Women who feel good about organs likely to orgasm

Women who feel "positive" about their genitals feel more relaxed in their own skin and find it easier to orgasm. They are also more likely to engage in sexual health promoting behaviours, says a new study.

These women go in for regular gynaecological checks-ups or performing self-examinations, says the study by the Centre for Sexual Health Promotion (CSHP), Indiana University.

"When women feel more positively about their genitals, they likely feel more relaxed in their own skin, more able to let go and thus more likely to experience pleasure and orgasm," said Debby Herbenick, associate director at the CSHP.

"These are important findings about body image," says Herbnick. "Our culture often portrays women's genitals as dirty and in need of cleaning and grooming."

"Some women may have had greater exposure to such negative messages or may be more susceptible to their impact," adds Herbenick.

"Women are often more critical about their own bodies -- and other women bodies -- than men are," Herbenick said.

"What we found in this study is that men generally feel positive about a variety of aspects of women genitals including how they look, smell, taste and feel," she says.

Herbenick's study, which involved 362 women and 241 men, most of whom were white and aged between 18 and 23 years, created a scale for measuring both the gender's attitudes toward women genitals, according to a CSHP release.

Such a scale, she wrote, could be useful in sex therapy, in medical settings to help better understand decision-making that goes into gynaecological care and treatment, and in health education settings involving women and their sexual health.

Herbenick, also a sexual health educator for The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, offers the following suggestions regarding the findings:

Body image: Parents might consider how they can help their daughters to feel more positively about their bodies, such as by teaching them accurate names for their body parts, including their genitals (e.g., "vulva" rather than "down there") and responding in supportive ways to their self-exploration.

"Rather than saying, 'don't touch down there -- it's dirty,' parents might let their children know that it's OK for them to touch their genitals, but in private spaces such as their own bedroom or the bathroom," Herbenick said.

Ads and marketing: Health educators might consider ways that they can teach women and men about their bodies in positive ways by openly discussing how some products or marketing campaigns make people feel about their bodies.

These findings were published in the September issue of the International Journal of Sexual Health.