To Shave or Not to Shave, That Is the—Wait a Minute, Who Cares?

I’ll be frank: this piece is about something I’ve found vaguely annoying for some time. I was reminded of it when I encountered a couple days ago yet another spielabout women’s pubic hair and why they’re supposedly doing and/or should or should not be doing whatever they’re doing with it.

I truly don’t understand what I’ve perceived as the intensity of some responses about the deliberate presence or absence of pubic hair. It seems to especially be an issue when it concerns female-bodied people removing their pubic hair or not, and I really don’t understand why anyone seems to think it’s his/her/their business what anyone else does with his/her/their pubic hair. Seriously, I am baffled by this.

I’ve seen some male-identified people say things like, “Please, stop shaving your pubic hair. We like it to be there!” (I’m not sure whether every man in the world congregated to let these particular ones know what they all like—and that it, astonishingly, happens to be the same thing—or how else any respective man feels justified proposing this, but that may be another post…or, perhaps, I’ll just let this little parenthetical speak for itself.) I’ve seen female-identified people, as well, seem to lament some current “style” of pubic hair for women and appear to proclaim what women “should” do with it.

In the case of the former, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, gentlemen, but I don’t shave my pubic hair because I think you like it or because you want me to or really because of you at all. I do it because I prefer it that way. Does that seem so surprising? For a variety of reasons, I prefer my vulva to be shaven, and I frankly don’t see that as anyone’s business but my own.

As far as the latter, if you don’t feel you need to or should need to remove your pubic hair to feel or look attractive, by all means don’t. I can hardly imagine why someone would feel pressured to do something with her/his/their pubic hair that was unwanted because of some perceived “style”—and I’ve worked as a porn performer, webcam model, and stripper. For whatever reason, I didn’t ever encounter pressure one way or the other (aside from customer requests) from anyone about what I did with my pubic hair in any of those contexts. I was generally either trimming or shaving at that time, so maybe that’s why, but I never interpreted anyone’s seeming to find it an issue or insist on anything one way or another.

When I got my hair cut last summer, I didn’t experience anyone’s saying to me, “Oh, dear, you cut your hair. I wish women would quit cutting their hair because they think it makes them more attractive to men! Please, just leave it long!” I presume that’s because it’s understood that it is up to me how to wear my hair and not the place of anyone else to suggest to me what I should do with it or why.

Why would that seem different with pubic hair? So what if something is “in style”? We don’t seem to complain a lot when people cut the hair on their heads a way that is in style. More to the point, why do we presume it is anyone’s business but the person’s in question what someone’s pubic hair “style” is?

Once in a great while I have encountered a piece on this subject I’ve found very cool—like this one from Alyssa Royse last year. But the very reason I find it cool is because it was obviously about what she wants to do and why. Why anyone would say much of anything else about pubic hair style, I truly don’t know.

Love,

Emerald

“Live right now, just be yourself, it doesn’t matter if it’s good enough for someone else…”

-Jimmy Eat World “The Middle”