body grooming

The Complex Interplay of Preferences in Partner's Personal Grooming

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2011-08-01 11:07

Photo by Flickr user Nicole Marti. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user Nicole Marti. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Over on the Reddit sex thread a poster named dreadlezzepin asks a good tables-turning question.

Do women think its weird when men shave their pubes all the way off?

Just curious, I usually just trim but today I had to do some much needed manscaping to do so I shaved them all off, being that I wouldnt have to worry so much about them. So do women generally prefer guys with shaved pubic hair or more natural? Also, guys what do you do?

Source: Reddit

For the record the answers trend heavily towards trimming rather than complete removal or not modifying it at all.

I think this male pubic hair grooming trend is pretty interesting. (And while I can't find the link it's one I predicted years ago.) I mean, yes, men aren't as subject to the rigorous scrutiny of appearance that women are, and so the question will probably never have the incredible social weight (or antagonism) that women's pubic grooming has. So call what's happening to men a good control group that helps explain why so many women who don't otherwise give fashion the time of day end up grooming themselves.

The sensation of being touched on bare or closely trimmed skin really is greater than being touched through a thicker covering of hair; it really is amazingly easier to keep clean; it won't tickle your partner's nose when they kiss nearby, in some cases minimizing UTIs either for one's self or one's partners, etc.

Meanwhile I'm curious what, if any, collateral effects might show up over time as men continue to adopt pubic grooming, particularly in light of conflicting conveniences of doing it vs not, of feeling scrutinized by partners, the ongoing influence of porn (where shaving for men appears to be more and more common.)  And, of course, whether their partners do or don't groom theirs.  And why.

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The (Rare but Real) Hazards of "Cosmetic" Shaving and Waxing

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2011-07-28 22:31

Photo by Flickr user Ruthy StinkFace. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user Ruthy StinkFace. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Feminist Law Professors says

Call it willful blindness, but I hadn’t seen this 2007 article from the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal (Oxford University).  Here is an excerpt from Severe Complications of a ‘Brazilian’ Bikini Wax:

Waxing . . . is the most common method for extensive depilation, and complications include burns, mechanical folliculitis, infectious folliculitis, other infections of skin and soft tissues, and contact dermatitis and/or vulvitis. Removal of hair causes skin microtrauma, with inoculation of pathogens and subsequent mechanical spread of infection. A recent systematic review of surgical site infections found that shaving resulted in more infections than clipping, presumably because the skin was not breached with clippers. Infecting organisms can be from autoinoculation of skin or vaginal flora and group A streptococci are known to colonize the vagina. Infecting bacteria can include S. aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and other potential pathogens include human papilloma virus, molluscum contagiosum, dermatophytes (such asTrichophyton ton- surans) resulting in Majocchi granuloma, and more unusual fungi, such as Sporothrix schenckii, which has been reported following electrolysis.

Citations omitted.  Read the full article here.

Source: Feminist Law Professors

Yes to this. These complications all sound exactly like the ones men face when we shave our... well... faces. It doesn't look like they mentioned MRSA in the section Prof. Crawford quoted but that's a risk too. For men it's a problem enough that athletes have been advised for years not to do "cosmetic shaving" in locker rooms (where too many men often have to share too few sinks when they're in too big a hurry to get out.) It's easy to see how similar problems would arise in waxing salons or even (as her quote suggests, during prep for surgery!)

In practice those complications are usually very rare, and women may be as likely to continue shaving as men do. But there is a risk and it can seem pretty big for strictly cosmetic benefits.

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And No, Using Questionable Science to Justify Questionable Body Modifications of Your Children Does Not Make it a Better Idea

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2011-01-28 15:00

Speaking of how it's a bad idea for parents to impose their body-modification ideas on their children, the anonymous but seemingly-credentialed author of The Neurocritic says

In 5 years of writing this blog, I have come across a multitude of news stories and press releases that make outrageous claims. Here's another one to add to the list. On the basis of two highly variable DTI studies in 36 pre-operative, pre-hormone treatment transgender individuals, now we're supposed to screen children for gender variant behavior and scan them at a young age, so their hormones can be altered before puberty?

Source: The Neurocritic

Yeah, if it's a good idea to wait for children to be old enough to make their own decisions before piercing their ears, circumcising them, or forcing them to wax or use cosmetics, let's definitely add deciding which sex hormones to pump them full of.

