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Vaginal Fumigation for the Goop Generation: Scent Therapy in Antiquity and the Holistic Health Movement

Scent therapy, when a woman’s vagina is fumigated by sweet or foul-smelling substances, assumes that the uterus can be attracted or repelled by certain smells like an animal. While scholars like Helen King[1] and Monica Green[2] argue that Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen rejected Plato’s theory of the wandering womb, ancient doctors and midwives continued to prescribe scent therapy, or vaginal fumigation, to women throughout antiquity and the middle ages. Furthermore, although scholars like Cristiana Franco, Ingvild Gilhus, and Marianne Govers Hopman have recently explored the link between women and animals in classical literature, they have not addressed the use of scent therapy and its connection to the animalized uterus in non-medical texts.[3] My paper suggests that classical authors outside of the medical field, particularly Ovid, not only explored the kinship between women and animals in their works but also reimagined certain medical treatments, like scent therapy, in a gendered context. Existing on the premise that women are chronically and incurably ill, scent therapy, rebranded “vaginal steaming” by the holistic health movement, continues today as women search for bodily autonomy and agency.

After briefly touching on the animalized uterus in ancient medicine and magic, I first discuss the depiction of the uterus as a canine or aquatic animal, usually a dog or some kind of fish,[4] and juxtapose it with Ovid’s three classic uterine monsters: Medusa, Scylla, and Charybdis. I then focus primarily on Scylla, whose experience in the Metamorphoses frames Rome’s approach to the female body and female sexuality. To arrest Scylla’s sexual development, Circe uses a form of scent therapy to draw out Scylla’s canine uterus by spreading foul, poisonous drugs in the water (14.55–8). Now permanently in a state of monstrous sexuality, Scylla’s botched session of scent therapy transforms her into Rome’s worst nightmare: the female uterus, lured outside of Scylla’s body like an animal, threatens to castrate and to consume the classical male hero. Considering this episode’s literary context, I argue that while ancient doctors used vaginal fumigation to restore balance to the female body, ancient authors like Ovid use it to expose women’s internally animal and potentially monstrous nature. Finally, I look at the reemergence of vaginal fumigation today. Although medical evidence points to the contrary, vaginal steaming, popularized by the American actress Gwyneth Paltrow, promises to cleanse the female body of dangerous chemicals and toxins. Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop[5] encourages women to steam their vaginas as a way of honoring the female body and its unique properties. Where ancient doctors and authors used vaginal fumigation to pathologize the female body as naturally sick and non-human, Paltrow uses vaginal steaming to restore balance to the naturally healthy, uniquely female form.