I’ve been thinking about pubic hair a lot recently.

Whilst I was single, I endeavoured to keep everything in my pants waxed or Immaced – you know, just in case. (Male friends have said they “keep on top of trimming” when they’re single because they also never know when they’re going to get lucky and they wouldn’t want a bush making their manhood look smaller.) I found upkeep was costly and, at times, uncomfortable. I told myself I was maintaining a landing strip for myself. And then I went through a few months with no intention of sleeping with anyone. Celibacy, coupled with the comment my waxer made (“I don’t know why you still come here, you find it painful and your vulva goes bright red afterwards!”) meant I stopped paying for waxes and only Immaced when I felt like it.

Until things started progressing with the man I’m now seeing.

Reverting back to my routine of maintaining a Brazilian, I remembered that I did like the smoothness and the look of having fewer pubes, but I wondered whether I’d have started removing my hair again if it wasn’t for a new man on the scene. As therapeutic as it is to spend the evening shaving, Immacing, creaming and painting fingers and toes, I have always been a girl who resents putting in all the effort by beautifying myself only for a man not to notice and (worse) not to spend any time grooming himself.

Of course, we could say this is anti-feminist and no woman should feel like she ought to shave for a man, but for me, feminism is all about choice, and if a woman chooses to shave all her hair off because she feels this makes her feel more confident, then good for her. Or is it the patriarchy telling us that baring our bodies is a choice we make? Is it feminist to expect a man to maintain grooming routines, too? I don’t know.

And so with this in mind, I made a joke to my boyfriend about how he could trim his pubes to match his haircut and freshly trimmed beard. Fortunately, he took the hint and wasn’t offended. When we spoke about shaving routines, I told him I would never have a Hollywood or Immac all of my pubes off again – I often did this when I was in my late teens, and for me, the pre-pubescent look doesn’t appeal.

During my time at university, I paid for laser hair removal of my pubes. For a host of reasons, it wasn’t successful. And thank god it wasn’t. Since my early twenties, my views on my pubes have changed and I doubt I’ll want to have a bald vulva at the age of 45. For the women who choose to remove all their pubic hair, either in the short- or long-term, their decision should be lauded but I hope these girls are doing it for themselves rather than as a result of feeling pressured.

This brings me very nicely to porn. In fact, I could write another blog post about my love affair with porn. What we need is pornography with a better representation of what women’s bodies look like. Not all women have “neat and tidy” vulvas (the most ridiculous and repugnant way to describe a woman’s body), and not all women choose to shave their legs, armpits or pubic hair. Not all women have “perfectly bleached” arseholes (to quote Bridesmaids).

Of course, there is porn that does show this variety, but it’s usually in the depths of adult pages, requiring specific search terms. Many young women will struggle to confidently do what they will with their pubic hair until female pubic hair becomes normalised again – maybe we’ll even hark back to the era of the 70’s bush?! As we get older and become more aware of, and educated about, issues such as pornography, we can discern how we feel about these issues for ourselves. We know that the sex in professional porn isn’t real sex, and yet it can impact the way we see our own sex lives.

So many women presume men are concerned with what they do with their vulvas but I know some men who say they’re just excited to see a naked woman in the flesh, they don’t care how much hair is between their legs.

And yet, there are men who say women should never let their pubic hair grow whilst sporting a completely-ungroomed amount of pubic hair themselves. Of course, it’s all about preference. Everyone has the right to do what they want with their pubic hair and we should be having conversations with our partners if we have differing opinions about how we style our nether regions.

For now, I’m going to embrace this femininity and we’ll see how my love affair progresses.

 

Image from Pixabay on Pexels.