Pubic Hair Grooming Injuries Have Increased Fivefold

In our time, uncertainty over What Should Be Done With Our Pubes has launched one thousand feminist think pieces (and, recently, a fleet of attention-seeking merkins to an American Apparel near you). In theory, I think the aestheticization of the hairless female body is interesting and quite telling. In practice, though, I can’t think of anything less relevant to my life than what other people decide to do with their crotch hair. As a rule, I don’t care. Do whatever you want — if you shave it into eyebrow shapes, I might maybe want to see that, but otherwise, nope. However, The New Republic has recently unearthed some findings about home-grooming injuries that bring a whole new element into consideration: the element of danger.

According to a 2012 paper in the journal Urology, the number of pubic hair grooming injuries increased fivefold between 2002 and 2010. Please note that the paper only tracked injuries that ended up in the E.R. — so, not little nicks or scrapes. EMERGENCY ROOM-LEVEL INJURIES. Other fun facts: shaving razors were implicated in 83% of injuries, and the most at-risk group is women aged 19 to 28. Laceration was the most common type of injury, accounting for 36.6% of all incidents, followed by rash, abrasion, and burn.

Here’s a graph of age and gender disparities in pube-related woundings:

Graph via nchbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Interestingly, it’s something that afflicts more women under the age of 28 and more men above. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it will remain a mystery forever.

In better news, only 1% of people were actually admitted to the E.R. for treatment. Encouragingly (?), the study notes that “no deaths were identified.” Moral of the story: do whatever you want, but be careful. Your body is a temple. Always wear a helmet.