Girl on the Net

How good do your genitals smell right now? Go on: if you’re in a place where it’s OK to do so, have a quick scratch and sniff. Really breathe it in. I bet a not insignificant number of you are delighted by the results. I’m certainly one of them: my vagina smells great at the moment.

It occurred to me the other day, when I was watching Channel 4’s programme 100 Vaginas, that when we talk about genital odour (most frequently vaginal odour) it’s usually in a negative way. The very phrase ‘genital odour’ seems to imply that there should be attendant embarrassment or shame: as if odour is something you should seek to remove at all costs.

Occasionally – as in the programme – we have ‘normalising’ conversations, where we seek to point out that it’s perfectly natural for genitals to have an odour, and that trying to remove those odours entirely is not only a pointless endeavour, it can actually be bad for your health.

Rarely do we state what must be obvious to all of us: often our genitals smell LOVELY.

I’ve seen people have surreptitious sniffs after scratching themselves. I’ve enjoyed the scent of the tips of my fingers two minutes after an excellent wank. The other evening my boyfriend asked me why I was sniffing him so vigorously when I walked in the door after a night out, and roared with laughter when I explained:

“I thought I caught a whiff of the scent of your post-wank dick, and it was absolutely incredible.”

At the time of watching the 100 Vaginas programme, I was two days in to a self-love binge that was focused exclusively on my junk smell. I wandered the house with post-wank hands yelling to my partner: “Holy FUCK babes, my vagina smells GREAT, have a go!”

It prompted me to ask Twitter how they felt about their own genital aroma, and although 41% of people were ambivalent about it, 50% of people had positive feelings about their own basement bouquet:

How good do your genitals smell at the moment?

— Girl on the Net (@girlonthenet) March 1, 2019

My vagina smells great

The smell of my cunt changes depending on a whole bunch of different factors. The time of the month, the time of day, how recently I’ve had a wank, and lots more. I sometimes relish the iron-y tang of my cunt when I’m on my period, and I particularly adore the way my vagina smells about an hour or so after I’ve been fucked.

Ah! *Inhales deeply like someone at a wine tasting event.* Post-fuck cunt. The greatest of cunt-based-bouquets. The heady mix of spunk and vaginal juice mingles to create a scent that is the perfect combination of me plus him plus residual horn from whatever perversions we were indulging in.

But right now, my cunt smells especially excellent. I know not why, I just know it. In the same way I know that I’m hungry for pizza not salad, I know this cunt smell appeals to me more than that one. Today’s cunt smells better than last Thursday’s cunt, and will probably smell better than that same cunt first thing tomorrow morning. (But I don’t know for sure, I’ll try to keep you posted)

Does my cunt smell greater than anyone else’s? Yep. I suspect there’s something here that’s deeply personal, and linked somehow to the comforting scents of my own body, and the way that smell is so inherently tied to memory. My vagina smells good right now because I’ve just had a wank. That wank smell on my hands is reminiscent of wanks from days gone by, and I like wanking so the association is a pleasant one. My cunt smells great post-fuck, for similar reasons.

I imagine, though I would not presume to assume, that for those in relationships with people who have cunts, the specific cunt-smell of those you’re with will hold similar associations. I certainly can’t get enough of the scent of my boyfriend’s dick – a specific and different scent to that which wafts around other dicks in the world. It’s good because it’s his and his alone, and the goodness of it improves sometimes for being slightly stronger, for mingling with my own smells post-fuck, and for having a slightly different tang if it’s experienced shortly after a wank: a full-bodied dick smell with a delightfully jizzy finish.

Your junk smells great

If you tried the scratch and sniff test at the start of this post, and you were disappointed in the results, take heart my friend: your disappointment can only exist if you have something lovely to compare it to. I find it hard to believe that many people experience their own junk-smell as an exclusively negative thing. Chances are your disappointment now only occurs because you know how good your junk can smell: at the perfect moment post-wank, when you’ve been for a brisk but satisfying walk, when you wake up first thing in the morning and are reminded of the delicious, musky, intense aroma of what it is to be human and you.

I have to include a compulsory shout-out here to those whose junk smells distinctly and differently bad: some smells can indicate that there’s a problem – bacterial vaginosis, for example, or excessive smegma which can sometimes lead to infection. So if you’re genuinely troubled by your own smell, have a chat with your doctor and make sure you’re OK.

But laying these to one side, we all have natural junk smells. Sometimes light and delicate, other times rich and full-bodied. And if we want to admit that sometimes we smell a little too strong for our own liking, we should probably also acknowledge the opposite, right?

Sometimes our junk smells fantastic.