The hygiene olympics online

There is no trophy for showering three times a day. There is no trophy for washing your body with antibacterial soap. And there certainly is no trophy that exists for triple cleansing every inch of your skin because someone on TikTok has convinced you that body wash somehow isn't real soap. Now, I know that this might sound a little dramatic, but I need us to sit down and talk about where this mentality actually comes from because what we're seeing today is not new. It has just been rebranded and if you are wondering, my name is Joanna Jara, I'm a biomedical engineer who studies female reproductive health. So let's break down this information. For decades women were told that our bodies were inherently dirty. Companies literally marketed disinfectants as feminine hygiene products. Laysal was once advertised as vaginal douche. Antiseptic were sold to women with the message that if your husband cheated, maybe you just weren't clean enough. Women were taught that keeping a man and being a good woman or wife meant constantly disinfecting themselves. That is not health care, that is misognostic marketing. Fast forward to today, the language has changed to be more dignified, but the message often hasn't. So now instead of telling women to disinfect themselves, companies have taught us to balance our selves. Instead of ant-septic douche, we have vinegar douche that are marketed as pH balancing. And the problem with that is that that's not how the vaginal pH works. Yes, the vagina is naturally acidic, but it isn't acidic because of vinegar. It's acidic because of the beneficial lactobacillus bacteria that produces lactic acid and pouring vinegar into the vagina doesn't recreate a healthy vaginal microbiome. It's a similar product that's wrapped in language that sounds more scientific, and then at the same time what we see is that mentality spill over into hygiene conversations that exist online. People brag about using antibacterial soap everywhere. People shame others for using a gentle cleanser. People act like if you're not scrubbing your skin multiple times a day, you are somehow dirty. But cleanliness is not measured by how aggressively you strip your skin. You don't earn extra hygiene points for killing more bacteria. And in fact, your skin has its own microbiome. Your vagina has its own microbiome. Your body is not supposed to be If you're washing your body with a gentle cleanser, you're cleaning your body. If you're washing your water area with a gentle cleanser, you're cleaning your external vagina. You don't need antibacterial soap on your genital and for most people, you don't need antibacterial soap on your entire body either. What concerns me most is how the hygiene Olympics have become a competition, especially amongst women. We constantly try to win up each other over who has the most intense hygiene routine, but somewhere along the way, we've confused more with better. more products, more scouring, more antibacterial ingredients and more cleansing. And none of those things automatically make you healthier. We have spent generations being told that our bodies are something to sanitize instead of something to care for. So maybe it's time that we stop asking, how can I be cleaner and start asking, how can I better support the biology of my body? Because those are two very very different questions.