Full bush: Why I made the decision to grow out my pubic hair

I have pubic hair, quite a bit, actually. I don’t just have a landing strip or anything subtle, I have a good old-fashioned bush. Yes, just like porn in the ’70s, although probably less tidy (I don’t want to set anyone’s expectations too high!)

Having pubic hair as a grown woman feels now basically abnormal. If it was small talk-appropriate, I’d say it was my fun fact! “Hi, I’m Mary, and I don’t wax my pubic hair!”

Looking for more thought-provoking reads? Try our Life section.

But all jokes aside, it isn’t something I really think about these days. It just is. I have pubic hair, and frankly, so what?

Of course, occasionally, it generates the odd comment, “What does your boyfriend think?” or “Isn’t that dirty?” or “That’s gross”. It is not gross. I don’t care what my boyfriend thinks. It’s my body and it isn’t dirty, end of conversation.

Also, if someone gets deterred by a bit of hair during sex, then I’d say they aren’t going to be the partner for me long-term. Life is complicated and messy and if your sexuality is that fragile, move right along.

Hardly worth the effort

Perhaps, my stance seems quite firm, maybe even jarring? But I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t feel the need to try and change myself for anyone’s approval, and I’m certainly not going to the trouble just to make a person’s penis hard. It’s hardly worth the effort.

Still, for a while, my pubic hair stance plagued me. In high school, I followed whatever my friendship group was doing. I waxed, shaved and plucked (yes, plucked!), desperately trying to remove any sign of my pubic hair. Smooth hairless vaginas were in, and I didn’t want to be known as The Hairy Girl.

For all my hair removal efforts, I was rewarded with ingrown hairs, more frequent thrush and the odd sweat rash, which made me constantly convinced I had an undiagnosed STI. Still, it was what everyone else was doing, and I read enough tabloids to understand no celebrity beach body featured a stray pubic hair – even the celebrity bodies that were mocked.

I was young enough to simply accept what women did to make themselves desirable to men. Yes, it was expensive and uncomfortable, but no one else seemed to be complaining, so why should I? I was also fed a lot of misinformation from my peers that having pubic hair was ‘dirty’ and being shaved or waxed was ‘cleaner’, and I believed them.

I will admit, my mother was firmly against the ‘no pubic hair’ trend. She thought it was unnecessary and anti-feminist, akin to ripping away your womanhood. But I was in my very early twenties, and although I valued her opinion, it was very much filed under, “You just don’t understand, Mum!” I mean, this was the same woman that didn’t understand the one-shoulder top trend – she clearly knew nothing!

So, I continued on my merry, hairless way, constantly bothered by the maintenance involved with being hairless and always not that happy with the results. Why did we decide a red and raw vulva was more attractive than a hairy one?

Bowing to the pressure

Still, occasionally I found myself asking the men I was sleeping with what they preferred, and while they almost always answered, “hairless”, they never could say why. They all agreed that someone being hairy wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. So why was I bloody bothering? In retrospect, I shouldn’t have asked the men in my life what they preferred. I should have asked myself, what did I prefer?

Eventually, I just hopped off the hairless train and started to embrace natural bush, and honestly, I much prefer natural. It’s no fuss, and I’ve since learnt that hair serves as a protective barrier for your vagina, so it is actually healthier or cleaner to have hair.

It’s also been a freeing and liberating experience. I don’t remember making a firm decision on it – it just became my normal state over time, it felt right for me, and I went through way fewer razors.

Of course, I recognise that people’s thoughts on pubic hair are often formed (consciously or not) around the trends. In the ’70s, it was all about the bush. Now, it’s all about being bare and maybe at some point, we will swing back again, and my bush will be very fashionable. Though they’ve been teasing that for years, most of my female friends are still very much hairless.

But here’s the thing. Often, we embrace trends or norms without thinking too much about them. Aren’t we all just desperate to feel normal and desirable? And I took that approach with pubic hair. I just wanted to go with what was expected and accepted.

But as I got older (and honestly very sick of ingrown hairs), I realised that while it may be on-trend, it didn’t feel good for me. I understood why we decided to burn our bras, but why did we need to start burning our bush?

Ultimately, you should do what feels good for you, but if you are looking for a sign to put the razor down, I know this much to be true, it’s way less scratchy and itchy in my world!

For more on hair removal as a beauty standard, head here.