Put Down The Pitchforks: New Product Doesn’t Make Vaginas Smell Like Peaches

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A probiotic product that became an Internet sensation after published reports claimed that it could make a vagina smell like peaches does actually exist, but wasn’t invented by the two male Silicon Valley bio-hackers originally believed to be responsible and doesn’t do what they claimed it would do.
According to a November 19 story by Inc.com San Francisco Bureau Chief Jeff Bercovici, Cambrian Genomics founder Austen Heinz and Personalized Probiotics founder Gilad Gome revealed a product line known as Sweet Peach Probiotics during the DEMO conference in San Jose, California last Wednesday. The supplement, they said, would “enable women to change the way their vaginas smell” and would be produced using Cambrian’s DNA printing technology.
Bercovici noted that Sweet Peach would have “practical benefits, like preventing yeast infections and other health problems caused by microorganisms,” but Heinz said the main idea was “personal empowerment” by eliminating odors “produced by the creatures that live on you. We think it’s a fundamental human right to not only know your code and the code of the things that live on you but also to write your own code and personalize it.”
Viral Peaches Storm The Net…
It didn’t take long for the story to spread across the Web like wildfire, with various bloggers, reporters and social media users chiming in with their opinions not just on the concept of the product, but on the apparent audacity of two men coming up with a product designed to biologically alter a very female part of the anatomy.
Allison P. Davis of New York Magazine said that the “personal empowerment” assertion “totally makes sense for a product insinuating that women need to fix or enhance their nether regions,” and quipped that “lest you think women’s vaginas are the only fix-it targets,” Heinz and Gome also had plans “to create a pill that will make pets feces smell like bananas.”
Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian suggested that women might be “perfectly happy with your healthy vagina’s natural smell and have never felt the slightest urge to have the scent of fuzzy fruits waft up from your lady garden,” and that many would “almost certainly…wonder why two guys have such firm ideas of how your vagina should smell.”
Buzzfeed Beauty Editor Arabelle Sicardi pointed out that the project had been “booted off of Kickstarter for being too controversial” and that “many vagina owners are not exactly thrilled at the prospect” of using the product. Sicardi also noted that Heinz gave little insight as to why they were purportedly working on a product that would alter feminine hygiene odors.
Not So Fast…
As it turns out, however, Heinz and Gome did not actually invent the product.
In a follow-up story, Bercovici explained that he was contacted by the REAL founder and CEO of Sweet Peach Probiotics, a 20-year-old, self-described “ultrafeminist” named Audrey Hutchinson. Hutchinson, the Inc.com reporter explained, is a former student at Bard College who left school to develop ways for women to manage reproductive health that did not require doctors or trips to the clinic. Yes, she is female, and she called the way her product has been characterized as highly misleading.
“I don’t think women should have vaginas that smell like peaches or anything like that,” she said. “I’m obviously sort of appalled that it’s been misconstrued like this because it was never the point of my company. I don’t want to apologize for [Heinz, who owns just a 10 percent stake in the company; Gome has no involvement whatsoever], but at the same time I want to apologize to every woman in the world who’s heard about this and wants my head on a stake.”
So how will it work? Hutchinson explained that a user will take a sample of her vaginal microbiome and send it in to be analyzed. After scientists determine its makeup and figures out what microorganisms live in her vagina, the company will supply the customer with a personalized regimen of probiotic supplements designed to optimize her vaginal health.
The goal is to make sure that desirable microbes flourish in their proper balance while ensuring that undesirable ones, such as those that cause yeast infections are kept in check. And the name? It does not refer to the fact that the supplements will make a woman’s nether-regions smell like a deciduous tree fruit; rather, it was chosen because the peach has long been used as a symbol of the vagina in literature, said Bercovici.
While Heinz said that some of his investors had pulled out in the wake of the controversy, he told the Inc.com reporter that he believed the “mischaracterization” would be “great for Sweet Peach. Typically in the press, philosophical controversy can be useful when you’re selling a product. So it’s great for Audrey.” He personally, however, had lost “a lot of money” due to the perception that “Cambrian is a sexist organization who think women’s vaginas smell bad,” he added.
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