Pubic Hair

I’d like to note before we get very deep into this pube forest is that I am currently at work so I am writing this in spurts. I am writing about this thing in particular because I gave the entire world an opportunity to choose what I’d write about but it was the middle of the night so most of you were sleeping and the naughty unbaptized children of the world won out. I’d also like to note that I started writing this in January and it is now April, and I have completed writing at home but I had a Coke with dinner (chicken nuggets and totchos) so I’m still feelin’ pretty jazzed up about this. Additional note: I originally posted this on Patreon but no one really notices when I do that, so now I’m cross-posting it over here. Ok. Good talk!

I could have provided better choices, sure, but like Gozer being manifest in the form of the Stay Puft marshmallow man, they were the first things that popped into my head. So here we are. And away we go!

✧ ･ﾟ: * ✧ ･ﾟ: * PUBIC HAIR * : ･ﾟ✧ * : ･ﾟ✧

One result of being a phenomenal loser in every aspect of the entirety of your life is it always seems like everyone else has figured out the answers to things you didn’t even know were questions you could ask.

Countless social outings, mingling with folks whose parents were present in their lives and whose lives were fairly normal, wherein I discovered some tidbit of commonly known information — how to pronounce ennui (those who don’t know will be surprised to find this word, which is a noun and means “a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement” is really fun to say — on-wee!), that Sting and Bruce Springsteen are different people, 1. that you’re supposed to wipe from front to back and 2. why you’re supposed to wipe from front to back (still not yet discovered is: 3. how to successfully wipe from front to back without my knuckles grazing the top of the water). That you should wash your face before you go to sleep no matter what. Why you will still end up smelly and sweaty even if you wear deodorant every day (you should change your deodorant brand every few months). What I’m getting at here is really, there’s a lot of personal hygiene and personal maintenance stuff that one learns from their at-home tribe, and when you don’t have an at-home tribe or your tribe hates your guts, you don’t learn these things until much later on.

I recall a particular conversation my mother — who, as we’ve established, is terrible — was having with her best friend in the apartment complex. I think her name was Lynn, but you have no way of knowing so I’ve just decided that it definitely was Lynn. My mother and Lynn sat on the patio of Lynn’s apartment, chainsmoking and chatting away while I, a kid, played with Lynn’s kids. It doesn’t matter how I got there but at some point I retreated from the child-things and I overheard Lynn mention that she’d cut herself shaving there. My mother groan-cackled in sympathy, letting out a “Oh no! That’s the worst!”

Here’s where one little shit known as me pops her head in and asks,

“What’s the worst?”

And here is where the memory blurs.

Either my terrible mother points to her crotch and tells me that Lynn cut herself shaving somewhere on or around her vulva and then I ask “Why would you shave that?”

Or

My mother slacks off in her usual way and instead of providing me an explanation to my question of “What’s the worst?” she simply responds:

“Oh, you’ll see.”

Either way, “You’ll see” has echoed in my ears and between my labias for as long as I’ve been alive and had pubic hair. It haunts me every time I attempt to manage the dense overgrowth that is the goatee of my butt via shower squat and unnatural contortion. Every time I hack and hack and hack with my Bic single blade over that protective hoodie of my own body’s making, pausing after every swipe to dislodge the tightly packed bundle of crotch fur from betwixt the single blade and its plastic edges, I hear the words: You’ll see. and I see, in my near future, the possibility of accidentally lopping off my whole freakin’ clitoris.

Palate cleanser time: philosophical shift edition.

Word of mouth is the source of all knowledge. Before the written word, we had verbal stories told in an Are You Afraid of the Dark?-type fashion. It’s through word of mouth that Beowulf survived long enough for you to know what it is, so that you can mention it to someone at a bar so they will think you’re learned and want to leave that bar with you so you can engage in coitus with them. Early humans built an encyclopedia of the world around them through speaking to each other, learning which plants were poisonous and which got you stoned to shit if you smoked them. Lot of people died for you to be able to light up, you know.

Recently, my roommate found herself in the fortunate situation of being given an opportunity because someone had heard good things about her. That’s a pretty common type of modern word of mouth: growing connections or spreading gossip.

But in our technological age, other types of communal sharing have dropped. What band was Sting in? Instead of calling up your friend who’s a huge fan of Sting to ask him, zink! (that’s the googling noise, I decided), it’s already on your phone. There’s no need to nurture the burning embers of your friendship fire because the answers — or some variant on the truth — is right there at your hands. Am I advocating here for us to put down our phones more often? Fuck no. Do what makes you happy. Who gives a shit. But. Sit tight. I’m getting to the good stuff.

