Vagina Pills Claiming To Make You Taste ‘Sweeter’ Are Complete Bullsh*t

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Everywhere we turn, products promise to drastically improve our lives by making our hair fuller, our skin softer, and our vaginas sweeter.

Wait, what? Make our vaginas sweeter? No, that wasn’t some bizarre Freudian slip – pills which promise to do exactly that actually exist.

So much so that in recent weeks, our social media feeds have been getting inundated with posts promising to ‘enhance the flavour of your secretions’ – like that’s an entirely normal thing to advertise.

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As though women needed yet any more reasons to dislike something about their bodies or to doubt their own self-worth, vagina pills are here to make us question whether our private parts are normal.

Disclaimer: they are, although companies selling these products wouldn’t want you to believe such an absurd thing because then you wouldn’t buy into their marketing.

Their intention is clear: to target women’s insecurities about how our vaginas taste, look and smell.

One particular product has gained traction on social media due to influencers advertising (and shamelessly promoting) the pills on their page.

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My Sweet V promises to make your ‘sexual secretions taste absolutely yummy and bring your sexual satisfaction and performance to incredible new heights’.

Pictures of women holding the product as they pose in their underwear have been posted all over Instagram, with captions promising to ‘make you taste better than the next girl’ and offering the secret to a happy relationship.

The secret to a happy relationship is, in fact, finding someone who loves you for who you are and (get this) someone who won’t complain about the taste of your vagina because they enjoy it just the way it is.

The secret to a happy relationship is not, therefore, using a bullshit product designed to alter the way you taste and smell naturally, because – and I cannot reiterate this enough – it’s a load of bullshit.

People quickly cottoned on to the bizarre promotions, with actor and activist Nicola Thorp posting a screenshot of one such Instagram post alongside a series of tweets calling out the product.

In one such tweet, Nicola wrote:

Now they’re ‘influencing’ us to take pills to make us taste ‘sweeter’

‘You should always taste better than the next chick’?!?!?

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The equality campaigner quickly followed up this point by linking out to several ‘meme’ accounts on Instagram who were promoting the product, making her stance clear.

While one meme made the bold assertion that you should try out My Sweet V ‘if they’re not obsessed with tasting U’, Nicola fired back: ‘If they’re not obsessed with tasting you then maybe you should try out someone who is.’ Amen to that sister.

Jameela Jamil re-tweeted Nicola’s original thread, slamming the corporations behind such sweets as ‘dumb’ and ‘offensive’.

The actor and activist then made the valid point that such companies wouldn’t think to sell gummies to men to make their sperm taste sweeter, because nothing is perceived to be ‘wrong’ about sperm in the first place.

Which is exactly the problem. By providing us with a so-called ‘solution’, these companies are instilling in women the idea there is something inherently wrong with us that needs to be ‘fixed’.

In other words, they want us to believe our vaginas are unnatural in some way and need products in order to taste a certain way or smell differently to what they currently do.

By getting women to model these products while sharing generic captions about how much they’ve improved their sex lives, women everywhere buy into the notion that maybe, just maybe, there is something drastically wrong with them.

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But there isn’t. Vaginas naturally have an odor, just as semen has a taste. If you’re healthy, vaginal discharge and the scent associated with it is perfectly normal.

Anyone who’s tried to make you feel bad about the way you taste or smell down there, just because they think you need to taste like some sort of breakfast smoothie, simply isn’t worth your time.

UNILAD spoke to Catriona Boffard, a clinical sexologist and psychotherapist, who regularly works with women who have an extremely negative body image, in particular with regards to their genitals.

Catriona stressed how pills such as these only increase the shame and disgust often felt by women in relation to their vaginas are therefore extremely ‘detrimental to women’s genital image’.

The sexologist stated that while certain things do lead to an unpleasant or unusual smell – such as smoking, processed foods, an untreated STI, or bacterial infection – the scent associated with a healthy vagina is completely normal.

Catriona explained:

So many women I speak to feel ashamed about the way they think they taste to a partner, which would only be further perpetuated by a product like this claiming to ‘improve’ how she tastes.

All women’s vaginas have a certain smell (like a man’s semen has a certain taste), and a woman shouldn’t be encouraged to take something to alter this. Vaginal discharge and the scent associated to it is completely NORMAL.

These sweets fuel the shame that so many women hold to their bodies already. They are also likely to throw off the pH balance that the vagina needs to function, which could wreck havoc and actually cause an odd smell due to infection.

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‘A lot more stigma exists around women’s bodies than men’s,’ Catriona continued, which she believes explains why these products are targeted towards women as ‘companies like this are playing into that’.

The sexologist continued:

As consumers, we are always encouraged to ‘do better, look better, smell better’ etc… and sadly this product targets an area of our body already shamed and stigmatised.

Emphasising that women ‘should never be shamed by someone else’ who might be insisting they take these sweets, Catriona urged anyone considering taking the ‘problematic’ pills to reconsider.

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If a qualified clinical sexologist and psychotherapist isn’t enough to convince you these pills are bullshit, how about the fact they’re not FDA approved?

As per the company’s own website: ‘These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease’.

Despite this, they describe themselves as ‘an adult sexual wellness and health entity’ and say their aim is to become recognised as ‘sex educators’.

If they really want to educate women about our vaginas though, surely the best place to start would be to inform us that we don’t need to change the way we taste in any way – instead of peddling untested products to take advantage of our insecurities.

Etsy/Felt Melons

Kate Moyle, a psychosexual and relationship therapist based in London, reiterates that these pills serve no other function than to reinforce unrealistic expectations for women.

The psychosexual therapist told UNILAD:

The problem with a product like this is that it gives the message that women and their bodies are not okay as they are.

Bodies have a natural scent, temperature, texture, hair but we are constantly given messages about how we ‘should’ be and ‘should’ look when this is all based on unrealistic ideas.

It’s also focused on the partner’s experience of the female body (for example a male or female partner giving oral sex), rather than being of any benefit for the person using the sweets.

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Kate stressed that the vagina is pH balanced and naturally contains healthy bacteria as it is designed to keep itself clean.

As such: ‘any scented products can disrupt the body’s natural balance and could therefore potentially lead to potential infection and inflammation’.

The therapist continued:

There are so many messages in the media targeted at particularly young women about how they should look and be, in a way that conforms to idealised and unrealistic standards.

We should be celebrating people as individuals and promoting acceptance and celebrating diversity, not trying to encourage everyone to be the same.

Targeting women in these kind of campaigns is nothing new, we can see it across a whole range of media and advertising about pointing people towards changing the way that they naturally are rather than learning how to accept themselves and be confident in that.

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Basically, these pills – which are not medically or scientifically approved – do nothing more than shame women into changing ourselves to fit someone else’s unrealistic standards.

The last thing we need is another product geared towards women which stigmatises our bodies and sexuality more than they already are.

It’s time to put an end to it once and for all.

UNILAD reached out to My Sweet V on several occasions but received no response.

If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via [email protected]

Lucy Connolly

A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).