Is It OK to Blow-Dry Your Vagina After Showering?

Showers are a fairly intuitive and uncomplicated part of daily life. Get in, get wet, put some viscous liquids on your body, rinse them off, get out, dry off. Easy. Just because something is easy, though, doesn’t mean it’s right. But just because this is the way we’ve done it for the past few decades doesn't mean it's the only way. If we stuck to the status quo, we would never have come up with innovations like the lightbulb, the iPhone… and, maybe, the idea to blow-dry your vagina after showering instead of just scrunching a towel up there and hoping for the best.

I know what you’re thinking: Excuse me? I’m supposed to be booking a Drybar appointment for my pussy on the daily? No. (That would be really expensive.) But since the idea has been a topic of discussion this week in the VICE office in the wake of a (since-deleted) tweet about a gynecologist’s recommending it, we looked into whether a post-shower blow dry could be helpful when it comes to keeping things neutral in your vaginal microbiome.

“This is not essential or recommended by any means,” New York-based gynecologist Alyssa Dweck told VICE via email. She did, however, say the practice was “safe with caveats”: keep the hair dryer on its lowest/coolest setting and only use it externally. “Don’t blow air into the vagina,” Dweck said. Good advice, and broadly applicable. She also said some gynecologists suggest blow-drying versus a mere towel-off for people who get frequent yeast infections or suffer from issues related to skin sensitivity. “Yeast thrives in moist dark places, and towel drying may not do the trick,” Dweck said.

So, if you’re someone who deals with recurrent yeast infections and you’re looking for an excuse to fire up the ol’ Dyson Supersonic, it’s not actively dangerous to put two and two together. Just proceed with caution and enjoy the breeze.

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