To compensate for my anxiety, which is derived from me being a tremendously unloveable moron, I do a lot of google research. I figured out I had polycystic ovarian syndrome via google before working up the courage/working through the anxiety to see a gynecologist, who then formally diagnosed me. It was through google that I determined, on several occasions, that my cat was not dying and did not need to be rushed to the vet for procedures I could not afford just to conclude that he has a cold. It was also through google that I determined that my cat had a UTI and that I needed to take him to the vet, but that I could turn down the vet’s kind offer of several very expensive tests and instead try out a specific wet food for him to clear up the UTI (did you know cats can get UTIs just through food and it’s not something they get through sex? That really sucks. The only upside of getting a UTI is that you also got laid. Cats don’t even get that. Consider that next time you’re like “Man, I wish I were a cat.”).

I got so good at googling that I once had a job writing quick hits like “What time is the 2017 presidential inauguration for Donald Trump?” and “April Nor’easter weather updates: Everything you need to know.” I wasn’t so good that I got to keep that job (it was a contracted position anyway), but it takes a special sort of resilience in googling to pull together a boatload of sources to hit 200 words for a piece titled “Here’s the exact time daylight saving 2017 will take effect.” It actually takes effort to write more than one sentence for stuff like that, you feel me? And so, this is all to say, I am an incredible googler. If you’re trying to find an answer to something and google isn’t showing you what you’re trying to find, there is a 99.5% chance I’ll be able to find it for you. Because I know google. I speak google. I breathe google.

And yet.

The one thing I have not been able to deduce through all of my googling, the one topic I have not been able to broach with the stuffed animals I line up along my bed and chat with as I imagine we’re the Sex and the City women, is the matter of pubic hair.

Any cursory search for the term “pubic hair” provides me, ace googler, with the following returns:

“Why I’ll Never Shave My Pubic Hair Again.”

emphasis google’s

“23 Things You Should Know About Pubic Hair.”

TWENTY-THREE?!

“Pubic Hair: 14 Facts Everyone Should Know”

that is still too many!

“The Evolution of Pubic Hair”

??????

“Images for pubic hair”

hard pass!

When I’m searching for like, the name of Sting’s band (The Police! C’mon!) and the results are this varied, it tells me something very particular: there is a very large gap of information missing.

Which leads me to conclude one very big thing:

None of us know what we’re supposed to be doing with our pubes.

Wax? Shave? Pluck? …Eat it?

So, here I am, baring all of myself to the world in an effort to make things better and to help my fellow hyper-googlers out a bit.

Here is what you should do with your pubic hair:

1. If you decide to get it waxed, make sure you have a very uncomfortable conversation with the person waxing you to ensure they know how to work with your hair and skin type, otherwise you will have a lot of ingrown hairs. If you get ingrown hairs, google various methods to work through them until you find something that works for you.

2. If you decide to shave, do not shave inside your buttcheeks. I don’t want to go to deep into explaining why, but just. Consider the stubble. I’ve found using St. Ives exfoliator (which is too harsh for your face skin and you shouldn’t use it there!) is great for prepping my legs for a shave. I do NOT recommend it for your crotch, since things get stuck and whatnot. The best advice I can give on shaving is to let any hair you plan to shave — face, armpit, belly button, etc. — let that hair run under the hot-warm water of your shower for 5+ minutes before you start hackin away. This helps soften the skin around the hair and makes you less prone to ingrown hairs.

3. If you decide to pluck, do you have like all the free time in the world? Are you into experiencing pain that’s more exhaustingly annoying than painful? Don’t pluck your pubes.

4. Talk to your friends about what they do with their pubes! This feeds back into that whole googling vs. communal sharing thing. Your friends — your tribe — don’t have the answers. But they have options and experiences. And it never hurts to bond over pubic hair or bowel movements or other ‘no-no’ topics that society says are unbecoming just because they’re deeply rooted in our human bodies and existence. Ask them questions you have about managing their pubes! Then tell me what they say because I don’t know!

5. How you “present” your pubes is wholly up to you and should not be dictated by any man, woman, or child (especially not child) who “prefer a person with ____.” If a guy tells you or in any way suggests to you that you should shave, dump him. Trust me. A man who wants a clean slate vag is a man who associates sex with porn and not with intimacy and who probably also wants to fuck children? I once had a guy who had like 3"-4" pubes that went up his shaft tell me I should shave because he likes it “clean.” I laughed and cut him out of my life so completely I don’t even remember his name.

If a guy tells you you should grow it out, but that’s not something you’re comfortable doing, thank him for being pro-bush but you’re not in the mood to go full Demi Moore. If he doesn’t get the reference, or if you don’t get the reference, that’s fine. I’m old.

To sum up:

- It’s hard learning all the answers to questions you have about your body. The human body is weird!

- Google has a lot of answers, but most of them end in the conclusion that you probably have pube hair cancer.

- Don’t do what you think others will like. They’re your pubes. Even if your partner likes them a certain way, it’s you who will have to deal with the itching and burning and ingrowns and stubble that come later.

- Connect with people. I’m not saying talking about pubes is the path to world peace, but a lot of problems could be solved if we just let ourselves be more vulnerable with one another. Also I’m pretty sure talking about pubes is a great starting point on the path to world peace.

Oh, and if you decide to grow it out… fuckin’ rock on, bud.

And there you have it! Goodbye!