Personal grooming down there

Brian Alexander • E-mail

Press ... rip ... YEOW!

That guttural scream you hear rattling the door of a back room in your local day spa just may be coming from a man getting his pubic hair waxed. Yes, it’s true. Men are grooming, uh, down there.

And, for those of you who haven’t seen a skin magazine since you were a tyke hiding behind the Knights of Columbus lodge with a flashlight, women have been coiffing for at least 20 years. But now many women are going for the Yul Brynner look.

At first glance this trend could be taken as yet another sign that the collapse of Western civilization is nigh or that the Queer Eye guys (clear-cutting body hair has long been a staple of gay maledom) have completely addled our brains. Well, relax.

Centuries-old practice
The idea of removing pubic hair is an old one. It’s likely that ancient Egyptians shaved, perhaps to prevent or treat infestations of lice. Some European women, and probably some men, removed their pubic hair at least as early as the 1500s. In its place, they sometimes wore a “merkin,” a pubic toupee.

How the current fashion for stylin’ pubes arose is a matter of some debate. Theories include everything from anti-feminist backlash to admiration for shaved Olympic swimmers to the aforementioned influence of gay culture.

But here’s mine: The high-cut one-piece bathing suit hit big during the 1980s because it made women look a little bit like Elle MacPherson, the model with legs that stretch from here to Cincinnati. But the suits left tufts of curlies sticking out, so women had to mow down the sides. The more skin the suits showed, the more trimming. Finally, women wound up with the “landing strip,” that little line down the center that looked like Groucho’s mustache. Super-low cut jeans only added to the fashion imperative, mandating shaving from the top down. 

I think the mainstreaming of porn had something to do with it, too, because porn actors tend to shave, the better to show off the naughty bits. Men began asking their wives and girlfriends to do it because it made giving oral sex more pleasant and because it seemed wicked. Lately, in the interest of fair play, women have been telling men to denude penises and testicles and to trim back the rest.

Anyway, that’s my theory.

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