Howl
Stop Asking Us About Our Pubic Hair
Our appearance is not up for discussion
Most of my sexual partners have expressed, at one point or another, their desire to be with a woman who has no visible body hair. Though I haven’t had a lot of partners, the fact that so many of them preferred a waxed canvas had me worried that it was becoming a mainstream expectation.
This was a problem for me on many levels. For one thing: I don’t wax. No way. I tried a couple of times —just on my legs — and it hurt so badly, I could hardly bear it. The thought of doing that to my armpits or vulva was unappealing, to say the least.
Further, I never enjoyed having men tell me how they want me to look. After all, I’ve never made requests of lovers to change their appearance, nor has that even occurred to me. Their bodies belonged to them, and it never crossed my mind to ask them to make alterations for the sake of my sexual preferences.
So why, I thought again and again, should I have to do something so painful — and so costly ($50-$100 every 3–4 weeks) — just so my partner can pretend he’s fucking a porn actress? None of my partners would have had their pubes ripped out by the roots for me, after all. I mentioned that once to one of them and he immediately placed his hands over his crotch and said, “No way in hell.”
Their bodies belonged to them, and it never crossed my mind to ask them to make alterations for the sake of my sexual preferences.
Did he assume my incredibly delicate parts were somehow immune to that pain? Or that because I was a woman, I was culturally required to endure it?
I said “Not a chance” to each and every partner who felt that they had the right to ask me to change my appearance for them. Not gonna happen.
I know I come off with feminist confidence (and anger) on this subject, but the truth is — it hurts. It hurts so badly to find that partner after partner doesn’t approve of my appearance. That partner after partner feels it’s okay to assert his preferences onto my body.
It hurts so much that I came to fear it as I entered into a new relationship.
After one date that wasn’t really a date, my new love interest and I were wiling away an afternoon with a series of flirtatious text messages. Suddenly, he turned serious.
“Hey,” he typed. “Can I ask you a really personal question?”
I felt my breath catch in my throat. I had no idea where he was going with this, but I was hopeful it would be an invitation into further emotional intimacy. I texted him back a simple yes.
“Do you wax down there?” he asked, followed by the emoticon of the smiling face with the tongue sticking out mischievously.
My heart sank. I just sat there staring at the screen. We hadn’t even kissed yet and he was already telling me what he expected me to do to make myself attractive to him when we had sex.
Before I could even answer, he texted again. “I love a bald pussy so much. It makes me so hot when a woman is that feminine and smooth.”
At that point, my eyes filled with tears. He had made it abundantly clear that this was beautiful and sexy to him. All I could think of was that my trimmed, but slightly audacious 70’s bush made me less of a woman. Not feminine. Not smooth.
My heart sank. I just sat there staring at the screen. We hadn’t even kissed yet and he was already telling me what he expected me to do to make myself attractive to him when we had sex.
It pains me to say that I responded by typing, “Ummm…no, I don’t, but I keep it trimmed. Sorry.”
To this day, I look back on that moment and want to throw my arms around that misguided 31-year-old me. I want to weep that she felt she had to apologize to a man she hadn’t kissed yet because he was already making it clear how he wanted her to groom herself for his pleasure.
Here are some things I could have said:
“That’s an inappropriate question at this stage of our relationship.”
“Do you wax your balls? Because I think hairless men are so masculine.”
“Fuck off. Go find someone else to groom.”
But no, I apologized to him.
He never openly objected to my body hair once we began sleeping together. He wasn’t a fool, after all, and wouldn’t have risked getting kicked off the Pussy Train. But he did continue to wheedle me about it between intimate encounters.
“Couldn’t you just shave?”
I kept telling him I didn’t like having that conversation. It made me feel unattractive, unloved, and was chipping away at my confidence. I struggled with confidence and shame enough in the bedroom — this was only making it worse.
“What if I do it, too?” he asked. “If I shave, will you shave?”
I laughed, confident he would never go to the trouble. “Sure,” I agreed.
