Why Shave Your Nether Regions?

"We've got old-growth coming in." So went the call from the receptionist into the back room to the esthetician, when my 40-something friend went in for her very first bikini wax. She was still keen then. Still willing to tread into clear-cut Brazilian territory.

As transplanted northerners, she living in Whitehorse and me off the north coast of British Columbia on Haida Gwaii, neither of us had given much thought to the topic before. We're lucky to get a few sunny days at the beach over a summer. Then there are bugs to dodge. Public nudity takes place in saunas in the dark of winter. Why be concerned about hair removal?

Janet's shave with this trendy grooming phenomenon started at a coffee break. She and other female co-workers listened with horror and fascination as the barely 20-something summer intern mentioned she had some weekend waxing plans for her nether regions. All of it, they asked. Yep, every last bit. Why, they asked. The young intern didn't understand the question. Why not? Doesn't everybody? Besides, her boyfriend was coming for a visit and he'd never seen her with pubic hair. This enraged some of the women. Cries of male oppression, the infantalization of female bodies, the demon rise of pornography rang throughout the coffee room.

But Janet went home curious. He hadn't? That night she asked her husband what he thought about Brazilians. The full wax job. He got so excited that she decided to try it out. Why not? Like the intern said.

From a hairier time

Janet and I, roommates during university in the 1990s, might be considered innocents. Hey, we had boyfriends. We wore bathing suits. But neither of us, nor any of the gals we knew, shaved. The hairs grew long from our armpits. Our calves were covered in a thin sheath of fur. And the nether regions? It never came up. Sure, some of us may have run a razor down there, but waxing was something that only the insane or overly vain did. For me, a trip to Europe early in that decade cemented my hairy ways. Hair poked out from everywhere at the beach in France. Not caring about it felt liberating, not to mention way less fussy.

Turns out times have changed. Now even Brazilians are becoming passé. Showgirls are the way to go. Every follicle of hair removed -- from knuckles to the peach fuzz on a girl's downy cheeks.

When did we get such a hate on for pubic hair? I remember waiting impatiently for the first sign of pubic hair to arrive. Admittedly, as a teenager in Calgary, I razed my legs clean, but the bush below my belt? It was my passage into adulthood. The nudie magazines didn't even start showing pubic hair until the late 1960s. That line -- daring to show a few glimpses of wiry, curly pubes -- was a right of passage for the magazines too. I remember triumphing at the convenience store with my girlfriends in the 1980s when we made our first underage purchase of Playgirl. The one with Christopher Atkins (the guy from Blue Lagoon) featuring his naked torso cut off right above, showing just a mere fringe of hair. Sexy, but innocent by today's standards.

The great northern way?

Now, with the ever-increasing availability of porn (where guys and girls are fully shaved), expectations about body hair seem to have shifted. Cindy Gallop was worried enough about the impact pornography was having on young male minds that she made it her mission to date them and teach them about intimacy. At 49, she launched her website MakeLoveNotPorn.com, which cracks open the mythic difference between porn world and real world. In Porn World, for example, women have no hair down there. Real World: Some women shave, some don't. Some men actively prefer women to keep their hair. Entirely up to personal choice.

But another friend, the one who took Janet to her esthetician in the city, insists that all men prefer women who are clean down there. She meant bald. "At least trimmed," she said.

Fine for city types, I thought. But I'd been living in northern B.C. for the past 15 years, quietly assuming no one bothered with hair removal. Esthetician Christine Martiniuk in Queen Charlotte set me straight.

"The trend toward Brazilians is happening here too," she said. "It's a very personal choice. If you decide to wax, you will do it no matter where you live."

An informal survey of northern lady friends -- some born and raised in places like Skidegate, Smithers, Fort St. John and Vanderhoof, others just living there -- revealed that all types of groomers exist in the north. Random waxers, shavers, trimmers and free to growers.

Martiniuk did admit that more men in cities wax than on the islands. On Haida Gwaii, a man might come in for a back wax if heading on a beach vacation, but usually if someone (like their wife) has made them come to see her. (Mind you, I knew a local man who on his own accord attempted to endure the pain of a back wax, but switched to chemicals half way through. Why? He and his boyfriend were heading to the beaches abroad.) The intern's boyfriend (he was from the city) probably waxed too. Or shaved. "Trim the bush to make the tree look taller." This was the 2009 slogan of a razor company, offering advice on how to shear the male groin area.

'Start asking questions'

Has it all gone too far? That's what nurse practitioner Hannah Varto wondered as she noticed more and more rashes, razor bumps and burns in the genital areas of her adolescent female patients. She worried whether these areas of skin irritation increased the potential for transmission of more disturbing diseases like herpes or genital warts. What does one advise when it comes to hair removal, she asked herself.

She went to the literature, but found no answers. So she and a few colleagues undertook the study themselves. Their paper, "Smooth Talking: The Phenomenon of Pubic Hair Removal in Women" was published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality last year. First, they asked 660 women between the ages of 16 and 50 why they were doing it. The majority of respondents wanted to look good in a bathing suit, but others contended pubic hair removal was more hygienic.

But the dirty little secret in the beauty industry is that none of the practitioners or salons involved in hair removal are regulated. Do salons double dip by using the same spatula to apply wax on different clients? Does bacteria grow in the warm wax? No one seems to know.

"I'm not saying its bad or wrong to remove hair," says Varto, "we just want women to start asking these questions."

'This will hurt'

I'm not a purist either. I'm more inclined to use a razor on my legs and my bathing suit line now than I was in my 20s. But, I know I'm not the only one who hasn't had a Brazilian.

Oh, what about Janet? How did it go?

"This will hurt," the esthetician told her once she'd gone into the back room. "Are you sure you want to do this? Go all the way? Take it all off?"

"Mmmhmm," said Janet. The warm wax dripped onto her bikini line, the thin waxy sheet was applied. Then rrrriiiiip. A small yelp; then silence.

"How are you doing?" said the esthetician.

A squeak of a voice came up from the table. "Is it too late to change my mind?"