I just don't get it. A multi-billion dollar industry driven by the sole purpose of keeping something clean that can be kept clean with a magic block that costs 50 cents.

Its called SOAP people.

Sprays and roll-ons and perfumed pussy plugs and lord knows what else.
Wash the motherfucker with some soap.
Shower!
Take a bath!
If it still smells worse than your feet... see a doctor! Douches and salts and electronic overnight suppository treatments.
Vapor rub and ventilation units; nanites and plastic replacement parts.
What next!?
I am aware that some women have a medical condition, but not that many women. :P

I admit, I stole the idea "Perfumed pussy plugs" from somewhere else. If I could remember I would credit them. I believe it was a woman... hehe

Re knife: Apparently the ones I don't know either. I have met a few. But there are enough to support an entire market of unnecessary hygiene items. I used to babysit for a woman who had 4 shelves of her bathroom towel closet filled with douche. That's a lot of douche.

I think ailie, in her now-deleted writeup saying that women can't get by without pads/tampons, has misunderstood what moJoe is making fun of. Yes, every woman between puberty and menopause needs tampons or maxi-pads or the Keeper or something to catch menstrual discharges. However, what's the point of putting scents in the products, or bleaching their fibers, or using additional stuff like Feminine Deodorant Spray? Somebody must be that paranoid, using douches even though they can actually mess up the acid balance of the vagina and leave it more prone to infection, because all these things stay on the market.

Personally, the thing that amazes me is tampon applicators. Some women are apparently so afraid to touch their own bodies that they use cardboard or plastic tubes to push the tampon in? Applicators are terribly uncomfortable for me; they never get the tampon in at a comfortable angle. My fingers work so much better, and I can wash my hands. (Added later: On the other hand, Chiisuta tells me that "I have never been able to get a tampon in the right place with my fingers and believe me, I've tried. I have no qualms about touching myself (HOOWAH!) but I don't think my fingers can reach as far as the applicator. Something about angles." This is the exact opposite of my own experience. But we're all built differently. I also got a message whose author I lost track of pointing out that on camping trips or other places where it is not necessarily possible to wash your hands immediately, tampons with applicators come in very handy.)

When advertisers talk about feminine hygiene products, they generally refer to tampons, pads, and those magical Instead things (your guess is as good as mine).

We need these things. Granted, sticking a roll of chemically-bleached paper into your holy of holies begs certain questions for consumer pontification. But it must be understood that this is very different from douching.

Douching is not right.

Douching is wrong.

But, in this instance, so is soap

Soap is to vagina as Listerine is to eyeball. It'll get the sucker clean, but at what cost?

Vaginas are like self-cleaning ovens. They stink terribly once in awhile, but it's nothing a regular shower or a soak in a tub won't kill.

I don't know anyone who douches, but those who do (unless they have whatever dubious "medical conditions") must assume that women's bodies are fundamentally dirty, that nature is poorly designed, and that menstruation is something to be ashamed of. They are wrong on all counts.

I would caution anyone who decides to take a bar of

SOAP

to her vulva that this is both unecessary and can cause irritation.

The female genitals need only a gentle hosing, preferably with a detachable shower head. It is best to carefully pull back the hood of the clitoris and rinse the labia with a gentle stream of water.

I sometimes get offended by those commercials, I mean, there is a beautiful woman on TV, telling me that frankly, if I don't use product A, my cooter stinks, and then, there is the same woman telling me that all that excess cleaning made it dry.

Wait, now it's yeasty...

How about a UTI as well? Oh, and make sure you wear those odor absorbent pads, cause otherwise, you will stink as no matter what you do.

My mom said a very wise thing after watching a Vagisil commercial

"You'd think that until the last decade, people smelled so bad, that reproduction was done asexually..."

I must agree, the civilization survived for millenniums without scented tampons and vaginal creams, so what's up now?

When did we get that smelly, dry, and itchy?