They Tell You You’re Dirty

Years ago, I walked out of my South Florida home on my way to work and encountered two iguanas busily making the next generation of iguanas.

My immediate, thoroughly human response was: “Get a room.”

Of course, the iguanas did not need a room. They did not need lingerie, pornography, deodorant, carefully styled hair, ideal bodies, or reassurance that they looked and smelled the way iguanas were supposed to look and smell.

They were simply following a biological imperative.

Human beings surround sex with love, fantasy, religion, morality, beauty, memory, fear, and sometimes transcendence. We can experience sexuality as tender, playful, passionate, intimate, or sacred.

We can also surround it with shame. And the message beneath sexual shame is usually the same:

You are not okay as you are.

Your body is too large or too small. Your penis is inadequate. Your vulva looks wrong. You have too much hair. You smell or taste strange. You are too sexual or not sexual enough.

Eventually, no one else has to say it. You bring the message into the bedroom yourself.

How Shame Enters Us

No one needs to formally announce to a child, “Your natural body is unacceptable.” The lesson arrives indirectly.

It comes through a parent’s grimace while changing a diaper, a schoolyard joke, a warning to close your legs, silence around menstruation, a religious message about impurity, a partner’s criticism, pornography, social media, or an advertisement promising “freshness.”

The messages may appear unrelated, but they repeat the same idea:

Something about you needs to be fixed.

Advertising is especially effective at creating this anxiety. First, it identifies a problem you may not have known you had. Then it sells you the cure.

In one of Mel Brooks’s 2,000-Year-Old Man routines, he protests that “they’re taking away our smells.” He describes people spritzing deodorant everywhere until everyone smells like a strawberry.

Sarah Silverman mocks the same idea in a routine about vaginal deodorant. Both jokes expose a familiar assumption: the natural human body is offensive and should be made to smell like something other than itself.

Why Does Sexual Shame Exist?

Shame helps groups regulate behavior and belonging.

Every culture creates rules about acceptable bodies, relationships, gender roles, modesty, cleanliness, virginity, desire, and sexual behavior. Shame enforces those rules even when no authority figure is present.

Once the cultural voice becomes an internal voice, we police ourselves.

Terror management theory offers a deeper explanation. Sex reminds us that we are human and mortal, like every other species. We sweat, smell, bleed, grow hair, reproduce, age, become ill, and die. The problem is not that sex reminds us that we are animals. The problem may be that we have been taught that being physical is degrading rather than miraculous.

Hygiene or Erasure?

Of course, hygiene matters.

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Bodies need to be washed. Teeth need to be brushed. New or persistent genital odor, itching, pain, unusual discharge, sores, or irritation may require medical care.

But there is a difference between caring for the body and trying to erase the fact that we have bodies.

Healthy bodies have scent. They grow hair. They sweat and produce fluids. They change with hormones, age, medication, stress, health, and sexual arousal.

Pubic hair is not evidence of poor hygiene. A vulva is not dirty because it has a natural scent. A penis is not inadequate because it does not resemble one selected for pornography. An aging body has not failed because it looks like a body that has lived.

People may choose to shave, wax, groom, wear perfume, or use scented products because they enjoy doing so. That is a valid choice.

The important question is:

Am I doing this because it gives me pleasure, or because I am afraid my natural body will be rejected?

A freely chosen preference is different from a ritual performed under threat of humiliation.

Watching Yourself Have Sex

Sex researchers Masters and Johnson used the term spectatoring to describe the experience of observing and evaluating yourself during sex instead of participating fully in it.

You begin wondering:

Do I look attractive?

Do I smell or taste acceptable?

Am I taking too long?

Does my partner think something is wrong with me?

Pleasure asks:

What am I feeling?

Shame asks:

What are they thinking about me?

Sexual pleasure requires attention to sensation. Shame redirects attention toward evaluation. Instead of inhabiting the body, we monitor it.

The body becomes a performance under review.

There Is No One Normal Body

Jamie McCartney’s The Great Wall of Vulva consists of hundreds of casts of actual vulvas. The artwork reveals enormous variation in size, shape, symmetry, texture, and appearance.

Its message is simple:

There is no single correct way for a vulva to look.

Shame thrives in secrecy. It convinces people that everyone else is normal and that they alone are defective. Human bodies vary. Vulvas vary. Penises vary. Breasts vary. Desire varies. The time required for arousal and orgasm varies.

Variation, not uniformity, is the human norm.

Returning to Your Body

Undoing sexual shame does not require you to stand naked in front of a mirror and declare that you love every inch of yourself. You can begin more gently. Notice whose voice you are hearing when you think, “I am dirty,” “I am unattractive,” or “No one will want me.”

Care for your body without declaring war on it. Bathe. Groom. Shave or do not shave. Use fragrance or do not use it. But make the choice consciously.

Ask yourself:

Does this give me pleasure?

Does it help me feel cared for?

Or am I trying to become acceptable?

Your worth is not determined by your age, weight, genital appearance, scent, sexual experience, fertility, erection, orgasm, or ability to satisfy another person.

You are not a product awaiting approval.

You are okay as you are.

And when you choose to use scent, groom, adorn, or change something, let it be an expression of freedom—not evidence that the natural you was ever unacceptable.

The human body can be awkward, unpredictable, funny, messy, vulnerable, and beautiful.

Carolina Freire and I will be recordinga podcast dedicated to healing shame. When it’s aired on our Let’s Talk Sex Official: Birds, Bees & Beyond, it will explore how messages about cleanliness, appearance, scent, body hair, genital “normality,” and sexual performance enter our consciousness—and how shame follows those messages into the bedroom.

If this piece resonated with you, you might also enjoy:

• Intimacy: The Sacred Space Between Us is available on Amazon in three formats: Hard cover, soft cover, and ebook. Find it here.

• Let’s Talk Sex: Birds, Bees & Beyond my podcast with Carolina Freire. Subscribe, share, comment.

• Work With Me individual coaching and workshops about intimacy and relationships including transcendent sexuality.