Read My Lips (28 page)

2007: Body Drama
by Nancy Redd is published as a book for younger women. It is body-affirming, featuring many images of diverse bodies—including vulvas. In fact, there are twenty-four images of vulvas laid side by side with varied pubic hairstyles including fancy fluffs, groomed lady gardens, and beautiful bare-naked lady parts. (Well, we came up with these terms; but you get the picture—the women in her photos do all sorts of fun things with their hair.)

Hank Moody sings the praises of women’s natural pubic hair (and natural labia) on the popular show,
Californication
.

Debby takes her Wondrous Vulva Puppet on
The Tyra Banks Show
to teach women about their genital parts in an episode called “What’s Up Down There?” The clip goes viral to millions of viewers on YouTube, in part because of it being posted on PerezHilton.com and aired on
Talk Soup
and
Best Week Ever
. And yes, pubic hairstyles get a nod.

The movie
Knocked Up
features a famous birth scene in which the main character, played by Katherine Heigl, gives birth and her vulva is completely bare. The blogosphere chatters away about the bald “stunt vulva.”

Reality show actor Spencer Pratt allegedly writes a negative post about actress Lauren Conrad (LC), describing her as having “beef curtains.” Perez Hilton runs with this term and frequently calls LC by that name afterward.

Finnish performance artist Mimosa Pale launches her “Mobile Female Monument,” which she describes as “an interactive performance sculpture on wheels.” It’s also known as a large vulva sculpture operating as a bicycle taxi. Her “bicycle bits,” as we like to think of them, were on exhibit at the Tennis-palatsi Art Museum in Helsinki, where they were taken for a walk around town every other day. Individuals could enter the sculpture, and there was reportedly enough room for an adult to lie down in it. (See MimosaPale.com for photos.)
¹⁰

2008:
Rachel Liebert founds the International Vulva Knitting Circle (IVKC), a “grass-roots activist collective in support of the New View Campaign’s WTF-ing against the emerging industry of female genital cosmetic surgeries.” In its first year, the IVKC had almost 150 diverse knit vulvas from five countries.

Comedian and author Amy Sedaris appears on Chelsea Handler’s show,
Chelsea Lately
, and teaches Chelsea about “vaginal cleansing” using a model that she says was made by Todd Oldham. Though there are some wavy lines on the outside of what she calls the “outer folds” (the outer labia, we presume), it’s unclear if these are meant to be pubic hairs or not.

2009:
Actress Kate Winslet tells
Allure
about wearing a merkin for her role in
The Reader
. “I had to grow the hair down there,” she said. “But because of years of waxing . . . it doesn’t come back quite the way it used to. They even made me a merkin—a wig—because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough.”

The New View Campaign holds an event titled “Vulvagraphics: An Intervention in Honor of Female Genital Diversity” at The Change You Want to See Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The event features vulva-related art including knit vulvas from the IVKC.

The UK newspaper
The Guardian
publishes an article featuring the work of “The Muffia”—two female performance artists, Sinead King and Katie O’Brien, who lift their dresses and expose merkin-covered underwear while communicating messages to passersby. These messages raise questions about women’s issues, such as female genital cosmetic surgery, eating disorders, and more.

2010:
The Hairy Underwear Collection is founded on January 4, 2010, by Finnish duo the Nutty Tarts (tarahtaneet.net) and features underwear that are given the appearance of having pubic hair on the crotch.

On
Lopez Tonight
, actress Jennifer Love Hewitt talks about getting vajazzled. “After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski crystalled my, um, precious lady,” Hewitt told Lopez. “It shined like a disco ball.”

VATOOING

We would rather this be called a “vulvoo,” rather than a “vatoo”—as it’s not actually a temporary tattoo for the vagina but for the vulva. And in all fairness, it’s also been called a “vatu” and a “twatoo” in the blogo-sphere. Essentially, the vatoo is an airbrushed image toward the top of, or just above, a woman’s waxed-bare mons, and it was pioneered by the Completely Bare salon in Manhattan.

Although a fun and kind of quirky idea, one video we watched about vatoos had the aesthetician warning not to mess it up during sex. This doesn’t bode well for sex positions such as the coital alignment technique, a variation on missionary that involves a woman and her partner lining their bodies up quite closely and grinding, rather than thrusting in and out. Coital alignment technique has been shown to help make it easier for women to experience orgasm during intercourse. Given the choice between a no-holds-barred sex act and a not-smudged vatoo, which would you take?

In a
New York Times
profile of the J Sisters (who reportedly started the Brazilian-wax trend), writer Stephanie Clifford attributes the decline of the Brazilian to the 2008 recession.

Vanessa and Debby take to the Las Vegas Strip with Vanessa dressed up as a giant vulva, a costume she made herself. This occurs the evening before the New View Campaign’s conference at the University of Nevada Las Vegas called
Framing the Vulva: Genital Cosmetic Surgery and Genital Diversity
(newview campaign.org).
¹¹

In her book
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
, Chelsea Handler writes about learning about her genitals—what she calls her “coslopus” and likens to a pincushion—while growing up. When she learned that she would one day grow pubic hair on her coslopus, she says that she experienced mixed feelings about this and would frequently wonder, in a way that only Chelsea can do, “Pubic hair or pincushion by itself?”

2011:
Groupon airs a Super Bowl commercial featuring model Elizabeth Hurley in which she begins by talking about the perils of deforestation impacting the Brazilian rainforest—that is, before she says, “but not all deforestation is bad.” The example she uses is that “since 100 of us bought at Groupon .com, we’re all saving 50 percent on a Brazilian wax at Completely Bare in New York City.”

WHAT DO WOMEN DO DOWN THERE, ANYWAY?

