When the PayPal cofounder came for your period, I did not speak out enough. So I blame myself, really, for this waste of science. According to Inc. magazine,
two male bio-hackers just "previewed plans for a new probiotic
supplement that will enable women to change the way their vaginas
smell."
They have called it Sweet Peach, which sounds like a C-list rom-com with a similarly retrograde view on the priorities of the contemporary human female. If there was any doubt whether Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, the duo behind the peachy probiotics, were trying to enhance the female body or fix it, consider their other olfactory targets:
They have called it Sweet Peach, which sounds like a C-list rom-com with a similarly retrograde view on the priorities of the contemporary human female. If there was any doubt whether Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, the duo behind the peachy probiotics, were trying to enhance the female body or fix it, consider their other olfactory targets:
And why stop at humans? The other product Heinz and Gome are partnering on is Petomics, a probiotic for dogs and cats that makes their feces smell like bananas.
In addition to myself, the blame for this travesty should be placed on the questionable standards of the crowd. Heinz told Inc. that Sweet Peach has a campaign on the crowdfunding platform Tilt:
"We got banned from Kickstarter."
Now, there's nothing objectionable about a peach. It tastes great and makes a useful emoji. Biohacking also has its benefits. As soon as they develop brain enhancing injections, I will volunteer my frontal lobe. Is
frontal the right lobe? I wouldn't know, I'm not a cyborg yet. But as
you can tell from the way Heinz and Gome describe it, they genuinely
think that given the ability to alter their "code," women would choose to smell like a Bath & Body Works at an outlet mall:
Sweet Peach will have practical benefits, like preventing yeast infections and other health problems caused by microorganisms, Heinz said in his presentation. But the ambition behind it is a loftier one."The idea is personal empowerment," he said. "All your smells are not human. They're produced by the creatures that live on you.""We think it's a fundamental human right to not only know your code and the code of the things that live on you but also to rewrite that code and personalize it," Gome chimed in.
The pair
could not provide a satisfactory answer for why they are trying to
iterate on your vagina, except that having sex organs that smell like
fruit might help women better connect with their bodies, as though the way they smell pre-hacked is a malodorous barrier to body acceptance.
[Gome] also offered a little insight into why two men had seized on feminine odor as the target of their entrepreneurial energies. "It's a better idea than trying to hack the gut microbiome because it's less complicated and more stable," he said. "It only has one interference per month."The pleasant scent is there "to connect you to yourself in a better way," but it also serves as a sort of indicator light to let users know the product is working.
If they are
referring to your period as "interference," someone at the DEMO
Conference where they debuted this idea may want to tell them about
vaginal intercourse.
The recent
rash of healthcare and biotech startups has not felt obliged, thus far,
to involve the women they want to buy their product. The period tracker
app Glow, founded by PayPal's Max Levchin, did not have a single woman
on their executive team aside from Jennifer Tye,
who is in charge for marketing and partnerships. No other female
executives when I asked on October 2nd and no other women listed as part
of the executive team on their website right now.
Glow has
raised $23 million in venture financing, including money from Founders
Fund, Peter Thiel's investment firm. In addition to Sweet Peach, Heinz
and Gome have their own biotech startups. Heinz's is called Cambrian
Genomics and Gome's is called Personalized Probiotics. Peter Thiel, who
once bemoaned giving women the right to vote, has also invested in Cambrian Genomics
Here is Heinz describing yet another scent that needs solving back in September:
"I don't know about you but I think poop smells not so great," Heinz told This Week in Start-Ups. "We think, on an airplane you're breathing 90 percent farts, right? So it'd be good if they were good smelling."
If Heinz needs help coming up with any other gross smells that need fixing, ask a lady. We have a few suggestions.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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