Sorcery for your vagina

Traditional vaginal practices usually relate to personal hygiene, genital health or sexuality. Hygiene practices involve external washing and intravaginal cleansing or douching and ingestion of substances. Health practices include intravaginal cleansing, traditional cutting, insertion of herbal preparations, and application of substances to soothe irritated vaginal tissue.

One such traditional practice is ‘vaginal steaming’.

Recently vaginal steaming has become a fad promoted by SCAM-promoters (such as the vagina-obsessed Gwyneth Paltrow) with the claim that it leads to a range of health benefits. According to one website, for instance, vaginal steaming, Yoni Eggs, yoni or v-steam, as it is casually known, acts as an internal cleanser of the membranes of the vaginal tissues and uterus. This is considered especially important for stagnant fertility conditions and/or incomplete emptying of menses each cycle. This women’s treatment gently but effectively cleanses, tones and revitalizes a woman’s center, providing a myriad benefits from reduced menstrual cramps to increased fertility and more. Support your natural feminine cycle, help your body to heal, relax, and detoxify both physically and emotionally with a yoni steam.

The method is recommended for a wide range of conditions and is said to achieve all of the following and much, much more:

• Significant reduction of pain, bloating and exhaustion associated with menstruation.
• Significant reduction of PMS.
• Decrease of menstrual flow as well as reduction of dark purple or brown blood at the onset or end of menses.
• Regulation of irregular or absent menstrual cycles.
• Increased fertility.
• Faster healing and toning of the reproductive system following childbirth.
• Assisting in healing uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, uterine weakness, uterine prolapse & endometriosis.
• Breaking down of reproductive adhesion/scar tissue. Assisting with the repair of a vaginal tear, episiotomy, or C-section scar.
• Assisting with the healing of haemorrhoids.
• Treating chronic vaginal/yeast infections and maintaining healthy vaginal odour.
• Relief of menopausal symptoms such as vaginal dryness or pain during sex.
• Detoxification of the womb/removal of toxins from the body. Release of stored emotions.
• Reconnection with our female bodies and tapping into the sexual energy that is our creative potential.

New Zealand psychologists analysed online accounts of vaginal steaming to determine the sociocultural assumptions and logics within such discourse, including ideas about women, women’s bodies and women’s engagement with such ‘modificatory’ practices. Ninety items were carefully selected from the main types of website discussing vaginal steaming: news/magazines; health/lifestyle; spa/service providers; and personal blogs. Within an overarching theme of ‘the self-improving woman’ the researchers identified four themes: (1) the naturally deteriorating, dirty female body; (2) contemporary life as harmful; (3) physical optimisation and the enhancement of health; and (4) vaginal steaming for life optimisation. The authors concluded that online accounts of vaginal steaming appear both to fit within historico-contemporary constructions of women’s bodies as deficient and disgusting, and contemporary neoliberal and healthist discourse around the constantly improving subject.

For the sake of ‘journalistic balance’, let’s give Gwyneth the last word about the benefits of vaginal steaming. She knows best because she has done it and was quoted uttering these profound and scientific views: “The first time I tried v-steaming, I was like, ‘This is insane’. My friend Ben brought me and I was like, ‘You are out of your f**king mind. What is this? But then by the end of it I was like, ‘This is so great.’ Then I start to do research, and it’s been in Korean medicine for thousands of years and there are real healing properties. If I find benefit to it and it’s getting a lot of page views, it’s a win-win.”

And who would or could argue with that?