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Amanda Palmer on Rejecting the Impulse to Impose One's Own Preferences on One's Children's Appearance

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2011-01-27 20:45

Great quote from solo artist and Dresden Dolls co-founder Amanda Palmer in Spin magazine

"I've been really shocked and distressed to find out that 8- and 9-year-old girls are getting all their pubic hairs waxed off by their mothers," she says. "I think if I have any purpose at all, it's to stand up there and say, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, girls. You totally have a choice. You can wax it, you can shave it, you can grow it out, and this really is up to you.' That's the way that I feel about everything, that you just need to know there's a choice out there."

Adds Pope, the director: "On the surface, it's a song about girls growing out their pubes. Underneath that, however, is a call to everyone, woman and man alike, to discover the courage to be themselves. Whoever that may be."

Source: Spin

That sounds exactly right. I couldn't find the right post this morning but I remember Holly of The Pervocracy saying that for her the decision to remove her pubic hair signaled adulthood rather than pre-pubescence. There are obviously plenty of good cases for never fiddling with your body hair at all in adulthood but this isn't about that. Beyond basic sanitation whatever one's choice might be, as a child or an adult, it ought to be your choice and not your parents. And yeah, having your mom decide to wax you isn't as permanent as other decisions parents make: piercing ears, circumcision, or sex reassignment surgery come to mind, so if it's just getting waxed you can stop once you're out of the house.  (Right, as if only permanent physical alterations leave mental scars.)  So let's just add this to the list of things you should leave it to the child to decide. When he or she grows up.

(Note: based on conversation with teachers and other parents this is one of those areas where a) daughters are more subject to parental pressure and b) moms tend to bring more of that pressure to bear.)

Another note on the pubic hair, just to tease my friend Chingona, who's promised never to go easy on me about pubic hair pontificating: the real question to ask these days isn't so much why women are or aren't grooming their pubic hair. Instead it should be why men aren't doing it more -- after all the same esthetic, hygenic, and sensory arguments ought to apply both ways. Actually, technically, to the extent they apply at all they do apply both ways.

(Link to Palmer quote via SexIsNotTheEnemy)

Update: Palmer's assertion that mothers are waxing their 8-year-olds may be related to this article in The Frisky which reports spa owners in the Bay Area and NYC are trying to build a market for it.  So with any luck it could be another one of those all sizzle, no steak stories like rainbow bracelets, vagazzling, or labiaplasty.  (I gotta say, though, the telling line would be a spa owner in NYC who said "in 10 years, waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth."  Um, yeah.  Waxing? Braces tightening? What child could possibly object?

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"Vajazzled" Vulvas: Privilege Rorschach Test?

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2010-03-10 19:33

Lisa of Sociological Images succinctly describes the concept behind “vajazzling.”

In any case, the video below, in which a woman documents the vajazzling of her “vagina,” reveals that the term refers to the placing of a field of tiny crystals where your public hair would be. So, first you essentially replace your pubic hair with shiny objects.

See the video, and read Lisa’s text in context, here.

Succinctly but not completely. That should read shiny, sharp cut-glass crystal objects! Which at the very, very least would tend to limit one’s partner’s interest in face-to-face intercourse. And assuming men are being honest who say they don’t want pubic hair in their mouths ought to be just even more balky about chipping their molars on Swarovski crystals.

My guess is that the hair-in-the-mouth thing is a red herring. As Holly says, if men are so all-fired indiscriminating and sex-crazed they sure are a demandingly picky bunch. And nothing says demanding like “scrape off your pubic hair with a razor, or pull it out with hot, sticky wax,” I’m guessing saying “and encrust it with jewels instead” just seems extra special.

My second guess, though, is that it’s scarcely any of my business how an intimate partner chooses to groom herself and no business at all of mine how anyone else goes about it. Part of privilege would be assuming people who get themselves vajazzled are interested in men’s opinion in the first place.

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When it Comes to Shaving Bible Colleges Tell Men to Do What We Say, Not What the Bible Says

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-02-28 22:23

Chris of Cynical-C answers the question “How Does a Brigham Young Univ. Student Grow a Beard?”

By visiting a doctor and filling out lots of paperwork. I wonder if you could cut down on some of that if you just grow a mustache?

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process. If a request is granted for a temporary or more permanent beard exception the student will be notified by the Honor Code Office; at which time the student will come into the office to complete the necessary paperwork. After completion of this process the student may then grow a full beard according the guidelines given.

