December 15, 2022 — 7.00pm
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This story is part of the December 18 Edition of Sunday Life.See all 14 stories.
The first time I went for a Brazilian wax, way back in the 1990s, I sobbed and hollered … and that was just in the waiting room. I couldn’t believe I was about to lie naked, spread-eagled, as boiling-hot wax was agonisingly wrenched from a part of my body primarily reserved for giving birth.
The torture was even more medieval than I’d feared. But even worse was the itchy regrowth. Two weeks later, my nether regions resembled a sea creature disturbed in a rock pool and preparing to attack. It certainly gave “bad hair day” a whole new meaning.
How could enduring physical pain to obtain the appearance of a prepubescent female, ever be deemed feminist?Credit: iStock
I then heard a model on a chat show maintain that Brazilian waxes were “empowering”. Her comment pulled me up by the short and curlies. (Well, it would have, if I’d had any.) How could enduring physical pain to obtain the appearance of a prepubescent female, ever be deemed feminist?I immediately stopped waxing. My swimming friends, all as hairless as lab rats, were appalled. As we showered in the change rooms after our laps, they’d tease me mercilessly. “The last time I saw anything that hairy, I was being chased by a herd of wildebeest in the Serengeti!” laughed one. “Your unwaxed pudendum looks like William Shatner’s hairpiece. You’ll have every Trekkie in town chasing you!” cackled another.
I countered that I enjoyed having pubic hair: “It’s like having a little pet in my pants. You’ll never hear me say this in any other context, but ‘Bring Back Bush!’ ”
Well, I’m thrilled to report that fashion has finally caught up with me. Fads, like pop songs, go in one era and out the other. Latest polls reveal that society’s obsession with bikini waxing is waning. Women of the world rejoice!
Yes, the Brazilian wax, first made popular in New York in the late 1980s, has basically become, well, too popular. Once championed by Hollywood royalty like Gwyneth Paltrow and Sex and the City’s Samantha, “lady-scaping”, along with fake tans, vajazzles and silicone breasts, has come to be associated with the “lower social orders”. Apparently, waxed loins now put you in the same category as a pole dancer, a twerking pop princess, a reality TV star or some other species perceived to have the IQ of a house plant.
That waxing is now considered déclassé is deliciously ironic because back in 1915, when Gillette launched the first razor marketed specifically for women, the removal of body hair was promoted as offering “a way to separate oneself from the cruder people, lower class and immigrant”.
But even style guru Gwyneth has confirmed that she now prefers to “rock a ’70s vibe down there”. Yep. To be a fashionable female in 2022, your groin must be awarded National Park status. Could shaved legs and armpits follow? I hope so. Do you know why blondes have more fun? Because brunettes are too busy waxing, shaving and Nair hair removing. Perhaps fickle fashion will soon demand that women flaunt angora stockings and mohair armpits? Then, finally, brunettes will have more fun and blondes will be forced to spend fortunes on leg merkins and knee wigs.
The list of reasons men are luckier than women is long: higher pay, standing up to pee, no childbirth, periods or menopause, having a choice about whether or not to grow a moustache. But since porn went mainstream, women have had no choice when it comes to painful deforestation.
Is there anything more annoying than a hirsute man insisting that his female partner wax?
KATHY LETTE
Teenage boys, reared on Pornhub, no longer seem to know that women even have pubic hair. It reminds me of the repressed Victorian era, when polymath philosopher John Ruskin refused to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray because he was so horrified by the sight of a female au naturel.
But is there anything more annoying than a hirsute man insisting that his female partner wax? Hasn’t he noticed that he looks like a fur ball that’s been vomited up? That’s not mere stubble on his chin, it’s your basic Harris Tweed. If his bare leg brushes yours, you get carpet burn. Yet do we insist he skulk back to his lair? No.
It might help to remind such men that humans are mammals. Hair is there to keep you warm in the winter and protect you from sun in summer.
It also captures your pheromones, the invisible chemical scent that attracts the opposite sex. So, ironically, waxing to attract a mate is actually having the opposite effect.
With the arrival of summer, there’s only one thing a woman should wax: lyrical. Now you just need to find a fella who enjoys a little light bush walking.
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