At Your Cervix: Pap Rap Urges Ladies To Get Smear Tests. How Do You Deal With Unpleasant Medical Stuff?

There’s something a bit unpleasant about the word smear, isn’t there? It falls somewhere between “pamphlet” and “moist” on the scale of annoying words that make me squirm. Possibly even more so when it’s followed by the word “test”.

However, as manky as it sounds, the procedure itself is actually grand. Honestly, the name is so much worse than the thing itself. A bikini wax is a bajillion times more embarrassing, so if you’d been for one of those, then a smear test is a breeze. It doesn’t even hurt, it’s just an odd sensation for a few seconds and that’s it.

All of which is the message that Welsh-Iraqi comedian Nadia Kamil has put across in an excellent and hilarious fashion in her smear test-themed cover of Azaelia Banks’s hit 212, called Pap Rap.

It’s got Josie Long as a nurse, Mary Wollstonecraft puppets (“she gave birth to modern feminism AND Mary Shelly…quite the vaginal canal”), what appears to be a giant fairy-lit vagina and lyrics like:

I know it’s weird showing a stranger your foof, my advice is to wear a skirt.

and

Remember that the nurse has seen a thousand vaginas in his or her life, yours ain’t nothing special.

It's also super catchy. What’s not to love?

So while a smear test isn’t exactly fun, it’s just one of those necessary medical things we have to get on with from time to time. And if the results come back as abnormal like mine did, it’s genuinely no reason to panic. Like I did. Because everything is most likely fine. Like I was! (Doireann previously talked about what happens next here.)

Over the years I’ve cringed during B12 injections, felt a bit like a robot when I had to wear a 24 hour blood pressure monitor that beeped and inflated at half hour intervals, been covered in cold gloop for scans and peed into many a cup. When I was instructed to obviously, not because I like to. I’ll stop talking about pee now.

Anyway, the important thing to remember during any unfamiliar medical stuff is that loads of people go through the exact same thing at some point in their lives. Everyone needs the odd tweak and tune-up every so often, like an NCT for people. Without the mechanic sliding out from under you on a trolley thing. Unless you’re into that.

So, how do you deal with the more unpleasant medical hoops we need to jump through? Are you putting off booking a smear test? And what do you think of Nadia’s "social media smear pioneer” approach?

Let’s discuss in the comments!