LET’S NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH
To trim…. or not?
PUBIC HAIR’S FUNCTION IS TO PROTECT THE VAGINA
How do you like your lady garden to look? There are endless styles: the full Brazilian, the Landing Strip, the Heart. There’s even the scary V For Vendetta (although obviously, if your name is Vivienne, it’s more of an aide-memoire). And despite recent intervention from Gwyneth Paltrow extolling the full bush, the trend for hairlessness in the front-bottom area seems unstoppable. But, along with that trend, is a more than tenfold rise in the demand for cosmetic labiaplasty (the reduction of the outer lips of the vulva). Are the two connected? I am convinced that they are, and it worries me enormously.
A recent study of over 3,000 American women’s pubic grooming habits, published in JAMA Dermatology, revealed not only that 84% groomed their pubes (we’re mostly talking a monthly trim with the nail scissors), but also that 63% had at least one experience of the nuclear, completely hairless option. Those in the study who thought hair-free was the only way to be were most likely to be young and educated to degree level. And UK studies point a similar way, with the vast majority of under-25s thinking a defuzzed pubic area is not just desirable, but normal. It’s hair that’s odd for them.
HAIR-RAISING PROSPECTS
So why do they do it? Some claim it’s for occasions, like going to the doctor (truly), going on holiday or to a wedding. Evidently many say it’s for sex, but in the US study, more – over 60% – talk about hygiene. This is doubly odd since one of pubic hair’s functions is to protect the vagina from harmful debris, but also because removing hair causes irritation in the vaginal area for over 80% of women – not to mention bumps, rashes and stubble, and the potential for infection that these bring.
But pubic hair has another function. It signifies sexual maturity. And here is where it all gets a bit spooky. For a long while now, the common-or-garden bush has been disappearing from pornography. It’s been replaced by images of vaginal areas that look like those of pre-pubescent girls. So here is the killer fact: we are not little girls. We are grown-up women who look like grown ups down below. More than this, you look like you because the size and arrangement of the labial lips around the vagina are as unique to you as your face is.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Great Wall of Vagina, created by artist Jamie Mccartney. He managed to persuade hundreds of women (How? springs to mind…) to let him make plaster casts of their bits and then display them. No two are the same, not even twins. It’s a revelation, because you rarely get to see your own bits, unless you’re adept at contortion with a mirror in hand. Nor can you compare it with your friends in the way that blokes do, penis in hand, at the urinals.
PALE IN COMPARISON?
But what full-on depilation does for sure is expose more of what we never normally see. And then we – or, more likely, our blokes – compare it to what appears in the pornographic pictures and films and cosmetic surgery ads that flood the internet, and find it wanting. Sadly, the women who end up asking for cosmetic surgery have a vaginal area that is pretty much always slap bang in the normal range.
Men are made to feel their meat and two veg should be bigger, women that their equivalent should be smaller and neater. Why are young women allowing themselves to be sexualised in this way?
Trim your bush by all means, girls, but don’t be manipulated into feeling you’re any the less beautiful without it.