Kourtney Kardashian advertising her new product - vaginal gummies. Photo / Instagram/Lemme
OPINION:
I’ve learnt a lot of new things this week, some of them against my will. For example, I learnt that Kourtney Kardashian has a wellness brand (because, of course she has) and I learnt that Kourtney Kardashian’s wellness brand, called Lemme, wants women to buy gummies for their vagina.
Now that you too have been burdened with this newfound knowledge, let me tell you a couple of things:
1. I’m sorry.
2. Don’t add vagina gummies to your shopping list.
Lemme’s vaginal gummies are called “Lemme Purr” (no prizes for guessing why) and apparently cost US$30 (nearly 50 New Zealand bucks).
Announcing the sca-I-mean-business to Instagram, the Kardashian company wrote:
“Meet Lemme Purr: our new vaginal health gummy! Vaginal health is such an important part of a woman’s overall well-being (and not talked about enough) which is why we are so excited to launch this,” the post read.
“Give your vagina the sweet treat it deserves (and turn it into a sweet treat). You know what they say… you are what you eat.”
Excuse the sudden paragraph break but I really could not keep on typing without saying this: do not, for the love of all that is holy, take medical advice - or any kind of advice, really - from the Kardashians. And I say this as someone who enjoys watching the Kardashians but, just like my gynaecologist would not give them advice on... well, whatever it is that they do, they should not be giving me tips on how to keep my vagina healthy. Anyway, in the interest of providing you with context, here’s the rest of their post:
“We combined real pineapple and Vitamin C with the power of clinically-studied SNZ 1969™ probiotics to target vaginal health and pH levels that support freshness and taste.”
In another post, Lemme tries to tell people that their “vaginal microbiome is delicate and can be easily disrupted” which is really not true but, if your microbiome does get disrupted, you really ought to see an actual doctor.
I have many thoughts on this that are not fit for print and my mum raised me better than that anyway so here’s what I’ll tell you about these “vaginal gummies” instead: actual medical experts advise you not to take them. Actual experts call it a “grift” and a “weaponisation of patriarchy” which is a pretty awful way to make a dollar.
Canadian gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter, an expert in vulvovaginal disorders, calls it a “vaginal scam”.
“Block. Ignore. Don’t engage because that feeds the algorithm,” Gunter wrote.
“Anyone who suggests that your vagina isn’t fresh or needs an improved taste is a misogynist and awful person, and yes that includes you @kourtneykardash and your @lemme grift. Weaponizing the patriarchy for profit is misogyny. Your vagina is terrific. If you think you have a health condition, consult an expert, not a Kardashian. And that pineapple myth needs to die. It’s a myth and one of the reasons I had to include a chapter on food in The Vagina Bible,” the expert added.
There is no end to the number of issues I have with these vaginal gummies (but luckily for you, there is a limit to my word count so I will keep my ranting brief). We all like to pile on the Kardashians but the reality is that they’ve got more influence than most of us like to admit - and that’s a problem, particularly when they come up with dodgy ideas like this one. Even if these gummies did anything for your health, the whole marketing framing of it as something to sort out your smelly vagina is just a hot pile of patriarchal bullshit, playing on old tropes and exacerbating women’s insecurities for financial gain.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan UK, Dr Melanie Bone, an OBGYN, said that even if the probiotics in the gummies could potentially have some benefits, the messaging was highly problematic: “Certain elements of the marketing campaign for these gummies are harmful. For years we have been exposed to messaging that leads us to believe that our vaginas are inherently dirty, smelly and unhygienic, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Dr Bone told the magazine.
The reality is that vaginas are self-cleaning and there is not one way they should smell or taste.
Speaking to the BBC, A&E doctor Maddy Dann, who often posts about sexual health to her large TikTok audience, called the Kardashian vaginal gummies “snake oil”.
“Every person with a vulva or vagina is going to have a different odour, it’s going to have a different scent, a different taste and a different amount of discharge,” she told the BBC. “And so what this product suggests is that every woman needs to have the same tasting, the same smelling, vagina or discharge - and that’s just not realistic.”
I’m worried about the cost of living, the skyrocketing inflation, the war in Ukraine, the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. I’m worried about the pandemic (yup, it’s still happening), I’m worried about climate change. Kourtney Mary Kardashian is not going to make me worry about the taste of my (or anyone’s) vagina.
The bottom line is: your vagina is great as it is. And if, for some actual medical reason, then as Dr Dann puts it, “you need to see a GP or a gynaecologist, not a Kardashian”.
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