Not long ago, our research team at Indiana University conducted a study about women’s pubic hair-removal patterns. Like many people, we were curious about what women were doing with their pubic hair. We had read many magazine articles that claimed that nearly all young women were going bare. We even came across articles that said going bare was increasingly common among women from their mid-twenties to their forties and fifties. But this didn’t make much sense to us.
¹²

WHAT’S YOUR STYLE?

“I prefer to have a ‘tuft’ of pubic hair on my mons pubis, and keep my labia majora as hairless as possible. I like how this looks, and it decreases my frequency of yeast infections. My partner also likes this style because it is easier for him to perform oral sex on me.”—Alana, 22, Indiana

“Bald, smooth, shaved top to bottom. It is what I have always liked.”—Zoe, 36, Canada

“Have shaved completely in the past because of partner’s preference. Currently shave vulva and keep mons hair short.”—Abby, 28, Texas

“I trim, but not shave. I don’t think this is influenced by anyone’s preference besides my own.”—Rachel, 25, Colorado

“I prefer to have a nicely manicured triangle at the top and hair-free labia. It’s due to my preferences. I love to touch the bare labia.”—Gina, 36, Washington

“I’ve often trimmed it but also leave it ungroomed often. One lover shaved my pubic hair. I really liked how it felt, but it was inconvenient to maintain. Also, if I shaved my pubic hair now, I’d be self-conscious in the locker room. Most of my lovers haven’t expressed a preference.”—Casey, 43, Indiana

“Busy, with the ‘hedges’—hair that extends past my panty line, removed.”—Jill, 36, New York

“My pubic hair is waxed into a ‘California’ strip. My labia majora and mons pubis both have hair on them (that I keep trimmed), but the bikini line, plus a bit extra is waxed off. My partner doesn’t care one way or another how I have my pubic hair. I just like feeling clean and able to wear a bathing suit without being embarrassed by hair sticking out everywhere.”—Mary, 31, Texas

“Trimmed (sometimes VERY short and other times just a bit). I have no pain tolerance and am irrationally afraid of taking a razor to that area (no clue why but I am)! However, going wild and free is a little itchy so I give it a haircut. I remember making a pact with a friend in high school to never do anything to our vulvas for a partner . . . only for us based on what we want! While this, in hindsight, is a little extreme, when I was rocking full bush and my of you and I’m kind of loving it (until I didn’t anymore)!”—Hilary, 22, Massachusetts

“I leave my pubic hair completely alone. Sometimes for fun I will trim—and one time I tried shaving it all—but generally I just leave it. I do however have very little hair and when it’s completely grown out it still doesn’t show outside my bikini bottoms. As for my friends . . . definitely everyone grooms, if not waxing or laser. My friends and I talk about it sometimes but I am in no way interested in grooming my pubic hair constantly. My partner prefers when I’m completely grown out.”—Jessica, 28, Canada “Prefer it all shaved/waxed. I’m not fond of body hair on me or on anyone else.”—Kali, 22, India

“I prefer it slightly waxed so it doesn’t show in a bathing suit. I disagree with Brazilians. I wish grown women didn’t want to look like 10 year old girls.”—Jane, 48, New York

“I don’t care much how it looks. I enjoy cutting hair so it’s fun to mess with. I also tried trimming it to get my girlfriend to want to go down on me more. Didn’t work, however.”—Anne, 26, Idaho

“When I was with my first partner I hadn’t had sex before so I didn’t know of his expectations. I left my genital hair natural and he was very surprised when he first saw it, he said something along the lines of ‘it’s hairier than mine’ (which wasn’t even true) and I think he expected that I’d naturally have very little hair there or none at all. For this reason I shaved it off while I was with him. When I broke up with him I decided that it was a stupid expectation and that I actually preferred to have some hair there as shaving is uncomfortable, so now I just trim and shave around it but leave most of the hair where it naturally should be!”—Liz, 22, UK

“Completely shaved, obviously affected by society, but I personally like the feel of it bare and shave even when I am not planning on having anyone see it. My partner definitely likes it shaved, but if he didn’t I wouldn’t grow it because hair feels scratchy and uncomfortable to me down there.”—Cynthia, 18, Connecticut

“There is no peer pressure for a woman of my age to be waxed or shaven but since I was in my twenties I have trimmed my pubic hair and had electrolysis on the bikini line or waxing. These days I only trim as I wear skimpy clothing less. I do pluck the odd hair from the groin area.”—Brenda, 55, Australia

In part, this didn’t hold up because Debby often teaches human sexuality classes to college students at Indiana University, and they had more diverse stories to tell. When the topic of pubic hair removal would come up in class or in students’ papers, she learned that these young women described a wide range of things they did with their pubic hair. Some kept it natural. Others trimmed. And still others shaved, waxed, or used more permanent methods (such as laser hair reduction). We had also talked about pubic hairstyles with friends and found that they did different things with their hair, too. And being in a locker room, one can see a range of styles.

We found that there was very little scientific data on the subject and decided to conduct our own study of women’s pubic-hair removal patterns as part of a larger study we were conducting related to women’s sexuality. We published the results of our study in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
in 2010 and are happy to share them with you here as well.

In total, we asked 2,451 women ages eighteen to sixty-eight, to tell us whether, how, and how often they had removed their pubic hair over the previous month.
¹²
We asked about shaving, waxing, laser hair reduction, and electrolysis. We also asked how much hair they removed (some or all of it). Then we categorized women into groups based on what their pubic hair had been like over the previous month—did they remove all of it so often that they were likely bare most or all of the time? If so, we called them “typically hair-free.” If they removed all of their hair only a few times, we described them as engaging in “some total removal.” Women who removed some, but never all, of their pubic hair were grouped as “some removal, not total.” Everyone else fell into the category of not having used any of the removal methods we asked about.