I had smear-test anxiety long before I got my first invitation letter from my GP asking me to come in for my first cervical screening. And when it arrived, just after my 25th birthday, I still couldn't bring myself to go and talked myself out of it. It wasn't just nerves; my feelings about smear tests -- a preventative test to check the health of the cervix -- were tangled up in some internalised shame about my body and chastity, all of which made the idea of going for a smear feel emotionally loaded.