That’s when I learned how far a man will go to make his porn fantasies come true. The next night, he stripped and started dancing around the room. I rolled my eyes, good-naturedly, as I started taking off my clothes, but was puzzled by this act of showmanship. He’d never danced around before.
That’s when I noticed his pubic hair was completely gone. Yes, he’d been so determined to get his way that he put a goddamn razor to his balls.
I was annoyed, but I made good on my end of the deal and shaved the next day. I had done it a few times before — for my own reasons — but had forgotten how steely-nerved one had to be to navigate a razor along the vulva and across the perineum. (I’m not one of those lucky gals who only has a north-end bush. Mine is more like a hedgerow that really enjoys southern exposure.)
Yes, he’d been so determined to get his way that he put a goddamn razor to his balls.
I wish I could say I was at least turned on by my partner’s bug-eyed, tongue-hanging expression when he saw my bald mound and lips. But honestly, that only made me feel worse. I wanted him to look at me that way when I looked like me. When I looked the way my body was made to look. When I looked the way I chose to look.
We had conversations about my pubic hair for the entire seven years we were together. And we talked about my occasional underarm stubble. And how much he wished I would wear slinky lingerie, thongs, and garters.
And you know what? I think that’s bullshit.
I never asked him — or wanted him — to shave his bush for me. When he grew a horrible little beard-lette that I couldn’t stand, I never said a word. It was his face, after all. When he wore a god-awful, ripped up plaid hoodie day after day, I never told him I was sick of looking at it or asked him to wear one of the button-down shirts that I thought made him look so sexy. I didn’t tell him that I prefer boxers on a man instead of the briefs he wore. I remained silent when he went through a period of getting his hair buzzed.
It just wasn’t my business how he dressed or groomed himself and I never thought it was.
I know some people will argue that there’s nothing wrong with asking a lover to wear certain things that turn you on, or groom in ways that you find attractive. But I have never found this to be a two-way street, and therefore, it seems like a slippery slope to me.
For instance, I remember one night, on a double date, my friend tugged at her boyfriend’s shirt and said, “God, I wish he would stop wearing these raggedy t-shirts. He’s got a closet full of Henleys but he never touches them!”
When we were driving home, my boyfriend said to me, “I can’t believe he let her say that about his clothes. I would never let a woman tell me what to wear.”
Of course, by then, I already knew he would never have conceded to changing his haircut for me, or ditching that awful hoodie. I already knew the beard-lette and whatever else he wanted to try would remain until he was good and ready to move on.
He had the privilege to do whatever he wanted with his appearance without worrying about what a partner wanted.
While it’s true that my ex turned out not to be such a great choice as a partner, his attitude about my body hair, as I mentioned, was not unique.
And the bottom line is: This shit has got to stop.
I wish I knew then what I know now. I think it’s incredibly rude, arrogant, and presumptuous for a man to ask a woman if she shaves or waxes downstairs.
The only reason to ask a woman that before a man has seen her naked is to communicate his expectation about her appearance.
And that is not okay.
Most women have already grown up in a culture that is constantly telling us how to groom and shape ourselves in order to be attractive to others. Some of us have a hard time letting go of the habit of looking at ourselves through other people’s eyes.
I think it’s incredibly rude, arrogant, and presumptuous for a man to ask a woman if she shaves or waxes downstairs.
But we deserve to look the way we want to look. We deserve to be accepted and yes, loved, for the bodies that were given to us, just as they are.
If we want to wax, great. If not, great.
But this shouldn’t be up for discussion.
If a man wants to know what a woman looks like down there, he can wait and find out for himself. If that thought is so heinous — god forbid he encounters hair — then maybe he isn’t ready for sex. We are, after all, adults, and adults have secondary sex characteristics…like body hair.
And yes, before you yell at me, this goes both ways. Guys, if your lady is nagging at you to dress better or shave that scraggly little beard thingy, you have my full support to tell them that your appearance isn’t up for debate.
Just like ours isn’t. Not anymore.
© Yael Wolfe 2019
Here’s a man’s perspective on the subject:
And a little reminder, ladies: