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#PantyChallenge intro

Source: Snapchat/Facebook

I usually roll my eyes when I see women on the internet talking about how they want to tweet their periods or bake bread with the yeast from their vaginas. It just seems like team too much and there are other fights we could be fighting under the banner of feminism.

But then something like the #PantyChallenge happens.

The earliest mention of the challenge came from back in December 2015.

A Facebook user and aspiring rapper, who shall remain nameless here, wrote:

“We Finna Start A #PantyChallenge If Yo Sh*t Looking Like A Caramel Frappe From McDonalds Im Calling The Police You Hoes Finna Start Getting Charge [sic] For Attempted Murder”

For those who missed it, the object of the panty challenge was for women to snap a picture of the crotch of their underwear and post it on social media. Women were to show that their underwear was free of marks or stains.

Thankfully, I only saw like three pictures of women or girls participating in this challenge. But for whatever reason, the topic of discussion came up again yesterday on Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram.

Still, the fact that it was created. The fact that so many men feel free and empowered to speak on a body part they don’t possess and know very little about, was and is worth a discussion.

The problem with the #PantyChallenge? Well, being that the crotch of your panties sits right under your vaginal opening, it is the first to catch vaginal discharge. And there is a good chance that your discharge, though normally clear, will leave something like a watermark or more. And that’s completely normal and completely healthy. The vagina is a self-cleaning body part that is always in the process of regulating its own pH through the release of vaginal secretions and cervical mucus.

The #PantyChallenge seeks to shame women for simply having a normal, healthy vagina. Like the same ways men shame women for the fact that their vaginas don’t smell like peaches and cream, or the way they shame women for bleeding every month as biology dictates.

The same men who claim to love women really don’t know a single thing about the way our bodies work, which is incredible, considering how much time men spend trying to get inside of women’s bodies.

Thankfully, there were plenty of women who called this challenge out for what it was, an ignorant, misogynistic attempt at belittling women and their bodies for doing what they do naturally.

God forbid we ask these men to take and upload a picture of their tightie whities after a bean burrito has worked its magic.

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