Recently, Cosmo had an article about Brazilian waxes, and how they're Empowering! And Everyone's Doing Them! And how they're Changing the World! And then Jezebel produced a post about that very terrible article, which has spawned a 300-count-and-growing comment thread that is mostly about how disgusting it is to remove your pubic hair; that they, the commenters, are Real Women and Women Have Hair; that to remove that hair is to Give in to the Patriarchy and Look Prepubescent--and generally, I want to say screw you.
My vagina, bereft of hair, remains a woman's vagina because holy crap! I'm a woman! It is also a lot easier to deal with and neater during my period, far more, way more, so ridiculously more sensitive during oral sex, and I know for a fact that sometimes a faceful of wet hair is not the most pleasant sensation in the world--I am nothing if not polite.
Why is it a problem that I want to wax? It doesn't hurt as much as everyone swears it does, I have the money for it, I am not doing it because it is hip, I am not an idiot who is doing it because Cosmopolitan magazine tells me that I have to if I want to be a real woman, a wreck who thinks my body is disgusting and needs to be fixed, a weakling who goes bare because my man tells me I better or I'm not getting any because that's the way vaginas in porn movies look.
I do it because I want to do it. I like it. I do not think your pubic hair is a problem--why is my lack a problem? I am as confused by the women in the gym, as one Jezebel commenter recounts, who criticize other women for having full and luxurious mounds of pubic hair as I am by the women who say that waxing is disgusting and wrong. What the heck people?
Which wave of feminism is it that talks about our right to make informed, well-thought-out decisions about our bodies? Because that's the one I want to be a part of. That's the one I want to bring back, the one where you say "My Body, My Choice," full stop, without going on to suggest that your body is wrong. Where women stop undermining each other over stupid crap, stop assuming that all women are the kinds of idiots who listen to women's magazines and base all their choices on their dictates, and start worrying about the important things. Like not the state of my vagina.
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