Dear Girls: Please shave your pubic hair.

By ROSIE WATERLAND

I don’t get rid of my pubic hair. There, I said it.

I don’t wax it or shave it or lazer it or pluck it. I let it run wild, baby.

There’s no grand ideological feminist reason behind my choice – it’s literally because I’m a wuss. I got a brazillion once, and it was one of the most traumatic and painful experiences of my life (and that’s coming from the only person on earth who sat through the entire Catwoman movie).

When I was younger and felt pressure to go bald, I used to tell boyfriends early in the relationship that “I just haven’t had time to get to the beautician…” Then I would just never go, and by the time they realised the beautician story was an elaborate ruse I already had them in my charming and witty grasp. Suckers.

As I got older and become more confident in myself, I stopped with the lies altogether. I just figured if a guy wants the goods he has to take them whatever way they’re packaged. If he has a problem with that, then obviously I’m not the right girl for him.

I’ve not had any problems with that system so far. In fact, I think it’s an excellent way of weeding out the dodgy guys before things go too far. The douche-canoes, if you will. Anyone who demands your vagina look a certain way has no business being in your vagina. Simple.

Except, apparently not.

I recently came across an article on Thought Catalogue titled “Dear Girls, Please Shave Your Pubic Hair.” It was written by a guy called Bernie, who basically says he can’t get it up for bald vajayjays, because porn broke his brain. He says he’s been conditioned to only like hairless vaginas because all the porn he’s grown up watching is full of, well, hairless vaginas: “I don’t blame girls who don’t shave around that area,” he says. “I blame the porn industry.”

Example: Bernie read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a fairly racy book written in the 1930’s, and he couldn’t believe the protaginast was attracted to hairy muffs:

Reading that text (from one of my favorite books of all time) I was shocked. I thought there was sarcasm to it. I was missing on something. Doesn’t he want it shaved? What happened? Why is it so repulsive for me to be with a girl who left everything down there to grow? It’s not only me though. He’s the alien. It’s his weird time of history. Maybe it’s the drugs they used to consume. When I share my “hairy experiences” with friends I get the same reaction from EVERYONE. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I am not a demanding douche. I don’t mind them leaving hair or designing it on the groin. But when I get a hard time staying hard, don’t look at me. Let me explain.

Exasperated, I brought the article up with my friends. I imagined we would have a grand old time laughing at hapless Bernie who is obviously never going to have sex because he’s so snobby about vagina hair-styling. My system of weeding out dodgy men would go into overdrive working on this guy.

But not all my friends thought he was dodgy. In fact, some of them even thought he kind of had a point.

Here’s a guy, they said, who is just being honest about the fact he’s been conditioned to only be attracted to a certain kind of woman. A woman with a bald vajayjay. He says that he wishes it wasn’t the case, but it is. He’s repulsed by hair down there. (His solution to the problem is for more hairy women to become porn stars. Although I agree with the premise of diversity in porn, I’m kinda busy this week.)

My friends really believed that porn broke Bernie’s brain.

Really.

We argued talked calmly like adults back and forth for a while, but when it came down to it, I had two main issues with men blaming porn for their hair-related sexual standards that I just couldn’t get past:

(1) It doesn’t happen to all men. If all guys grew up watching the same hairless brainwashing porn, how come I’ve slept with plenty of guys who’ve had no problem with my nether-regions?

(2) Even if porn brainwashing was true, why are women the ones who have to adjust the way they look to accommodate the broken brains of men? Bernie thinks it would help if more hairy women were willing to star in porn. I think Bernie should solve his own damn erection problems.

So, whose fault is it? Is Bernie’s struggle to turned on by hairy ladies the porn industry’s fault, or Bernie’s fault?

And, (for argument’s sake, because I’m still not sure I buy it), if we do accept that men have been conditioned to only like bald vajayjays, whose responsibility is it to fix it?

My friends and I seem to be firmly split into two camps, which is why I’m throwing this one over to you:

Whose fault is it that Bernie can’t get it up? The hairy women, porn or… Bernie?

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