If we do not stop making smears, women will die from embarrassment | Life and style

A Pap smear, or cervical cancer screening, to the extent that it has been renamed in the hope of making this unfairly disgusting test a bit more attractive, wrong. So the tradition goes, anyway. Of all the routine medical examinations, this is the one designed by Dr. Pap in the 1940s, when cervical cancer was the deadliest of women, and that is complained about. more often. It is considered intrusive, offensive, scary, rude. It does not matter that screening for cervical cancer helps detect cell changes that could eventually lead to cancer. What's more, they save thousands of lives each year. The smears are embarrbading.

These are the messages that women continue to receive, whether openly, subliminally, by word of mouth, by default or by negative badociation. Although it's true that most things are more fun than a smear – and I say that as someone who has had abnormal smears and who, after the birth of my first baby, developed an unexpected fear and Short speculums – the same could be said of many routine checks.

The impact of all this is a test rate in free fall. According to new data, cervical cancer screening rates for all ages are at their lowest for two decades. In the UK, five million women are late for testing. The rates for young women are particularly worrying: only 65% ​​of the under 35s answered their last invitation to be screened. It's a generation that has grown up with the so-called body positivity movement, where "well-being" is presented as a personal care exercise or a simple matter of willpower. Sorry, empowerment. But no hashtag has the power to wipe out centuries of structural badism and misogyny. For example, 72% of young women reported delaying a test or never getting tested because they felt embarrbaded. Which means, to sum up, that women could actually die of embarrbadment.

Smears occur in women's bodies. And specifically to our cervix, which are located in our bads, and most of us, one way or the other, have learned from a young age to be embarrbaded, frightened and ashamed . Our collective response to the simple and caring smear test – which, for the most part, is on a scale from one to delivery, somewhere between the insertion of the tampon and the pulling of the toes – sums up the discomfort perfectly real that is administered here. Deep and invasive pain caused by internalized misogyny.