“Oh no, no, it’s OK, don’t get offended, it’s not your fault. You can’t help it, I understand that. Your genitals are disgusting and they stink, especially when they’re bleeding and there’s nothing you can do about it. You didn’t ask to be born with such a terrible curse, and nobody expects you to take responsibility for it. Help is at hand, though! If you give me lots of money every month for forty years of your life, we can help! Because believe us, you need it…”

I will admit up front that I am not a trained marketer, but it’s plain to see that the above isn’t the most convincing of sales pitches. Unfortunately, it’s a far more honest pitch than the current campaign for Always sanitary towels, which proudly declare the addition of “odour neutralising ActiPearls” as the next step in the evolution of “feminine hygiene” products. What the ads coyly decline to mention is that they’ve taken lessons in odour neutralisation from the Lynx school of “synthetic chemical stench and hygiene are THE SAME THING.”

This is straight-up vagina-shaming. It’s insulting and inexcusable. And giving me yet another reason to be pissed off when I’m already simmering with ire about the massacre going on between my legs is inadvisable. So congratulations, P&G: you’ve lost my custom for the next thirty years.

The packaging claims to “neutralise odours rather than just masking them”. This is at best a delicate glossing over of the truth. It’s impossible to tell whether “odours” (those vaginal FIENDS!) are neutralised or not because of the perfume.

Oh God, the perfume.

I appreciate that scent perception can be a highly subjective thing, so I’ll attempt to keep the description as general as possible. Cloying, synthetic, sweet florals with an undertone of disinfectant, false and stereotypically feminine. It hits you as soon as you open the packaging, before even unwrapping the first towel. A scent that lingers for hours even if you switch to an unscented brand immediately after using one of these. A scent that does not mask menstrual blood, but mingles with it into a nauseating aberration.

What I Expected

A thoughtful free gift from Always!

What I Got

OH.

The problems presented by this are manifold, but there are three main ones that leapt out at me. Bullet point list time? Bullet point list time!

• The obvious implication that people who have vaginas are utterly clueless about personal hygiene and how to take care of themselves, plus the completely ignoring the fact that vaginas are self cleansing and look after themselves without much intervention from their owners beyond showering/bathing regularly. The idea that menstruation makes a person malodorous or otherwise “dirty” is an outdated and misogynistic notion. If a vagina IS smelling bad, whether through illness or neglect, adding an unpleasant artificial scent to the crotch is only going to make the problem worse.
• Following on from this, people who are at least vaguely aware of their sexual health can tell from changes in vaginal scent if something untoward or unusual is going on. Trying to cover that up with perfumes isn’t going to help anybody stay in touch with their genitalia.
• The choice of such a blatantly “overt femininity-pink-and-flowers-BECAUSE-THIS-PRODUCT-IS-FOR-GIRLLLSSS” fragrance risks alienating trans* men and genderqueer customers who choose to use these products. As if the patronising “have a happy period, always” slogan weren’t bad enough. Not only are Always trying to insist that a reminder of nature not necessarily assigning the genitalia that most closely match an individual’s gender identity should be a matter for celebration, but also that everybody should smell like a field full of artificial blossoms when their loins are creating underpant carnage. Way to consider the needs of your whole customer base, there.

Now, at the risk of incurring violent flames, I’ll admit that I am not the biggest fan of my vagina. I appreciate the vast capacity for pleasure that it and its associated physiological paraphernalia provide, but for the most part our relationship is one of tacit acknowledgement and grudging acceptance. This does not mean, however, that I do not appreciate the inherent beauty and wonder of such genitalia.

A vagina should smell like a vagina. A vagina should not smell of roses or perfumes or any number of artificial masking agents. Every healthy vagina has a personality and life all of its own and scent to match.

At a time where in the USA, the wealthy, middle-aged, cis-male elitists running the country seem determined to drive women’s bodily autonomy and sexual rights back into the Victorian era, now seems a very prudent time to turn our eyes to our genitals and send a clear message to politicians and megabucks sanitary product manufacturers alike that our bodies belong to nobody but ourselves. Their efforts to undermine and deny our sexuality will be met with the resistance and fight it deserves, until they back the hell off what’s between our legs.

If we really must accept defeat and acknowledge that we are no longer capable of keeping our own vaginas spring-fresh, then our next step is clear: begin a campaign to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to produce their own range of sanitary towels impregnated with their gorgeous scents. Because if my vagina isn’t allowed to smell like a vagina any more, it can do a hell of a lot better than Procter and Gamble’s sickly synthetic flower bleach.