Personal grooming down there

Serious business for some
However it all started, it has clearly become something of a hobby for aficionados. Some women are now giving themselves the equivalent of Friday night permanents. They dye it, they style it, they shave it all off. Of course, this being America, a minor industry has sprung up to sell them products and services.

Hair Care Down There -- yes, you read that right -- is a company founded one year ago this month by former corporate executive Judy Pfleger. She came up with the idea when she went to a drugstore to stock up on pubic grooming gear like shave gel, razors, scissors and skin conditioners.

“I paid $125 for the products," she recalls, "went home and dumped them on my floor and said, ‘I don’t know how to use any of this stuff.’” So she researched. She looked at fetish magazines. She went to a strip club and grilled the dancers on their techniques.

“The girls had all these different looks,” Pfleger says, “like the landing strip, the smoothie with nothing in front, the Brazilian with everything off in front and back, hearts, the Charlie Chaplin with just a little patch above the clitoris. So I decided to create a guide on how to achieve them.” Next, she attended a hair show in Las Vegas and discovered body jewelry and stick-on rhinestones.

It all went into her “Ultimate Shaving Kit,” which retails for $59 from her Web site (www.haircaredownthere.com). She’s sold about 2,500 kits so far and has had demand from men for a men’s kit, which conjures the scary image of a hairless man with a rhinestone lightning bolt stuck to his penis.

Exactly how popular pubic grooming is among men is debatable, but it does seem to be catching on, largely because women like it. “One woman who wanted [the kit] for a man said, ‘Hell no, we are not going down there if it’s a mess!'” Pfleger says.

Not just for porn stars
Most men probably coif in the privacy of their own bathrooms with razor, soap and maybe a beard trimmer, but calls to skin care salons and day spas around the country revealed that many are now going pro. Beverly Hills skin care and waxing expert Nance Mitchell says she has about 50 regular male customers who come for pubic waxing “and they are not gay and they not porn stars,” she tells me before I have a chance to ask.

“Some go totally bare, some just do the shaft and up around the pelvic area," she says.

The style, Mitchell says, depends on what their wives and girlfriends want. Men go along, she explains, because removing the hair makes the whole package look bigger. She charges $85 and up for the service. 

“They get waxes?” I ask, incredulous that men, known sissies when it comes to any threat to their treasures, would submit to a procedure the United Nations would outlaw if it were used as torture. “And you do the waxing?”

“Yes, they get waxes,” Mitchell laughs. “It’s just like driving a sports car. You grab the [stick shift] and you go, babe!”

Brian Alexander is a California-based writer who covers sex, relationships and health. He is a contributing editor at Glamour and the author of "Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion" (Basic Books, 2003).

MORE FROM SEXPLORATION

Sexploration Section Front

Being thankful ... you’re not like mom and dad Vicarious thrill: He wants her to be hit on Dangerous liaisons: Why we find vampires sexy When she earns more, he aims to please Allergic to sex? It really can happen Marriage eludes high-achieving black women If sex is a yawn, you may actually be turned on Marriage thrives despite our evolving sex lives Yes! Yes! Oh, no! Coming oh so close to orgasm Sick or sexy? When he's ‘Daddy’ in the bedroom Sexploration Section Front   Add Sexploration headlines to your news reader: