I got into a fight with my ex about pubes once. We’d just reconciled after a rocky patch and consummated our reunion. While going down on her, I felt something tiny and sharp into my mouth, near my teeth, but carried on. After we were done, I tried to dislodge it with my tongue and, in the process, pulled a weird face. ‘Why are you pulling that face? What’s wrong?’ she said. I said ‘Nothing’. She said ‘Oh no, there’s something’ and suddenly we were in another, unrelated argument which basically resulted in us never having sex again. Four days later, emerging from a swirl of heartache, I sat down with a mirror and tweezers and managed to pull a three millimetre-long pube from in between my teeth.
Turns out that’s not the only argument people have had over pubes – there’s a huge one raging right now. Over in the straight world, women are busy reclaiming their bushes. It’s down, in part at least, to Cameron Diaz, who has a whole chapter in her new self-help book adulating pubes. ‘I am really concerned that young girls are making choices to get rid of something that is there for a purpose. It’s like saying “I don’t need my nose”’, she's said.
Add to that the fact that American Apparel mannequins now are featuring hair down there and the newly released stats from UK Medix saying that over 50% of women now do not groom their pubes, and it’s no wonder 2014 is already being officially declared the Year Of The Bush.
The argument against trimming, shaving, waxing or whatever, goes that depilated vaginas are a symbol of women being enslaved by what men want. The trend for hairless vaginas started in porn (which is invariably made by men) and has resulted in women feeling obliged to shave off their curly wurlies, at great cost – both time and money – spent on knicker-bound deforestation.
And I get it. I totally understand. And normally, us lesbians and bi women would be tagging along with any feminist cause. We’re a politicized bunch, the first to rally against a male-founded rule that requires women to change or feel crap about their normal selves. But I’m afraid on this one I have to leave the soapboxes and pro-pube placards to you. Because, well… have you ever gone down on a full-bushed girl before?
I’m sorry to break it to you, but it’s not so great.
I’ve slept with women with all sorts of hairstyles, and yeah, if you love someone, you’re going to eat them out even if they’ve spent the past 18 hours at a festival, drip-drying their muff above overflowing portaloos and sweating enough to fill all the craters of the moon. But people will do anything for love. What if you just want head off of someone who’s into you but not in love with you? Well, at risk of sounding like a battered old copy of Cosmpolitan, you should probably keep your pubes in check.
Unlike a bald-obsessed man, I am actually equipped to tell you this. Because I know the annoying parts of having to (attempt to) stay smooth – the ingrown hairs, the time it takes, the annoying moment you realise your shaving wasn’t quite as comprehensive as first thought, the expense, the pain, the cuts* and the Murphy’s Law of pubes – as soon as you get rid of them, you don’t get laid, the moment you grow them, you get propositioned. Having to shave them is more annoying than eternal nose-whistling. But I also know that getting a tongueful of pubes isn’t that much fun either.
Generally, in the lesbian/bi women's world, even the most ardent feminists, the porn-phobes and the righteous, will trim their bush. Quite a few of them will also get a vajazzle as a joke, or shave their girlfriend's initials into their bush. Either way, the consensus is that your pubes are definitely something to be interfered with, never to grow to their fullest potential.
That’s not to say pubes can’t play an important part in a girl’s sexual repertoire, though. Because, contrary to popular belief, going down on each other isn’t always the apex of all lesbians’ sex lives. (Side note: if I had a pound for every time a well-meaning straight girl asked me what lesbian sex actually is, I wouldn’t need to be writing this). Sometimes we’ll go for fingering or using a dildo. In these cases, pubes won’t matter so much, and if they do, it’s more an aesthetic issue. One couple I know (potentially too well) find that, while scissoring, the stubble on one woman’s vagina actually helps her girlfriend to come, so they do loads of that. If the woman had had a smooth wax, it wouldn’t have felt so good.
So where does that leave us? The point is – as of course it always is when it comes to matters of sexual politics – that it really is up to you. It’s your choice. But if you’re thinking of growing out your bush or already have one, just appreciate that if a man won’t go down on you because of your pubes, he’s not (necessarily) crazed paedophile porn-addict. If he won’t do anything with you because of your pubes? Yeah, tell him to shove it.
*full disclosure, I’ve never shelled out for a wax. Apparently waxing is agony for gingers and perhaps thanks to years of being told that having ginger pubes made me a freak, I’m actually too embarrassed to go on all fours to get a stranger to apply hot wax to my most sensitive regions so as to tug hairs out of the most sensitive parts of my body.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.