Waxing Poetic

Coiffing the hair "down there"—why is less more?

by Melissa Bigner
illustration by Raziel

Picture the scene: The local YMCA swimming pool in Marietta, Georgia, a conservative suburb northwest of Atlanta (so conservative, in fact, that Newt used to call Marietta home before he moved in with his mistress.) Toddlers paddle about in the shallow end. Their moms, in various states of pregnancy, pack the bleachers. You enter mid-conversation. "I only get the Brazilian," one says disdainfully.

I beg your pardon, madam?

Are these suburban housewives actually chatting about the most severe pubic grooming technique to come down the pike? Could it be that the Brazilian wax–the bikini-wax-gone-mad inspired by the dental-floss thongs popular on Brazilian beaches–has caught on even in Dixie? Are the Peaches renouncing their fuzz? Is Scarlet a sexpot from top to bottom? Indeed, indeed.

While you might expect to overhear talk of "the little landing strip" in Manhattan and Los Angeles, it is somewhat shocking to hear that the Brazilian is now everyday business to even the moms of Marietta. Surely this means the fad has reached its saturation point. How long will it be before ripping the hair out of our crotches in patterns becomes every bit as tired and ubiquitous as tiny backpacks and big-soled shoes?

Interestingly enough, there is another segment of the Atlanta-area population for whom the Brazilian is not just the latest sacrifice commanded by the fashion gods, but a professional necessity. Atlanta is one of the few places in the country where strip bars can be all nude and serve booze at the same time. (In many states, if a club wants to serve alcohol, the girls have to keep their bottoms on.) Like it or not, there’s no denying the clubs are a huge hit in Georgia with locals and conventioneers alike. In fact, when there was talk that the dancers might be forced back into their g-strings in 1988, rumors flew that the Democratic National Convention threatened to pull out in protest. No matter what may have transpired then, today the ladies are still as bottomless as they are topless.

Foxtail, a dancer at Cheetah, Atlanta’s premiere adult club, gives us the lowdown on the Brazilian as a tool of her trade. "Guys go wild over it," she says. "They just love it." As far as how-tos go, she suggests a thorough shave rather than a wax. (After all, a dancer can’t let the garden grow between wax jobs.) "To begin with, you need a really good gel, one for women. Lather up heavily and shave on the sides underneath. Then leave a two-fingers’ width strip up the front," she explains, and then, looking serious, adds: "That’s the law."

The idea is that this strip of hair "keeps everything covered," according to Foxtail, and strippers who would ignore this law do so at their peril. "You should have seen it when the laws first came out. We had nightly inspections, and girls got sent home if they didn’t pass. But it’s eased up a little since then, so most everyone has one-finger width strips. And I don’t know a dancer that doesn’t shave it all off underneath."

One finger or two, the fact that some Georgia lawmaker actually went to the trouble to legislate how a stripper can and cannot wear her pubic hair is in itself a startling revelation. In this context, pubic hair is not a natural part of a woman’s body, but rather a government-required protective barrier, the last bastion against … what exactly?

We’ve all heard the arguments for the banishment of "the hair down there." Jonice Padilaha, one of the seven infamous J Sisters whose 57th Street salon in Manhattan is renowned for its Brazilians, professed that a woman with a Brazilian wax "feels sensual, sexy, and more open with her lover." She went on to say that, "you feel clean, you feel better, and when you walk down the street, you feel more confident," but then gently refused to answer any more questions unless I was willing to undergo the procedure myself. All she would say was, "When you experience it, then you will understand."

Clearly, plenty of women do understand, and thus are willing to have their pubes torn out by the roots. And though some say it makes them feel sophisticated while others argue that it makes them more sensitive, let’s be frank: The real force behind the Brazilian wax is as ancient as the birds and the bees. Foxtail put it best: "Guys go wild over it." The question is, is there something wrong with that?

Some worry that if a woman removes unwanted hair to please a man she is saying "My body is dirty, smelly, and scary" and thus is oppressing herself and others. But it might be more liberating if it wasn’t an issue at all. After all, a man can shave his face to please himself and hear no more about it. Others fret about why men like the Brazilian in the first place. But any woman who suggests that a man’s liking a shorn vulva means he’s a closet pedophile risks having the same logic thrown back at her, unless all her lovers have had full beards. Pubes and facial hair arrive together on the puberty express, and for whatever reason, it seems both men and women are attracted to prepubescent smoothness. Could there be some selective advantage to hairlessness? Perhaps we don’t need to go there. It could be as simple as this: Body hair is out of style, and Brazilian waxing is a natural progression in this trend.

With the Brazilian, perhaps the real issue is not what is removed, but what is left behind. If less is more when it comes to body hair, then why leave that little pubic Mohawk? Why not take it all off? Clearly we have the technology. Issues from the sanitary to the sensitive say nothing about the logic of leaving that little decorative strip. Could it be that, deep down, we–gasp–find pubic hair erotic? Do the same things that make it offensive also make it forbidden and naughty? Perhaps. But more likely, we are, men and women alike, less afraid of a woman’s pubic hair than what’s behind it.

As for our Brazilian-sporting Southern housewives, maybe we shouldn’t be so shocked after all. Beauty without pain is as rare as beauty without politics, and Southern women, the undisputed champions of America’s constant, society-wide beauty contest, know this better than anyone. Take it off, leave it on, either way you’re making a statement. And either way, it’s nobody’s business. Might as well do whatever you want.