You can find anything on the internet, and these days, that includes crocheted tampons. Yes, tampons made of yarn are being sold on Etsy, and news outlets are having to run pieces advising on why vaginal chunky-knits really don’t need to be a look this winter.

Crocheted tampons, just like most things made and sold in an unregulated market such as the internet, do not have to pass the same safety regulations that store-bought tampons have to pass. That means that we don’t know whether they work, what’s in them, or even how they should be cleaned.

Online, it seems that a buyer’s good intentions (in this case, a desire to be more environmentally friendly, thrifty and less wasteful) can be easily exploited, because Google is the place where people with a lack of information go to find things. It’s not just Google: anyone who doesn’t live under a rock will have also noticed the endless stream of vaginal eggs, candles and other nonsense coming out of Gwyneth Paltrow lately. So as a service to you, we are correcting the record on some of the worst vaginal products out there.

Vagina tightening sticks

Vaginal tightening sticks can be bought in online stores such as Amazon, where you can also buy fake hymens – so basically, don’t use Amazon.

These sticks promise to give you the perfect “toned, narrow, tight vagina”. That’s right, in 2020, focusing on what’s inside means goodbye toned abs, hello slender vagina. Which is why vagina weight-training is also now a thing.

Vaginas come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and the tightness of one’s vagina has nothing to do with how much pleasure can be derived from it. If you really want to tighten your vagina, kegel exercises are free.

Weed

There is an array of weed products for the vagina that can be found on the internet, including but not limited to: weed tampons, weed lube and weed vibrators.



People often say that smoking weed can help people to relax and eases pain, heck, it can even be fun, apparently.

But in news that will shock the whole internet: just because something is nice doesn’t mean you have to put it in your vagina. While the compound CBD that is found in weed has been shown to help with some chronic pain, this does not automatically translate to working when put in the vagina. So please, stop.

Bleach

People order at-home creams, go into spas, and get laser treatment to lighten the skin around their vaginas. Needless to say, it’s bad for you: bleaching your vaginal area can result in irritation, inflammation and infections like thrush and bacterial vaginosis.

Oak galls

In case you didn’t know, oak galls are a little ball of bark created when a wasp deposits its larvae into an oak tree. Which leads to the natural question: why shouldn’t I put that in my vagina? Some con artists online have taken to convincing women to boil up oak gall into a paste and insert it, causing it to dry and tighten.

According to gynecologist Dr Jen Gunter, drying out the vagina increases your chance of getting abrasions during sex, destroys the protective mucous layer in your vagina, and can cause havoc with its good bacteria. In a blogpost on oak galls, she writes: “This is a dangerous practice with real potential to harm. Here’s a pro-tip, if something burns when you apply it to the vagina it is generally bad for the vagina.”

Not just that, but the idea that a dry, tight vagina is desirable is a frankly depressing sexual idea, and misinformation of the worst, most misogynistic kind.

Douching products

Most experts will tell you to avoid washing your vagina with soap, and yet there are rows of shelves in stores stacked with vaginal douching products. The vagina is a self-cleaning organ, and soap often disturbs its natural balance. “Vaginal pH is maintained by lactobacilli. Soaps, cleansers and douches will only hurt this bacteria, so they are all bad pH-wise,” Gunter wrote in a recent New York Times piece.

Not only that, this disruption can result in bacterial infections such as bacterial vaginosis. Among other things, bacterial vaginosis can result in an unpleasant smell – probably the last thing that someone buying a vaginal cleaning product is hoping for.