What should I say? When should I say it??
Q
My girlfriend (they/them) and I have been dating for a few months now and it is a LDR – one of us lives in the U.S. and the other in Europe. It has been going amazingly well and we have been able to visit each other for a few days every month. I see a beautiful future with them and I’m excited to figure it out.
There is one problem though that I can’t figure out what to do. About half the time we have sex or get naked, something smells bad. At first I thought it was their butt but now I’m thinking it’s their vagina? It’s just… a pretty bad, foul odor. And it is preventing me from wanting to eat them out or stick my face in their groin (which are things I normally want to do when there’s no odor!). My girlfriend has very good hygiene (showers every day or two), so I don’t know what’s up. I looked for explanations on Google but it came up empty, just listing potential illnesses. Maybe they need to see their OBGYN? Could it be it’s a side effect of their current medications? But what if the problem is me and it’s one of those things where our bodies are not compatible? But kissing them tastes good and I like how their sweat smells, so that’s a good sign, right?
We have very good, open communication with one another but this is something where I know they will feel really embarrassed about, so when I talk to them about it, I want to do it in the best way possible. What should I say? And when should I say it? Should I wait to talk about it in person the next time I smell something off? Thank you for the help!
A
Riese: Okay, I am not a doctor!!! But someone asked me something like this on formspring well over a decade ago (we used to give advice on autostraddle tumblr via formspring!) and I was like, listen I think your girlfriend has BV. You can have BV for a really long time without any symptoms besides a bad smell. And I did say then, as I am saying now, that I am not a doctor, but that the girlfriend should maybe see a doctor because she might have BV. And the question-asker wrote back a few weeks later and said “you were right! She had BV!” So I do actually think maybe your girlfriend should see a doctor ‘cause maybe they do have BV. It’s really easy to get and not a big deal. (I’ve gotten it a few times when starting a relationship with a new sex partner, which is apparently relatively common.) I would wait to talk to them about it until you’re in person. I’m not sure how to tell her, what the best way to tell her would be… hopefully someone else does.
Summer: It sounds like you’ve isolated the source of the odor down to something specific, and not their general bodily scent. Everyone has a scent and sure, we often find ones that don’t match our tastes. But you like your girlfriend’s sweat and other scents, so I think this is a more localized thing. More to the point, it may very well be something vaginal. Bringing it up won’t be easy, but I think it’s worth a shot rather than suffer for the rest of your life.
How to approach it? In private. In person (unless you two are way better with online communication). Have the talk when neither of you are in a stressful or sad place. This has to be an honest sit-down talk. You’ll need to indicate to them that this will be a serious and possibly unpleasant conversation. This isn’t casual chat and they deserve a moment to mentally prepare for some bad news. After that? Be direct about your concerns and how they affect you. Always reassure them that this is not a slight against their hygiene and bring up the possibility that it may be medical, like a pH imbalance in the vagina. Be prepared to offer comfort and support to them no matter what. Approach the topic with care and make sure they know that it’s about you working together to address something, not a matter of correcting their body, or something similarly horrible.
And… good luck.
Ah, the special hell of video calls and body dysmorphia 🫠
Q
I have REALLY bad Body Dysmorphic Disorder and just started a new job where I am on zoom calls all the time, hating myself. Is it too obvious if I set the blurring filters really high? Do people judge each other for that or do they notice? Any ideas at all anybody has for coping with this would be so helpful! Thank you for this and for everything that you do.
A
Summer: This one is really rough. I’ve got countless body image difficulties and I know how awful it is to be required to display yourself in a context you don’t want to. For a long time. Via a particularly unflattering medium. My suggestions to you are two-pronged.
Firstly, the band-aid: if you have a supervisor, you can notify them that for mental health reasons, it would be highly preferable if you weren’t always on camera. If they’re accommodating, they should let you just attend via a profile pic or even as some default avatar. That should go a long way to alleviating the stress of being watched. I used to do it entirely unprompted. They’re paying me for my presence, not for a show. I don’t know how your workplace would handle that request, but a good one should be willing to accommodate. This is advocating for yourself and it’s critical to healthy work-sanity balance.
