In my previous blog, “My Husband Doesn’t Want Me to Wash Before Sex,” I shared a conversation that highlighted how many men in loving relationships are happy to accept their partners as is when intimacy calls. Today’s blog features a guest response to that post.
G U E S T B L O G G E R
I recently saw a TikTok video of a man asking why he prefers his woman to come to the bedroom “unwashed”. His response was something like, “do you wash all the seasoning off the chicken before you put in in the oven?”
My immediate response was a mixture of shock and….revulsion(?). Then disbelief set in. I absolutely was unconvinced that this man represented any Black man (the man in the video was Black, I’m Black, and I’ve only slept with Black men) who woke up in his right mind on THAT day. There’s absolutely no way that a man would prefer that his woman or the woman he was having sex with at the time, come into the bedroom in an unwashed state. You cannot tell me that a man could possibly prefer a full day’s worth of (healthy) feminine “funk”, over a freshly washed and dried nether region. I’m not buying it.
Women have generally been socialized to view feminine odors as something bad. Visit any feminine products aisle of a neighborhood pharmacy and you’ll find that a quarter of the aisle, or more, is dedicated to rebranding our secretions as flowery nectars, baby scented syrups, or condensation from an ocean breeze. Our natural smells are bad, and need to be hidden away with sprays, douches, wipes and suppositories. And while men have funk, too, the value judgment placed on men with undeodorized underarms is not nearly as vitriolic as that of the woman who dares smell – well – like a woman.
When it comes to sexual relationships – and I’m speaking of long-term relationships – It’s been my experience that women tend to care how we present ourselves to the man we love. The act of cleaning ourselves – even that quick “let me run to the bathroom” – is a service. We don’t want to present the man we love and care for with feminine funk. We want to know that he’s getting something freshly cared for, something clean and pleasant. It’s one of the ways we show our regard for our man, AND it makes us feel more comfortable with ourselves. We are good, clean women. It’s the respectability politics of the pussy – and it’s real.
So, imagine how I felt when I not only saw this video but also to read a blog by Frank Love, who later told me that he had never seen or heard of the noted recording, that says that these are the REAL views of REAL Black men with REAL Black women partners. And these Black men sometimes want “feminine funk”. They want us to bring it to them exactly as it is, in all its juicy, musky splendor. Frank even noted that one man that he was talking to said that if there were particles of tissue down there, he would just spit it out and keep going. This seems unreal.
I must admit that this makes me extremely uncomfortable. And it likely has absolutely nothing to do with my man’s preference, as much as it has to do with my own upbringing, where women who could be smelled – even faintly – either had “a physical problem”, the ever mysterious “female troubles”, or simply “wasn’t raised right”. She was a woman who was not taught how to care for herself properly. No one told her how to wipe from front to back, to douche after her period, to wear scented tampons or pads, to use various and sundry sprays and powders to cover up who she is. No one told her that smelling like a natural woman was a bad thing because we are really supposed to smell like chemically engineered potions that men like.
While there is a movement now of (mostly women) medical practitioners who encourage women to eschew the sprays and powders and potions, there is still a huge population of us who are highly uncomfortable with our natural scent. It’s almost like the natural hair movement, where many women were unfamiliar with their natural hair texture until they were “good and grown”, and decided to no longer chemically manipulate their tresses. It’s happening with the vulva and vagina, too. Our lack of connection to who we are in our natural state can actually create more problems as we have no idea when there’s an infection or greater issue because we’re always covering it up.
So how does this topic connect us to having a loving relationship with our partner? Well, as women, we can embrace our vaginas as self-cleaning organs. We can use this embrace as a way to connect more closely with our feminine health. Along with a regular schedule of check-ups with a gynecologist we trust holds our sexual and reproductive health as a priority, we can begin to internalize that we are human beings, not flowering vines. And we can believe our men when they tell us that there are times when they want us as we are, without the quick pre-wash, and that they are telling us the pure, unadulterated truth.
As the good Brother Frank Love says – keep rising!
Maisha Hyman Sumbry
In my next blog post “Is Our Sex Live Stale?” I will try to deliver an understanding of what a healthy sex life looks like.
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Each week, Frank Love hosts Zoom support group meetings that assist women and men as we work to create a loving culture in our relationships. Calls occur from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST and can be accessed by visiting FrankWeeklyCall.com.
- Tuesdays—Black Women: Creating a Loving Culture in Our Relationships
- Thursdays—Black Men: Creating a Loving Culture in Our Relationships
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Frank Love coaches individuals toward creating a loving culture in their family. He is also the author of Relationship Conversations You Don’t Want to Have (But Should Anyway) and 25 Ways to Be Loving. To schedule a free consultation, contact Frank at Frank@FrankLove.com.
