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Private Area Bleaching: Is It Safe?
Society heaps all sorts of weird expectations and pressures on people. Whether it’s pressure for us to maintain a dress size that’s impossible for many women to even reach healthily or expectations and limits placed on a person’s careers and personalities… The checklist of things you have to do to be considered a conventionally attractive woman or man is not short.
While society may have come a long way from requiring all women to remain in the kitchen, or all men to be breadwinners, we still haven’t reeeeally reached equality. And a lot of these frustrating expectations and beauty standards continue to linger.
Don’t get us wrong — it’s important to feel comfortable and confident in your own skin! And part of that, for many of us, is appealing to conventional beauty standards. There’s no shame in that. But there are some expectations and pressures that are worth a deeper look before you follow through on them.
One of the most insidious — and frankly, the most confusing — is the growing pressure for a person’s genitals to be flawless in appearance. It’s great to take care of and to show some love to your bits (if you know what we mean), but there’s an increasingly long list of cosmetic procedures people are undergoing to try to change or improve the appearance of their vulva, labia, and other bits, including bleaching.
As going bare down there has become more and more popular and conventional, women are paying more attention to their complexion in the area!
If you’ve been considering undergoing private area bleaching to remedy an uneven complexion you’ve noticed, you may be wondering if it’s safe. The answer is actually a bit complicated!
Let’s Talk Complicated
Here’s the thing — we’re not into shaming people for any cosmetic procedures they decide to pursue to help boost their confidence or make them feel like their best selves. If you think changing the length of your labia will get rid of any and all self-consciousness you feel next time you’re in the sack, or just will make you feel good when you look in the mirror, that’s great!
But there are two things that make cosmetic procedures complicated when it comes to something like private area bleaching. It can be easy to allow society’s expectations or others’ opinions to change your opinion of yourself. You should make cosmetic choices based on the belief that they will make you happy rather than changing your body to make others happy.
If you’re looking to lighten your skin tone in areas to even it out, take a step back and make sure you’re pursuing private area bleaching for the right reasons.
The other thing is a general belief that all vaginas are beautiful! They’re unique and different, and no two look the same. Because we don’t often talk about our private areas with one another, there’s sometimes a self-consciousness that develops in women or men that their private parts are somehow wrong. That simply isn’t possible!
So if your desire to pursue a cosmetic change is motivated by feeling like your private area doesn’t look like the one you saw in a textbook, we’d again recommend taking a step back first, just to be sure you’re pursuing it for the right reasons!
Why Is Your Private Area Darker?
Even if you’re confident and comfortable with your private area as it is in every other way, you still may be wondering why it’s darker than other parts of your skin, whether this applies to parts of your vulva or even your anus. It’s actually completely normal and natural!
Areas of darker skin are known as hyperpigmentation. Hyperpigmentation can occur for a variety of reasons on all parts of your body. Parts of your body that experience friction more frequently are more likely to get Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation — so areas like your genitals that experience friction may be darker just due to normal daily activities.
That’s to say nothing of the obvious, ahem, stretching that may occur in your private areas during certain activities and the microtears that can appear as a result. Even if you don’t notice or feel them, repeated damage like this can lead to hyperpigmentation.
Another thing that might irritate your skin and lead to dark spots is wearing tight clothing! If you live in leggings or wear tight underwear, especially thongs or g-strings, your clothing may be irritating your skin, which can lead to hyperpigmentation over time.
All that said, while certain things can exacerbate hyperpigmentation, being a bit darker down there is neither unusual nor dangerous, and the only thing it can really harm is your self-esteem.
What Is Private Area Bleaching?
There are several different ways to go about brightening the look of the skin between your legs, but they’re not all created equal — and they’re not all safe.
If you’ve had dark spots or other blemishes before and looked into how to treat them, you may be familiar with the general concept of skin pigmentation. And for the ladies- if you have a vagina and everything that goes with it, you’re probably also aware that they’re delicate creatures in some ways.
What Can Help With Skin Pigmentation?
The smallest change in pH can throw off your whole microbiome and lead to infuriating and sometimes painful infections. So although creams and gels packed with Alpha Hydroxy Acids are a common and effective treatment for dark spots elsewhere, you probably don’t want to slather it on around your private area. We don’t recommend using chemical exfoliants or brighteners down there.
You may also be familiar with Hydroquinone, which is a popular ingredient when it comes to brightening treatments. Although it hasn’t been proven in humans yet, Hydroquinone is shown to have potentially cancerous effects, so despite its purported effectiveness, if you want to be safe, it’s best to steer clear.
A common alternative to Hydroquinone is Tranexamic Acid, which is thought to be a natural way to even out your skin tone with none of the risks associated with Hydroquinone. Although Tranexamic Acid is a great ingredient if you’re looking to treat dark spots on your face or other parts of your body, we don’t recommend it for use in your private area, either.
Because the skin around your genitals is super sensitive, creams and serums that work for other parts of your body could burn or otherwise harm the skin of your private area. The irony of ironies, if you use the wrong cream and it leads to some kind of burn… you may end up with dark skin anyway, resulting from Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation.
Another option for bleaching your private area is to get a laser treatment. This should only be done by a professional whom you trust and have researched extensively. Using a laser to bleach dark skin breaks down dark pigments in your skin.
By breaking them down, laser treatment makes it easier for these dark pigments to be carried away by white blood cells, leaving you with a potentially lighter, more even complexion on any dark area.
The problem is, again, the skin of your private area is super delicate! You’re more likely to have pain while being treated or experience negative side effects after treatment. It can also interrupt the microbiome of your vagina, the same as any cream, and if you’ve ever had a yeast infection before, you know the correct response to this, which is “yikes.”
So… Is There a Safe Way to Bleach Your Private Parts?
You’ve read the warning label, so now you may be looking for the advice portion. But the truth is, we don’t really have a good recommendation for bleaching the skin around your private parts. All of the traditional methods come with risks, simply because your private area, whether you’re a he, she, or they, is one of the most sensitive areas on your body.
Not only is the skin sensitive and prone to damage or irritation when mistreated, but you don’t want anything questionable around orifices (keep that in mind on your next Tinder date), as it could throw off the delicate microbiome your body works so hard to maintain and lead to infection.
If, however, you’re bound and determined to pursue private area bleaching, the best advice we can give you is to proceed with extreme caution and get it done by a professional. Because there are so many risks associated with this treatment, this isn’t something to cut corners on or save pennies on — you’ll want to see a professional and pay top dollar to ensure that you’re getting the safest possible treatment.
In Conclusion
Although private area bleaching is advertised more and more under different names — does Vaginal Rejuvenation ring any bells? — it isn’t a cosmetic treatment with a lot of reliably safe options and poses way more potential downfalls than benefits. While we support you doing what you need to do to feel like the glowing goddess you are at heart, this is one treatment you might want to pass on.
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