Secondly, if your BDD is that serious, then it’s worth addressing. Secure therapy or a similar outlet if you can. Find supportive, moderated communities and participate in them. Resist daily. It unfortunately won’t improve without your input and exposing yourself to stressful work environments that set these feelings off can only make it worse. If you have avenues to support yourself, please take them.
Lastly… do people judge each other over their Zoom presence? I’d say most people don’t, and I’m pretty antsy about personal image. Most places that use Zoom calls know that it’ll be unflattering. Working from home often means a lower standard of personal presentation. Calls can catch people in awkward timezones or at night, when the lighting is ass. Everyone who has used an app like that has seen an unflattering image of someone and continued working because that’s the nature of the work. If people stopped to gawk at other Zoom users’ video presence, no work would get done. Are there people who will judge? Yeah. But good people don’t. So ignore the ones who do, and ignore the possibility that they exist if you can.
Valerie: First of all, please know that everyone else is also mostly only looking at themselves and not you, if that helps you at all, regardless of how clear or blurry your image is. That said, for practical advice; the first one is dependent on the type of meetings you’re in, the second is possible no matter where you work. One:I highly recommend getting permission to be off-camera if possible. At the start of the pandemic, I told my boss my internet wasn’t strong enough to support me being on camera since my roommate and I were both working from home, and while at first that was true, eventually I upgraded my internet and my roommate moved out but I still stayed off-camera unless it was a one-on-one call and my boss was fine with it. Two: If that’s not something that’s possible for you, something I also have done when it was a camera-required situation is put a post-it note over my own face on the screen. So everyone else could see me but I couldn’t see myself. It helped me stop fixating on my own appearance and actually just listen and be present in the meeting. We as humans weren’t made to look at ourselves for such a long period of time, so protect your peace however you have to!
Nico: This can be tough, especially if you have a boss who demands that you be present on camera. I’ve definitely been in that situation, and so you have to, no matter how you’re feeling about how you look that day, show up on camera for calls. If your work is accommodating, then you can definitely ask for an accommodation. If you don’t have that kind of relationship with them, though, then I would advise being careful about revealing any mental health diagnosis that could be used against you in the future, so it’s definitely a choice you need to weigh. That said, I think it’s fine to use the blurring filters. I doubt anyone will ask you about it, and it would be rude of them if they did!
Riese: In this current political climate I would not necessarily recommend talking to your boss about it as a first line of action— but I would amp up the blurring filters! I don’t think anybody would notice, I’ve literally never thought about it when I’m on calls with others. Also my wife’s office is super dark so she got this like, backlight that she clips on over her computer screen? It’s not like a ring light, but I think it could be nice looking into. I like Valerie’s post-it note idea too. If you’re using zoom there’s an option also to turn off your self-view, I usually do that when in a zoom meeting. Other people can see you but you can’t see yourself.
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L1: BV BV BV!!!!!!!!! IT REALLY COULD BE BV Like Riese I also am not a doctor but it sounds exactly like my life for like 15 years while every doctor refused to do any testing until I moved to a country where preventative healthcare exists, one gyno did a regular swab and was like “you have BV” and after the gentlest easiest antibiotics ever I have since been UN-SMELLY. LIKE MAGIC. If you want to bring this up in a way that will not make your gf feel self conscious and terrible any more than they need to, might I suggest saying not that they smell BAD but that they smell STRONG? And just tell them that your online friend Pallas had the same problem and was very very happy to have it checked out by a doctor.
L2 seconding everybody saying that your coworkers are probably not looking at you at all. I also Zoom a lot for work and constantly seeing myself stresses me out and a lot of the time I solve this by making it so my video is on (can’t be off in my line of work) but I disable myself being able to see it. There is a setting for this in Zoom!!! I don’t remember what it’s called. Disable self-view, maybe? Either way it might be helpful in just being able to focus on everyone else (who, again, are only looking at themselves most likely).
Seconding the advice to disable self-view.
L1: I wonder if saying that your noticing a “different” smell rather than leading with it being a bad smell would feel easier for you and your gf. You said about half the time you notice it, so it’s sort of true! And “different” is easy to lead into “so something might be off, I bet it’s BV”