(via J-Walk)

That’s the whole post. I got it here.

The first commenter says that Pensacola Christian College dress code and Hyles Anderson’s are much worse. Anderson’s sounds vague but may be strictly enforced. Pensacola Christian College’s is, um, more strictly enumerated. As is is their behavior code. Both men and women must turn right down some road rather than left to go to a nearby beach, for instance. Students must not leave campus only with members of their own sex and never in groups smaller than three for men and five for women. Sheesh! The only concession to modernity seems to be an admonition for women to wear no more than two sets of earrings at a time.

The second commenter, Julia S., remarks that “finally something crappy for the guys to deal with. Go Jebus!!! Wait? Did Jebus need permission to grow HIS?!? Hey!!!!” Except for the “finally” part. equirements to shave really is one of the few appearance-related issues men are saddled with socially, compared to myriad such obligations imposed on women.

Further down KidneyPI raises a favorite issue of mine, given the Bible-beater obsession with Shalt Nots: “Being a religious school, shouldn’t they require beards? Leviticus 19:27 seems to forbid shaving.” (In Leviticus “rounding the corners of thy head nor beard” is at least as smite-worthy an abomination as homosexuality, premarital sex, or adultery and yet at Pensacola, Brigham Young, or Anderson it’s nothing but crickets.)

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"What’s the deal with manscaping?" Answers at Em & Lo's

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2009-11-04 09:38

I’m in the monthly rotation for the popular “Wise Guys” column at Em & Lo. This week’s question for their rotating panel of single, and married straight men and married or committed gay man was “What’s the deal with manscaping? We’re talking both genitals and chests.” Here’s how I answered it.

Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): Great question! It’s a great irony to me that, at least in Western Civilization, we don’t think anything of the original “manscaping” — men who shave their faces. For instance, you never hear debates about how shaving makes grown men look “prepubescent” even though technically that’s exactly what it actually does. As for the recent trend in straight men trimming or shaving pubic hair, I think you could make a case that it’s driven, at least a little bit, by the same things that drive women to do so: porn and advertising. The two come together in a recent razor manufacturer’s ad campaign with shaved kiwi fruit and hints about the “optical inch” of penis length that comes from trimming away an inch of pubic hair.

There’s also the point that it just feels nicer being kissed on bare skin than on hair… and, for many partners, it feels nicer kissing bare skin than hair. As for men grooming hair on the rest of the body, I think there are two big reasons. First, because it makes us look younger. Not so much “prepubescent” but, since body hair increases with age, not middle-aged or older. Second, because when it’s long it can be itchy both to ourselves and to our partners. Of course the other side of all that is first that a lot of women and/or men think body hair on men is very sexy, and second that stubble can be even pricklier than if we left well enough alone.

I said it here.

No sense analyzing my own writing (heck, I can’t even proofread my own writing!) so I’ll point out that the quality of comments is pretty different on the post at Em & Lo’s vs. their reprinted version at Yahoo Shine.

A number of Yahoo commenters are pretty down on manscaping because they see it as one kind of unmanly or another. Which makes the “Gay Engaged Guy,” Joel Derfner‘s answer priceless

I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because manscaping is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Gay men are manscaping less and less each year, which means that in a few years straight men are going to be manscaping less and less each year, and then our national nightmare will be over.

Yup, just let straight America get the notion that not shaving is Teh Gay!

Gillette and Schick stock will skyrocket and we can all go home. Oh wait! Scratch that last bit about stocks. Nearly all American men already own shaving products.

But getting back to the shaving makes you look less manly bit. Shaving makes men look less manly? Which is a riot because of course beginning to shave one’s face is often one of the first outward acknowledgments of manhood for boys.

Which makes the cultural perception gradient even weirder: shaving is supposed to make men look more womanly, meanwhile shaving is supposed to make women look more child-like. If there was any logic to gender conventions, since shaving is one of the first signals of manhood shaving ought to be seen as making women look more manly! I get so confused!

—-

Gender-neutral rhetorical question: do shaved armpits make everyone look pre-pubescent?

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Back to Hair Removal, or Prepubescence Pre-Senescence Revisited

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-07-13 18:41


Photo by Flickr user stevegatto2, who I’m sure looks perfectly presentable with or without back hair. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors has a thoughtful analysis of body-hair removal in the face of increasing marketing of shaving products and services to men. (She reports one Gillette tagline goes “you might say when there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller.”)

