I’ve been delighted and relieved to note the recent resurgence in feminist thought and discussion (much of it online) and such campaigns as No More Page 3 gaining traction and so wanted to ensure that I added my own thoughts on a different subject with a blog post I wrote yonks ago but never posted. Apologies, I’ve been busy waddling after a toddler and ordering Ocado shops.
So the big news back in January was that pubic fashion has caused a dramatic drop in crab louse numbers so much so they may be qualifying as an endangered species. Whilst this article (via the ever brilliant @newsmary) disappoints by its lack of butterfly effect details, my conclusion can only be that every time wax hits pudenda a polar bears gets left on a tiny iceberg or a square mile of Amazonian rainforest may as well have had its own back, sack and crack removed (disclosure: I’m no scientist).
The worrying thing for me, and not just because one of my many talents is going from Goodhew to Bellamy in less than 48 hours (too dated? how about Lucas to Seasick Steve [sans tats]?), is that this devastating effect to the crab louse seems to prove that this is a fashion that has lingered a little too long. Because I’m old enough to know it is a fashion – a friend of a friend has indicated that, in her humbling experiences, those born before 1979 are the non-trimmers even in the case of chaps, but those born afterwards are bordering on the apocryphal Ruskin when confronted with a fully grown bush. So it’s a thirty year old fashion, but nevertheless a fashion.
Reminiscing with a well-stacked friend the other day about the triumphant day for many large-breasted women that the “minimiser bra” became a fashion must following the first “wonder bra” push we realised that the no pube (hitler moustache max), big boob porn look feels like it’s here to stay.
I first realised quite how odd the porn look is when, three days after the birth of my first child, my milk “came in”. For the uninitiated but interested this is the morning you wake up and find that you have enormous rock hard boobs filled with spangles and spanners that is actually your first full load of milk. I remember taking a look at the mirror, warm flannels in hands (cabbage leaves also recommended) and thinking “oh! that’s where that weird fake boob shape comes from.” But I can assure you that it’s quite an unusual woman who, after giving birth, manages to give herself even a desultory trim (c-sectioners aside, I fully understand those who go for the Hollywood before their scheduled appointment for fear of the rusty NHS disposable bic).
And I recall quite clearly the first time I discovered I was the only person at the table with the full marmoset (as Caitlin Moran so brilliantly described it in How to be a Woman). I was at a table of high-achieving women in digital media circa 1995 but somehow the conversation turned away from the blockbuster potential of RSS to personal grooming and it turned out my toes had more hairs on them than the rest of the table had below the chin put together. My chin probably had more hairs on it, for that matter.
So I was also relieved to read that my choice may not be fashionable but may have saved my life. It seems obvious that after the disastrous breast implants, there will be increasing stories of infections caused by waxing. Doesn’t it seem obvious pubes have a job to do?.
Think of it as self improvement. A challenge even. Instead of “triathlon” add “grow my pubes back” to the list of 101 things to do before you die. I may even be mooting a pubic (though not necessarily public) “movember”, ideas for which charity we should support gratefully received.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe in wearing a bra (comfort, less distracting), I believe in shaving armpits and waxing female moustaches if you want to, I even believe in a little tidy up down below in order not to announce in swimming costumes that this is where the action is. But having been born in a time when a great number of women didn’t remove any body hair at all and seemed to manage to get enough action and remain perfectly hygienic, I just want to encourage ladies, gentlemen, mothers and fathers to stop the waxing madness. We have nothing to lose but boils and expense and we may just save the sweet crab louse from extinction and ourselves from a nasty infection.
Busy and Lively 
