So I just saw an ad for "laser hair removal" and it got me thinking about hair and places where I view it should and should not be. On the one hand it would really nice to never have to shave my legs or armpits again, but on the other side I wasn't sure I appreciated technology that exists only to remove hair.

All of this inevitably led me to thoughts to pubic hair, as hair removal conversations always do, and I remembered a good friend recently confirming my thought that if you shave your vagina you look 12--at least in between your legs. I find this disturbing and she finds this disturbing. But then I started thinking a little more and I decided that we, modern civilized people that we are, have all been pansified.

People have been having good sex for well over a couple millennia now and for most of that time hair was not an issue. They had other things like bound feet, or corseted waists, or female circumcision (all three of which are still in existence) but nobody was being grossed out by body hair. Maybe when everybody poops in a bowl body hair becomes less gross by comparison.

But in my opinion--and I apologize for the complete and total judgment about to take place--if you get grossed out by body hair or are bothered by it in any serious way you're a wuss. That's not the popular opinion these days because we like things to be clean, and well kept--as if my vagina were somehow a domesticated animal or small house for entertaining guests. But can we just think about the logic here? Please? You're having sex, people, and you're worried about the cleanliness of skin that does or does not have hair? Did you not taste the spit in your mouth? Or the various other bodily fluids? Hello!

I don't want to get too gross here, but I want to be as clear as possible that drawing etiquette lines in the bedroom is a mildly hypocritical act. Somebody peeing on somebody is an obvious health hazard; someone shaving or not shaving their body is not. And it isn't that I think someone shouldn't appreciate an aesthetic that appeals to them, but the moral responsibility we have attached to the aesthetic is what bothers me. If a woman doesn't shave, wax, or at least trim she's dirty and unkempt. And, for clarification, I'm not discussing keeping one's self in the one's swimsuit--that's a given, and has no bearing on this conversation. I'm rebelling against the idea that unsightly pubic hair has taken on the social significance of the mullet.

We scoff at unshaved bodies the same way we scoff at mullets and fanny-packs. Were I a better person I would take this as a lesson not to scoff at mullets and fanny-packs any longer, but I probably won't. But mullets and f.p's don't exist in natural naturally. Hair doesn't believe in business in the front while it parties in the back unless you're Joe Dirt and even his hair wasn't like that naturally. But the societal concept of my pubic hair as a fashion faux pas is causing me indigestion. I think the idea of my body as an inconvenience to someone desiring sex is indicative of a much larger, and scarier, issue in our society at large.

How dare you be the way you are when it limits my ease and pleasure?

Not something you would want to say to someone, right? Or have said to you? And yet, we change ourselves everyday so that it won't have to be said, or implied, in our direction. It isn't simply an aesthetic choice at this point; it's become expected and desired--a development of the last twenty years or so.

I'm still thinking on the implications of all of this, but regardless of what is decided I still stand by original claim:

If pubic hair bothers you all that much, you're a pansy.


This judgment brought to you by the FPBS--Fanny Pack Broadcasting Network.