to your poor little smoo, its skin, and its precious pH balance.
(And Huda’s team have now clarified that they were trying to steer the question-askers away from damaging online DIY techniques – but still, why bring it up at all?)
Also, you don’t want to blind anyone who tries to go down on you.
If your dude thinks all labia should always and only look like shy little virgin magnolia petals waiting to bloom, you do not want that entitled manchild near your bits. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing down there.
The only reason to worry about the way your genitals look is if they are showing symptoms of some kind of infection or rash, or there’s something coming out of them that’s not the consistency or colour it usually is, or if their natural shape and/or size is causing you real physical discomfort. In all of those cases, you should go and chat to your doctor. And if you want, you can ask them if this or that is normal, and they will tell you it is because they have seen what not-as-normal looks like.
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How your muff feels is way more important than how it looks. Please, for the love of all that is squishy in all the right places, do not slop acids on it to try and make it prettier. In fact, you should go home tonight, light a candle, put on some Janelle Monae, and give it some love.
(*Not just because nobody wants to get naked in front of them, but also if they’re of the DJ Khaled school of thought.)