It’s a thing. It popped into my newsfeed as a story. I had to click. I mean, what new vagina fashion has come into play. Maxxing? Is this some new big vagina trend? Are our vaginas now not ‘big’ enough? Are we trying to create a spare room in our womb?
Apparently maxxing has two x’s. I guess when you start appropriating language to describe a trend you get to mess with language. It’s the first step in messing with our minds, and inferring our vaginas are somehow not okay. Which, in the patriarchy seems obvious. We live in a culture of penis-maxxing. It’s not a product. Or a surgery. It’s power. Men have been penis-maxxing for centuries.
So what is vagina-maxixing? Apparently it’s a viral social media trend that pushes women to alter the appearance, scent, or tightness of their vulva using specialised products. To be more accurate it should be called vulva-maxxing, but we’ve always been encouraged to be inaccurate around what word we use to name our genitals. Somehow vulva just seemed too awkward, so vagina made it through. Vulva is the external area. Vagina is the muscular canal. It’s like calling the penis the scrotum. But accuracy was never a consideration when it comes to women’s bodies.
So there are tightening gels, steaming, whitening creams, washes, deodorants and supplements for female ‘freshness’. They are calling them vagina ‘wellness’ products. Like a normal un-maxxed vagina is sick? There’s one thing I know, and that is our female biology is pretty remarkable, and our clever self-cleaning vulva doesn’t need an air freshener. In fact, if you use those kinds of products you are going to end up with a very sad twat. Maxxing could lead to bacterial vaginosis, candida and UTI’s. Plus, if you’re piling in the coconut oil beware, it eats through condoms. So you might have maxxed your way to an STI.
In order for vagina-maxxing to work, you need to feel insecure about your vagina. You need to feel that your very healthy natural state is somehow deficient or wrong. That your vagina is ‘unwell’. The business model only works when women hate themselves. Vulvas are unique. They’re not made by AI. They’re all different. So don’t maxx your vag girls.
This maxxing concept is this stupid social media word – it’s internet slang for optimising a specific part of life. It involves dedication and obsession. Most recently it was ‘looksmaxxing’. That involves everything from ridiculous eyebrow trends to obsessively dragging smooth pieces of rose quartz along your cheek bone, to bone smashing and steroid use. And it’s not just women. Men looksmaxx as well.
Why is it always appearance? Why can’t we be book-maxxing? Obsessively reading to improve our intelligence? Smashing hours at the library instead of the gym? If we stopped focusing on our physical selves and invested on our sagging brains, we might actually finally experience the improvement we’ve all been seeking.
Imagine if critical thinking started trending!
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, and was the Greens candidate at the past two federal elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
