To Remove or Not to Remove...

This might be the silliest, most first world topic I’ve ever addressed on this blog but I spent so much time thinking about it that I knew I had to write about it. 

I decided to get laser hair removal. Riveting stuff, I know, but making this decision was harder than you might’ve expected. I have Mediterranean genes which means I have light skin but dark, thick hair - pretty much everywhere. To put it in perspective, when I would let my leg hair grow out as part of swim season (it’s a thing, I swear), if you looked at my legs from the knees down you’d have probably thought I was a guy. And not a teenage boy with a coating of wispy hair struggling to get through puberty, we’re talking full grown man levels of hair here. 

Hence, hair removal has been part of my beauty routine since I found out it was an option. I remember getting my mom to wax my legs when I was only eleven years old, and additionally trying depilatories, plucking, shaving, as well threading to control the hair on my body. 

I now have the disposable income to make this kind of unnecessary investment so I did some research and decided to consider two main areas for treatment: My underarms and my bikini area. The decision on the underarms was straightforward. I get ingrown hairs from shaving, the hair always grows back so fast, it prickles me in certain kinds of tops, and retains sweat and odor. It was also one of the cheaper options to remove. Great, done.

But I agonized over the decision to do my bikini area. 

On the one hand, the hair there is super thick, coarse, and grows almost to my thighs. Getting rid of it would mean no more painful Brazilian waxes, no more dealing with ingrowns when it’s in the growth cycle, no more worrying about how much is exposed when in a swimsuit, no more panicking about how much is there during sex. 

On the other hand, half of those reasons are driven by society. Society says pubic hair is unattractive and shouldn’t be visible when wearing swimsuits or underwear. Society says pubic hair needs to be kept to a minimum for a guy to go down on me. Society says the hair should be removed. I read article after article and review after review from women who had removed it all. Some loved it, but some regretted it. They felt less womanly or felt they had caved to societal pressure. 

All I could think about was if one day I had a daughter. I’m a long way off from having kids but I kept imagining I would have a daughter and maybe one day my imaginary daughter and I would be changing in an imaginary locker room together and she would notice that I didn’t have any hair there and she would ask me why. Because maybe imaginary puberty was starting to hit and she was curious as to why her body was different from mine. What would I tell her? 

“Oh sweetie, Mommy doesn’t have any hair there because the patriarchy thinks it’s disgusting so mommy removed it all to be more attractive”

What kind of role model would that make me? How would I ever be able to tell her that she doesn’t have to listen to ridiculous beauty standards if I couldn’t live up to that? Whereas I was sure I wanted to remove my underarm hair for myself, I couldn’t be so sure about anywhere else. Much of my reasoning was wrapped up in how I had been socialized to feel about that hair and I wasn’t able to separate if my reasoning was truly my own.

Women receive all sorts of messaging about their bodies. Much of this messaging is dictated by what men find attractive and/or what sells the most products. In this case, researchers theorize that humans evolved to have pubic hair for the following purposes: reducing friction during sex, protecting genitals from bacteria, and maintaining the optimal temperature for sex organs. 

Removing the hair wasn’t always in fashion either. Only a few decades ago it was commonplace to just let it grow. But with the rise of exposure to beauty media and porn, society decided it was better to get rid of it, or trim it, or do something with it. After all, if you leave it alone you won’t be buying any products or services and we can’t have that!

You might even be asking yourself now why I wasn’t considering options where I didn’t completely remove everything. The answer is convenience. If there is even a strip left, I still have to worry about it. Is it poking through my clothes? Is it getting too long to be acceptable? If I was going to do this, I was going to have to go whole hog or nothing at all.

So it was impossible for me to be sure. Did I want to do it because it really was uncomfortable for me? Or because I get bombarded with advertisements containing impossibly smooth, hairless skin all the time? Or because most women in porn don’t have any? Or because every boyfriend I’ve had has made a positive comment when I do remove it, but says nothing when I leave it alone? 

Furthermore, even if it is because of the patriarchy or capitalism or whatever external force, is there something inherently wrong with still pursuing it?  I have tons of other things in my routine that are unnecessary in order to achieve a certain standard but I enjoy how they make me feel so I do them anyway  - despite any sexism they may represent. 

Ultimately, I called my mom. She has daughters and I figured she could address my main fear of one day maybe perhaps being a terrible role model. Of course, her response was terribly even-keeled. She told me that I should choose what is right for me today. I might never have daughters, and even if I do, I should be able to have that conversation with her about choosing what is right for one’s own body. Sometimes that will be in line with society’s expectations and sometimes it might not be. 

After all of this fretting, I did decide to go through with it. I’m still not sure if I’m really doing it only for me or because of my socialization, but like my mom said, I can only act based on the information I know today and what I know today is that I want it GONE. 

But this thought process was still important to me. We get an impulse in our gut when something doesn’t quite feel right and I think it’s important to listen and explore that. In this case, my gut was telling me to think harder about my reasoning. But in other cases, it has told me that something probably just isn’t for me (i.e. as desperately as I want to be one of those girls with their nails always done, I just can’t). So even though all of this led me straight back to where I started, I’m much more confident in my decision and more importantly, the potential consequences of my decision. If I have to go through all this thinking to get that confidence, it was worth it. 

Only time will tell if this decision really improves my bikini experience…