Black women spend about four times as much as white women on hair, and twice as many black women douche and deodorize compared with our white counterparts, according to research by Francesca Branch, Tracey J. Woodruff, Susanna D. Mitro and Ami R. The researchers found that like baby powder, over-the-counter douches and vaginal deodorizers contain ingredients—namely, phthalates—linked to cancer, among other health risks not listed on labels.
Why do black women work so hard to keep our vaginas from smelling like we ever bleed, orgasm, sweat or eat catfish? If racism posits that blacks reek, and misogyny teaches us that vaginas are rank, how difficult does it become for black women to love the scent of our healthy vaginas?
Yes, cunnicentrism : aesthetic appreciation for colors pink, purple , shapes circles, triangles , and textures wet, viscous associated with the vulva and vagina. They smell like a human body, and part of claiming our full humanity is being able to be proud of every aspect of them. For black women, cunnicentrism not only stands to celebrate our bodies; It can save our lives.
Contact us at letters time. By Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley. TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. It suggests that guests of Louis XIV might have been able to pick up a thing or two about the king by sniffing the air upon arrival. In one study, women were given T-shirts worn by random men and asked to rank them by how pleasant they were. HLA is a group of proteins that helps our immune system to identify cells that belong to us and cells that are from something or someone else — and are therefore potential pathogens.
The gene complex that encodes for HLA, called MHC, also encodes for some other proteins used in our immune response, and is useful as a shortcut for scientists to see what kind of protections our immune system can offer.
Your HLA profile is very likely to be different to everyone else you meet — though some people, like your close relatives, will be more similar to you than others. From a genetic point of view, it is an advantage to have a child with someone who has a dissimilar HLA profile.
These women put the T-shirts worn by men with the most dissimilar HLA profile first and last the most similar. So they were able to identify the men, and preferred the men, with the best match in terms of immune system genetics. They didn't know that was what they were doing, of course — it was subconscious. Do humans use genetic information hidden in body odour to choose their partners? It would seem not. In a study of almost 3, married couples, the likelihood of people ending up with a HLA-dissimilar partner was no different to chance.
We might have a preference for certain smells, and there might be a genetic reason for that, but we don't act upon smells when choosing who we marry. People with congenital anosmia the loss of their sense of smell have poorer relationship outcomes , suggests Mahmut in a study with Ilona Croy at the University of Dresden, Germany. Couples who had high HLA-dissimilarity — which presumably happened by chance — had the highest levels of sexual satisfaction and the highest levels of desire to have children.
This link was more strongly seen in women. Women partnered with HLA-similar men reported more sexual dissatisfaction and lower desire to have children. Though when evidence from multiple studies is taken into account, the effect might not be conclusive. To evolutionary biologists the emphasis on female choice makes sense. In nature, females tend to choose males, as it is the mother who invests the most in raising children and therefore has the most to lose by mating with a genetically inferior male.
The female must be discerning in her choice, so looks for clues as to a male's quality. This is why males are often colourful, perform dances, sing songs or offer gifts in nature — they have to prove their genetic quality. The link between BO preference and genes spurred a fashion for T-shirt speed-dating and even "mail odour" services.
But the evidence to support the idea we can make good dating decisions based on smell is unclear. We might say we prefer something, but in practice it would appear we do not make choices based on that preference.
Why not? One reason might be that real-life scenarios are too complex to use scent information accurately. Our other senses can distort the information we take in from smell. Based on body odour alone, we can make accurate assessments of other people's neuroticism.
But when shown a photo of that person alongside a sample of their BO "they got confused", becoming less accurate, says Sorokowska.
There was no overwhelming evidence they put their partner at number one.
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