While I strongly disagree that shaving one’s pubic hair makes one look prepubescent (when was the last time you heard that description of a man who shaves?) I agree with Crawford that body-hair removal for both women and men is closely associated with the culture of youth.

Example A? The “problem” of back hair. Back hair doesn’t really start to sprout in men till middle age. And so ads for back hair removal (either temporary or permanent) are a staple of aging-youth-oriented alt-weekly newspapers, where such ads are at least as common as ads for “bikini line” waxing.

Crawford says, sensibly,

[H]airlessness — obtained naturally or by grooming — is a sign of youth (the pre-pubescent look), body-consciousness (I can see those abs glisten!), self-care (when you trim your nails, trim your hairs) and other-regarding (how thoughtful of you to anticipate that I wouldn’t like hair up my nose — wait a sec, did you assume I’d be visiting this part of your anatomy on a first date?).

A marketing technique will be a sure winner if it appeals to men’s desire to feel, um, large. There’s a reason that Trojans don’t come in size “small.”

The hairless look? Shows off a guy’s “equipment,” in Gillette’s lexicon.

Anyone who’s eagerly looking forward to her or his partner sprouting those tufty little middle-age patches of hair on his back, shoulders, and the backs of his upper arms pipe up.

But if, as I suspect, anti-ancillary hair bias is as strong against men as it is against women, an even more effective marketing strategy would be to taunt men for looking like skeevy old men.

Also, her sentence “how thoughtful of you to anticipate that I wouldn’t like hair up my nose” can be read two ways for anyone over 40, for whom lushly abundant nose hair may be “perfectly natural” but is rarely greeted by partners with any hint of enthusiasm.

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Shorter Version: Boys and Hair Fashion Preferences

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-03-31 13:29

I think the reason I keep cognitive-dissonant-ifying over the hair and boys and fashion/preference thing boils down to to strongly anti-feminist and anti-male… but also strongly contradictory assertions about men:

How can men simultaneously be so fussy that women can’t have a stray hair loose (or a stray hair period!) while at the same time men are supposed to be ready to hump anything that moves (or doesn’t?)

No. Seriously! One or the other can be true — and either one would be pretty inexcusable. But they can’t both be true. Seriously! They can’t!

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Outline For In-Class Talk On "Public Health, Patrician Status, and Pubic Hair"

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2008-03-03 16:34

Outline of in-class presentation on the history of pubic hair removal


Hey, I’ve never done an outline this detailed. Which should be obvious if you’ve read any of my posts. It was staggeringly hard for me, at least the first time, though I could see how over time it would be tremendously useful. Especially once it felt more natural. That said, despite quite a lot of preparation by the end of my actual talk I’d free-lanced a much stronger conclusion that more effectively tied the last section on class to the almost sudden turnaround of hairlessnes from a sign of sexual restraint to a sign of sexual expressiveness. Before I’d deliver the talk again I’d revise the outline to reflect the differences (oh yeah, and really clean up the bibliography!) but for now it really did serve it’s purpose.

Specific Purpose

After listening to my

speech my audience will introduce listeners to the history of pubic hair grooming as it relates to questions of hygiene, tradition, and modern body-image issues.

Thesis

“Brazilian" waxing and

other forms of pubic hair grooming have been practiced all through history and all around the world for all sorts of reasons. I will discuss some of those reasons, and their implications, as they relate to questions of hygiene, social conventions, and body-image issues.

Why do I care?

I first became interested

when I read an article for women about shaving their genitals and I was startled to see that except for location the steps, and the obstacles, were similar to those for shaving my face! A little bit of Googling turned revealed that body-hair grooming traditions were way more complex than I imagined.

Why You Should Care

The impact of body hair

grooming in general, and pubic hair grooming in particular have affected millions of women and, increasingly, men. Looking at the history of pubic hair grooming might help put the recent fashion trends into a broader context and, perhaps, give us more perspective when we choose to respond.

