After a conversation with an old school friend at a party I began to question my feminist position on the brazilian bikini wax. “Why knock it if you haven’t got the bottle to try it” was the question at issue. And it’s true – it’s hard to comment on the pros of actually having one without actually having one. The cons are much easier to spot from this more heavily-vegetated side of the fence. Craccum writers have been strangely silent on the issue, possibly because most of them are busy spending their cash on jeans and beer and at least half of that equation is preventing them getting laid anyway (see post from March 8 for info on the evils of brewers droop), so why bother to fork out:
Whether any potential partner of mine waxes or not is totally inconsequential. For me, as with anyone in such an abject state, things like sanity, limbs or a pulse are mere fripperies when it comes to turn-ons/offs.
Sometimes a brazilian is just de-guilding the lily, really.
For the uninitiated - a brazilian wax is the removable of all of the hair from the pubic region of a man or a woman, from the butt to the front, usually except for a bit over the pubic bone. Wikipedia says the “procedure involves the complete removal of hair from the buttocks and adjacent to the anus, perineum and vulva (labia majora and mons pubis)”. What that means in practice is having hot wax applied to successive 3 by 5cm areas, then a strip of cloth put over it, and then having the whole lot yanked off so the hairs come out at the root (stragglers are tweezed). That includes what’s between the legs, and around the anus, so many women describe the experience as being rather like a trip to the gynaecologist. Apparently there’s a lot of lying on your back with your legs in the air or down on all fours with your bum sticking out. The process takes between 15 and 30 minutes. In the states having the whole lot off is often called the Hollywood. A regular Brazilian involves leaving a landing strip or thin strip of hair at the front. There is also trimming of what’s left, and some people get it dyed and trimmed into a particular shape or purchase a merkin (that is a pubic wig – I kid you not) to further decorate the area.
The brazilian seems to have begun its life in the affluent west via America and the now fairly infamous New York salon run by the “J-sisters” , seven sisters from Brazil whose first names really all do begin with J. Gwyneth Paltrow said of them “you changed my life”.
According to internet accounts Brazilian was made popular in Brazil because women wear g-string-style bikinis there all the time and having pubic hair peeking is quote unquote, the most embarrassing thing any woman could ever do.
The “g-string” theory holds up anecdotally - a completely different school friend from the one above went to Brazil on exchange in 7th form and I can confirm that her NZ togs were a source of continual amusement to her host family. Her mother constructed her a “thong” on the family sewing machine so the other kids wouldn’t laugh and point and they strung up her old togs on the living room wall for ongoing hilarity. However further net reports suggest that some Brazilian women (older and middle-class perhaps) have never heard of the practice. At all. In any case the volume of material on the net indicates many American women and more and more men are now totally into the brazilian wax.
According to friends who’ve had a braziian, the pros include feeling aroused straight after having it done because lots of blood goes to the area which is in a state of injured shock, feeling breezy and sexy while walking around, feeling clean because there’s no hair, feeling dirty because the genitals look pre-pubescent and forbidden, and having better sex – apparently Eva Longoria never had an orgasm till she got a brazilian. My flatmate told me this and I thought it sounded so impossible I looked – and it’s there on the net in black and white . However much you can trust the net of course. Mind you according to first hand accounts on one site, male experiences of having a brazilian include having an orgasm on completion. And the description given is detailed enough to seem believable. How weird for the beautician involved – almost like being paid for rendering a sexual service….
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif half-way down the page
Craccum writers weight in:
For fuck's sake if you are going to insist on tearing out your pubes, get someone experienced to do it. Unless you really like tearing, bleeding, and extreme bruising. That is all.
I can’t comment on this from the perspective of someone who's had a brazillian but having had a regular bikini wax I’d say yup – the area is pretty bloody delicate and messing with it yourself is tricky.
A male perspective on the female version (I think):
Brazilians (NOT SHAVING) are mandatory, for a number of reasons:
1. The vulva feels seductively pre-pubescent
(see below)
2. Waxed girls get wet with relatively little effort (the cause of which is still a mystery to modern science)
(I haven’t been able to confirm or deny if or how this is true. Eva wasn’t very forthcoming. Anyone is welcome to email in with a comment).
3. The girl involved does not get scratchy pubes shoved up her vagina
(There are other ways to avoid this)
4. The guy involved does not get pubes stuck in his teeth before dinner with her parents
(floss anyone?)
5. No longer do you need to laboriously comb dried cum from the locality of the mons veneris
(Try showering – it’s all water soluble)
6. Shaving leads to stubble, which leads to a sore penis
(Shaving can also lead to a rash which leads to stubble….rashes and stubble are not good from just about anyone’s perspective)
Additional Craccum comment - Um. Waxing leads to stubble too. And more ingrown hairs.
(oh I hear you on the ingrowns – they’re bad enough on your legs let alone anywhere else. And it’s not like you can see to dig them out)
7. Vaginas are hot. They are best observed in their full glory.
Look – I have to say this – technically the vagina is the area inside. The outside bit is the vulva, including all the lips or labia, clithoris and hair. Maybe vulvas look better without hair – and that depends entirely on your perspective – but vaginas per se never had any to start with.
I like looking like a 12 year old boy.
Preference for acomoclitism or hairless genitals is not about paedophilia, apparently. It’s about the general trend for femininity - as depicted in everything from greek statues to renaissance art to porn films - to be bald as an egg. Except on the head. Although the forbidden fruit factor must have something to do with it – only young people have no pubic hair. This is something that feminists have had a bee in their bonnets about for ages. If you sit and think about it for a minute, it is kind of weird that what’s normal for a body to make for itself isn’t what’s normal socially. Humans are weird, self-aware animals and we’ve been removing or adding something to change how we look since prehistoric times. It’s the way that we do it that has political overtones, depending on your point of view.
Messing with one’s pubes has an autoerotic, self-conscious quality – even a regular bikini wax had the affect of reminding me constantly of my primary erogenous zone and that made me horny. But there was also that fact of knowing I looked more like a porn star than before, even if it wasn’t the full monty. It’s the idea of the wax as much as the practice of it that counts, and how that idea relates to ideas that are already in the world about what’s sexy. No hair has become so de rigeur that it’s simply unacceptable to have any hanging out while swimming in public and less and less acceptable to have any in the bedroom.
Now - sexism is an entire vast topic all to itself but ponder this: given that a brazilian starts at around $50 and gets more expensive from there, the people who get it done – mostly women - are losing out financially. If they took the money they would have spent on brazilian waxing every four weeks and invested it they’d be a lot better off. Particularly given that men can still expect to earn higher salaries and spend less on altering their bodies to be more socially acceptable.
However, if I told that to Eva Longoria, I bet I know what she’d say.
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