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.

Introduction: For a number of years I participated in the Half-Nekked Thursday self-photography meme.  About a year or so ago I began winding down and I can't even remember the last time I participated.  Maybe because it's finally spring here (even if an unusually cold and wet one even for the Pacific Northwest) or maybe it's because I've really started perking up since beginning a course of Welbutrin about a month ago, or maybe it's because I don't think I'll ever shake the "NSFW" designation for my poor politics and sociology of sex, gender, and relationships, or maybe it's just for the heck of it.  But I was thinking about it the other day took a few experimental over-the-shoulder photos.  And made a surprise discovery about my physical apperance that I thought was worth bringing up.

So we're all aware that there's, um, controversy about whether or not people in general, and women in particular, should remove their pubic hair. All fine and fair enough -- there's considerable differences of opinion, much involving appearance-related pressure, others involving "pre-pubescence," others involving other esthetics such as sensation, texture, conformity, and even cleanliness.

So! Not much agreement there.

There's another, stealthier area where agreement about body-hair removal appears to be much closer to universal. It's in an unusual place. And it appears almost exclusively on only one biological sex.

Check out the following keyword searches (from Google, May 11, 2011.)

Image captured by Figleaf (hey that's me) Posted under a Creative Commons license.

Wild, huh? Considering the controversy it's not surprising that there would be more than million hits on the key phrase "hair removal pubic." One million hits!

Wilder, and perhaps weirder, there are seventeen million hits on the key phrase "hair removal back."

You can mix and match key phrases, adding for instance waxing, shaving, laser, and other removal-related terms to the base terms "pubic" and "back" and get fairly consistent results. Back hair -- typically an age-related development that tends to signal middle age in men (along with ear and nose hair) has very, very few advocates, adherents, or aficionados.

Sigh. Which means it's very likely that instead of spending time contemplating my cute but manly butt in the photo below (c'mon, it looks cute!) your attention may instead be drawn in more of a shoulder-ly direction. And if it does your attention may further be drawn to a not-quite-lush but growing dusting of back and shoulder hair.

Based on Google's results I'm guessing odds are about 17 to 1 that if you do notice the back hair you won't find it very appealing. But I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

"Image captured by Figleaf (hey that's me) Posted under a Creative Commons license.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Quick note: I’m finally back from vacation, plus various other strong distractions, and I’ve finally had time to fix the blog. It should operate quite a bit faster. I’ll be taking a couple of steps to limit the hordes of comment spam I was getting before, including requiring comment previews again (sorry) and, if necessary, closing comments in older posts. If you notice other problems please let me know. Hopefully in comments. Finally, I’ve got a hella backlog of emails for the last two weeks or so. I’ll be trying to catch up this week.

The question for the Wise Guys advice feature on Em & Lo last week was says

What is the appeal (or not) of a woman who’s completely bare down there?

Read three answers from the Wise Guys, and at least 55 other answers in comments, here.

Yes, yes, I’ve already beaten the point to death but for immediately personal reasons related to my having not shaved while on vacation I’m going to give it one more whack.

I’m sitting here contemplating a rare but very irritated razor-burn rash under my chin, thanks in part to a razor blade I forgot to change, thanks in even more part to the fact that I had about a week’s worth of stubble and it’s really hard to see under my chin when I shave (always in the shower) and the surfaces are really hard to navigate a razor around safely anyway. Anyway, the irritated skin and hair follicles remind me once again how shaving is unnatural no matter who does it. Or where.

That said, my bare face is definitely more sensitive when my partner touches me there. It’s definitely easier to keep my face clean when shave regularly. I should also say that most of my partners have preferred to kissing and being kissed without a beard rather than with one. Personally I think I just tend to look better clean-shaven than with a beard or mustache. And of course some employers have been very strict about how my head and facial hair should be groomed.

Even without considering visual or partner or public preferences I think most people shave various parts of their bodies for the same reason I shave mine: occasional razor burn notwithstanding it’s more practical and the sensations are nicer for me.

But yikes! If you’re going to shave anything it’s a very good idea to keep your $#*@ razor blades sharp.

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.