Why women are sticking cucumbers in their special places (and why they shouldn't be).

Cucumbers and humans have lived in harmony for centuries now. We’ve always understood the value of the humble cucumber and we’ve treated it well.

Cucumbers have let us use their crunch in our salads, their soothing properties on our puffy eyes, and their refreshing tang in our cocktails.

But now we’ve gone too far.

Women have decided to stick the simple, innocent vegetable all up in their lady parts to give themselves a ‘vagina facial’.

Yep, you read right. This is a thing that’s happening now and, quite frankly, I feel sorry for the cucumbers.

The trend is being advocated by bloggers, vloggers and ‘health gurus’ who believe douching yourself with a cucumber will help your vajayjay restore its natural PH balance.

According to Disfunkshion Magazine you should do a cucumber cleanse once a week to naturally “flush” the vagina.

“To do this, cut a fresh cucumber down to a size that will fit, peel it and insert it in your vagina. Twist in and out for about 20 minutes. You can do this treatment in the bed, in the shower or even in the bathtub. Ask your partner for help to make it even more fun!”

But probably the biggest advocate for the cucumber cleanse is Gigi ‘the yoni cucumber cleansing lady’ Robinson. Robinson is a microbiologist and sacred sexuality facilitator who also believes the cucumber can activate the skenes gland for squirting. Yep.

Gigi even has a YouTube tutorial for those who need more guidance on how to peel a cucumber and stick it up their hoo-ha.

But before you get too excited and head down to your local greengrocer, you should know that putting a cucumber in your lady bits is actually really, really dangerous.

The vagina is a self-cleansing machine and sticking anything up there as a douche can actually cause more harm than good.

Dr Jen Gunter, a Canadian gynaecologist, warned women on her blog that they should avoid this trend at all costs (*millions of cucumbers breathe a sigh of relief*).

"This idea that some kind of vaginal cleansing is required, be it a peeled cucumber or the 'feminine washes' sold at drugstores, is misogyny dressed up as health care and I am having none of it. Vaginas are not dirty," she writes.

"Study after study after study tells us that douches, cleanses, steams, vinegar, ph balancing products, aloe, colloidal silver, garlic or whatever else passing as the vaginal snake oil du jour at best do nothing but have real potential for harming good bacteria and/or disrupting the mucosal surface."

Dr Gunter warns that "damaging lactobacilli and the mucosa attempts at vaginal cleaning" can actually increase a woman's risk of contracting HIV or gonorrhea if she is exposed.

And it'll probably make you smell a little funny down there.

Lastly, Dr Gunter warns putting a cucumber in your vagina and twisting it around for 20 minutes could actually cause vaginal and bladder perforation. So yeah, there's that.

So ladies, step away from the cucumbers.

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