I’ve been a tomboy from a young age. My friends have always been guys, and I developed a dislike for being around other girls around age 10-11 because the people who bullied me were all girls.

When I was a teenager, I kept hearing that girls and women supposedly have a strong “fishy” smell. I know it’s a meme, but I’d seen and read enough firsthand stories that it stuck with me. I even came across accounts from gay men who said that every woman they knew smelled that way, and that it influenced their attraction to men.

In my case, I seem to be an exception. There’s no fishy smell on myself, just normal skin or sweat when I’m active, or at night when I’m due to shower. But that actually made me even more uncomfortable around groups of girls and women, because I really hate the smell of fish or seafood in general, and if there’s a lot of women in a room, that smell lingers even after they’ve left.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed, because people see me, see that I’m female, and I worry they automatically assume I’ve got a rotting crab factory somewhere.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      7 hours ago

      Well when you put it that convincingly, assuming women’s vaginal odor is supernaturally pronounced and something everyone you meet is unrealistically preoccupied with and disgusted by – a belief plausibly tied into childhood trauma – doesn’t sound like body dysmorphia at all.

      I’ll put up the DSM-V’s criteria here which are similar to the ICD-11’s.

      I don’t see anything else better describing this ©*, and it evidently causes significant distress (B), because a) they’re saying it does, and b) this mindset would obviously be highly distressing.

      (A) is slightly complicated by the fact that, in this paranoia, she thinks she’s the exception among women. It’s still a deeply negative, unhealthy preoccupation with a body part that she thinks she’s constantly judged by others for but in reality probably never has been; I think any psychologist would recognize this as a minor variation on typical BDD.

      * There might be comorbid gender dysphoria, but that doesn’t fully explain this specific paranoia.