Incomprehensible Ick
Monday, October 6th, 2008 | Filed under General
What is it with women who hate their own vaginas?
Slate’s Torie Bosch wrote up a review of NuvaRing’s ad campaign (I personally find the commercial kind of creepy). In it, she says:
The ad’s smartest move is glossing over the ick factor of the contraceptive device itself.
Ick? It’s a clear plasticky ring. It resides in your vagina. Presumably, one inserts and removes it using one’s fingers. Is there an ick to this?
Sure, as she points out later, there’s an ick to the idea that it might fall out while you’re on the toilet, but somehow, I don’t think that’s what she means by “the ick factor of the contraceptive device itself“.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Maybe the ick factor is the thought of having a foreign object in your vagina for weeks?
October 7th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I’m currently use NuvaRing. There is a slight ick factor in that some of the normal vaginal discharge gets caught in the ring. But it’s really not a big deal.
It doesn’t fall out when I go to the bathroom, though.
I used to know a woman who couldn’t stand to touch her genital area when washing herself and had to have a washcloth specifically for that area. I don’t get that.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:11 am
sorry– that’s “using the NuvaRing.”
October 7th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I don’t know. I mean, something like an IUD is even more invasive–and it stays in your uterus for years. I assume that the NuvaRing is not made of anything which can provide any kind of significant growth site or medium for bacteria or which absorbs or otherwise retains any secretions. It’s a smooth plastic-like ring. It’s not a barrier like a menstrual cup or a diaphragm. It’s not absorbent like a tampon. It never occurred to me that such an object would be an icky thing to have in one’s vagina.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I’m a ring user, too.
The only psychologically icky thing is, as Zanti said, the time factor. Before using it, I had a sense that I shouldn’t leave things inside my orifices for more than a few hour stretch.
That said, in reality, the ring is no ickier than anything else. I rarely feel it. It doesn’t appear to react to its environment (become discolored or anything like that). Sometimes I worry that one of my used rings will wind up polluting some body of water and trapping a sea creature, so I cut it before throwing it away.
And here’s more info than you could ever want to know. The ring is perfect for me because I’m forgetful. The Pill demanded too much rigidity for my disposition. Every time I tried to use the Pill, I’d forget to take it one day and I’d screw up my cycle. Even when I’d tell myself to take a pill everyday when I brush my teeth in the morning, that wasn’t good enough because I sleep in sometimes, and if I varied the pill taking even by a couple of hours, I’d wind up way off track. If I’d been using the pill as a contraceptive instead of as a way to control my endometriosis, I’d have been knocked up for sure.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am
First of all, there are far “ickier” ads on tv, like the maxipad ads where a disembodied hand pours blue simulated menstrual blood to show how it collects in the pad’s channels. There is the Clorox “body soil” ad where people dive into a bed covered in murky sludge. There’s the ad where a cartoon bear runs around the forest with toiltet paper crumbs stuck to its ass.
I do find it interesting that medicine ads are now stressing the idea that pills are burdensome (rather than hard to remember to take). In the Boniva ad, Sally Field can’t believe that her friend has to find the time in her busy life to take a pill ONCE A WEEK. Sally has it so much better with her once a month pill. I guess they don’t want to alienate their potential customers by suggesting that they are the sort who forget to take their medicine.