The State Of The Bush

My latest Ask Ugly column is about modern pubic hair norms (and features 14,000 of you).

The next installment of Ask Ugly, my monthly beauty advice column for the Guardian, is here —featuring the long-awaited results of The Pubic Hair Poll, answered by 14,000+ people.

A preview:

Illustration: Lola Beltran/The Guardian

Dear Ugly, 

I am a 30-something, straight, cisgender woman that is recently divorced. I’ve started dating again and I already feel completely lost when it comes to how I should be “styling” my pubic hair. With that said, the last few weeks I have been receiving ads on Instagram to laser my bum hair… I have multiple questions. Is that safe? Should I buy a laser hair remover so I can do this in the privacy of my home? Is my anus supposed to look like a naked mole rat? Are women actually doing this? 

- Lost In The Bush 

From one 30-something divorcé getting targeted ads about at-home asshole hair removal to another, let me start by saying I see you. I hear you. I am you.

You and I came of age in the early 2000s: the era of low-rise jeans, whale-tail thongs, and belly shirts. Girls were going wild, Carrie Bradshaw was getting a Brazilian wax, and internet porn was at our Hard Candy-painted fingertips. Yet for all those montes pubis sightings, the only female pubes I saw as a young teen — not counting a cartoon in The Care & Keeping Of You, that classic “body book for girls” — were my own. 

How could I not internalize the idea that hair down there was unacceptable, unattractive, unsexy? How could I blame boys for feeling the same? Hairlessness had become the norm. I soon traded my burgeoning bush for a razor-burned bikini line dotted with spots of dried blood and ingrown hairs. Ah, yes. Much sexier.

Millennials were hardly the first to be shamed for their short-and-curlies, though.

“Body hair has long been seen as unclean and uncivilized as far back as the Roman Empire,” says Dr. Michael Reed, a California-based OB-GYN known as The Cosmetic Gyn. “Men and women removed body hair and pubic hair [with tweezers] to mitigate infestations of lice, while wealthy people in old times could afford things like soap and hot baths, so they had the luxury of shaving. This made being hairless a sign of being upper class.” The trend cycled. Pubic hair removal was considered “a non-necessity by most Europeans and Americans” by the 18th century. By the 19th century, it was back in style thanks to a new safety razor from Gillette. The free love movement of the 1960s and ‘70s freed the bush once more, then the ‘80s and ‘90s brought a grooming boom.

“Especially over the last 10 years, more than 80% of women groom their pubic hair” to some degree, Dr. Reed notes, and there are ever more methods to choose from: trimming, shaving, waxing, sugaring, depilatories, epilators, lasers, and more.

Not all hair removal is sex-driven. Plenty of people prune their pubes for sensory purposes. The practice can also be part of the performance of class, cleanliness, femininity, youth, beach etiquette, yada yada yada. But what I love about your question, Lost In The Bush, is that you’re very clear on your why: You’re not “doing it for you.” You’re doing it because men will be seeing your various holes, and you want those holes to look hot (or at least average). 

Now to your questions. First: Is the at-home bum-hair removal device you’ve seen on Instagram safe, and should you use it on yourself at home?

I’m pretty sure you’re referring to Nood, a tool that haunts my own internet experience via a video captioned, “Want a hairless ***hole?” Nood isn’t a laser, but rather an IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) device. “Similar to laser hair removal, IPL therapy targets hair follicles with pulses of light to inhibit hair growth,” according to Dr. Reed. While Nood is FDA-approved for hair removal, risks include “skin irritation, burns, and changes in pigmentation.” It’s also not meant for use on blonde and red hair or dark skin. Even if you’re fine with those risks and meet those requirements, Dr. Reed still says you should get “a proper assessment by a trained professional” before trying it at home. 

I say don’t bother.

In an effort to answer your other two questions — Is my anus supposed to look like a naked mole rat? Are women actually doing this? — I polled over 14,000 people online through my newsletter, The Review of Beauty, and I have some beautiful news to report: The bush is back, baby. And the back-bush of which you speak? It never really left.

Of the straight women polled, 82% remove some of their pubic hair — but only 15% of respondents say they’re completely bare down there. 40% maintain a bikini shaped-bush (only removing the hair that would stick out of a bikini bottom), 29.5% report rocking either a full bush or a slightly trimmed full bush, and 11% leave a small landing strip. A full 60% of the people polled say they don’t remove the hair on or around their anus at all. 

While 65% of women report worrying about whether new male partners will judge their pubic hair style, only 16% say a partner has ever asked them to change the way they groom their pubic hair.

In fact, of the men polled, 50% say they have no preference whatsoever when it comes to pubic or bum hair — their partner could have all of it, none of it, some of it, whatever. As for those who do have a preference? 17% prefer a full bush, 18% prefer the area bare, and most prefer a polite “clean up” of the general genital vicinity. Over 71% of male respondents say they’ve never been turned off by a partner’s pubic or butt hair. Many even wrote in with enthusiastic praise for pubes. Comments included: “Natural body hair is hot!” and “Grow the bush!” as well as “Who has the energy and flexibility to shave their own anus?” 

The rest of my answer includes:

• more statistical findings from European Wax Center

• a breakdown of bush-as-fashion-accessory from

  Emily Kirkpatrick
  of
  I <3 Mess

• the why behind the pube-aissance

• the pube-pleasure connection

• my own laser hair removal experience (the quick version: I did it for my ex-husband, I regretted it, it grew back, thank God)

• and more!

Click through to the Guardian to read the whole thing (and if you decide to share it with friends or on social media or whatever, please share it via the Guardian link).

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Have a question for Ask Ugly? Submit it anonymously here — and be as detailed as possible, please!

(I’m particularly eager to answer questions about hair and identity.)

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The Official Results

For the purposes of that specific Ask Ugly question, I separated the findings out by gender and sexual orientation. Below, though, you can find the aggregate results from everyone who took the poll — a comprehensive look at the state of the bush:

Thanks to all who participated!