Introduction

  1. On Sept. 3, 1999, I read an article in Salon.com about a new fashion craze called Brazilian waxing.
    1. A. I’d heard of people occasionally trimming or removing their pubic hair for health reasons or if they were porn performers but Salon reported it as a new fashion.
    2. B. Only three years later a relative mentioned that more than 50% of her Women’s Clinic patients in rural, central Maine had begun practicing some form of partial or complete pubic hair removal.
  2. Since I grew up during an era when one of the biggest Broadway musicals, Hair, was about never cutting any of your hair, I’ve followed the radical reversal in fashion with interest, accumulating quite a lot of information on the topic.
  3. I thought if I shared some of what I’ve learned about the history and culture of pubic hair removal around the world it might help put our current fashion into perspective.
  4. “Brazilian" waxing and other forms of pubic hair grooming have been practiced all through history and all around the world for all sorts of reasons. I will discuss some of those reasons, and their implications, as they relate to questions of hygiene, social conventions, and body-image issues.

Transition:

Let’s take a look first at body hair removal through the centuries

Body

  1. Although shaving or waxing pubic hair hit America in the late 1990s it’s been around for years, but if it’s been around for years why haven’t we heard more about it?
    1. Nobody really talked much publically about sex until
      1. Masters & Johnson released their study in the late 1960
      2. David Reubin wrote “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" in the early 1970s
      3. Alex Comfort’s “The Joy of Sex" became a best-seller in the early 70’s.
    2. Almost none of the books I scanned in the library on sex, feminism, fashion, or porn from 1975 to 1985 refer to pubic shaving or waxing.
    3. Those that do make only oblique references.
      1. “Joy of Sex" mentions it as a surprise variation.
      2. A book about “swingers" in the 1970s mentioned that some women with died hair shaved their pubic hair to hide that they weren’t “natural" blondes.
      3. Towards the end of the 1970s some books and articles began to wonder why porn stars had started to shave their pubic hair.

Transition: So if there is

little historical evidence of shaving for sexual or fashion reasons what information is in the historical record?

  1. Ancient History
    1. Historians say women in the middle east made a depilatory called rhumsa turcorum three to four thousand years ago.
    2. Egyptians and Greeks used bronze or obsidian razors, pumice stones, threading, and sugaring to make themselves look more “refined" and less “barbaric."
    3. The prophet Mohamed specified that observant Moslem men and women should remove all body hair below the neck at least once every 40 days.
    4. We know that merkins were used by both prostitutes and nobility to disguise pubic hair loss due to parasite management and the effects of syphilis remedies.
    5. American pioneers and settlers shaved their body hair to control lice and other body parasites.
      1. John Wayne’s funny swagger may have imitated pioneers with razor burn or stubble!
      2. Ma and Pa Wilder probably shaved when living in their Little House on the Prairie and their House At Plum Creek, because we know many of their contemporaries did.
    6. French authorities refused to extradite a pornographer back to England for publishing photos of models with pubic hair (shaved models were considered non-obscene.)
    7. Anecdote: During the toxic-shock syndrome scare some women friends trimmed their pubic hair to reduce sticking and pulling from menstrual pads.

Transition: Can we make

any guesses about where the transition from assumptions about pubic hair as a Victorian signifier of greater sexuality might have begun to change?

  1. Body hair became an early 20th Century signifier for class, race, sexual “excess," and gender.
    1. In 1914, after the first sleeveless and leg-baring gowns were introduced, ads promoting armpit and leg hair removal began appearing, but only in very high-end women’s magazines like Harper’s Bazaar.
    2. Largely white Anglo-Saxon protestant, upper class feminists criticized recent immigrants from Mediterranean regions for their immodest attire, use makeup, flamboyance, and “coarse" complexions.
    3. Ads for shaving products in middle-class magazines didn’t appear 20 years after appearing in Harper’s Bazaar.
    4. Marketers trying to introduce women’s shaving products into Latin American markets noticed that women of European descent were reluctant to remove leg and armpit hair for fear of looking more like lower-status Native American women who they perceived to be more naturally hairless.
    5. The “Two Sphere" gender model dictated opposing qualities for men and women.
      1. If men were seen as strong, women must be seen as weak.
      2. If women were seen as nurturing, men must be seen as remote.
      3. If men were seen as hairy, mature sexual animals, women must be seen as hairless, sexless “pre-pubescent" angels.
  2. Not until the end of the 20th Century did removal of pubic hair begin to signify higher rather than lower sexualization.

Conclusion

Pubic hair removal was

present and common long before Americans became aware of it through sources such as Salon.com, Cosmopolitan magazine, and Sex and the City. In fact it was, and in much of the rest of the world still is, practiced for a variety of reasons including religion, hygiene, tradition, and status. Understanding this we may be able to assess contemporary media, marketing, and peer pressure to groom or remove pubic hair.

Bibliography:

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