Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and an incredibly depressing essay about getting older, basically plays the bad cop to Nerve editor-at-large Jack Harrison's good cop in this particular debate, titled "The Brazilian Wax: Bare vs. Hair." Speaking almost like a cliche of The Kind of Guy You'd Want To Have Sex With, Harrison says he likes all of a woman's natural smells, secretions, and adornments, including pubic hair. Wurtzel (perhaps unsurprisingly, given her much-publicized reliance on various beauty treatments) disagrees.

She argues that men prefer a naked snatch, and that this is "just the way things are and will ever be." After speaking for all men and predicting the future, she moves on to generalizing about the preferences of her own gender:

I think we women don't feel entirely female unless we're slaves to beauty.

And:

[A]t one time, when you got pubic hair, it meant that you were an adult. Now, you get it removed to show that... you're an adult. There's something childish about being hairy, now that Brazilians have achieved vaginal hegemony.

And:

I guess there is a philosophical sickness that drives us to do things like go to salons for hair removal: it's an insane drive toward achieving a state that we'll never get to, that we'll always be approaching, stuck at some horrible asymptote. But I guess it makes me feel better to try.

In her post on Wurtzel's aging essay, Sadie wrote that Wurtzel "has always ascribed a universality to her own experiences" — and really, the best response to her thoughts on pubic hair is, "speak for your fucking self." The truth is, I do know women who get Brazilians because men like it (or, as Wurtzel says, "the audience response had been very, very good"). But I also know women who do it because they like the way it feels, or looks — and I know women who keep a full bush for those same reason. Yes, institutionalized standards of beauty are fucked up, and yes, the ideal of female hairlessness is one such standard of beauty. But getting a Brazilian doesn't necessarily mean you don't feel "fully female" without one.

It's a little weird that I started out this post defending waxing, since my personal sympathies lie with Harrison and his let-it-all-hang-out philosophy. But Wurtzel makes all female grooming sound like such depressing drudgery that I feel like stepping in on its behalf. Feminism has long had a fraught relationship with the modification and decoration of the female body, but one of the few nice things about the current post-feminist morass is the widespread recognition that dressing up, wearing lipstick, and, yes, even getting a Brazilian, can be kind of fun.

Yeah, so waxing hurts a lot more than lipstick. So it produces a look that some people think is infantile. That doesn't mean everyone who does it wants to look like an infant, or that every hair removed is an act of willing enslavement. Wurtzel's "insane drive toward achieving a state that we'll never get to" does sound like a pretty good description of the attitude toward beauty that women's magazines and advertisers want us to have. But just because Wurtzel drank that Kool-Aid doesn't mean we have to.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic — maybe it's impossible to make choices favored by the beauty-industrial complex without in some way enslaving oneself to this complex and all its evil familiars. But Wurtzel's idea of womanhood is so heartbreakingly constrained — by men, by porn, by standards of beauty that are totally entrenched and unchangeable — that it seems to leave no room for taking actual joy in our bodies. And I have to believe we're freer than that.

The Nerve Debate, The Brazilian Wax: Bare vs. Hair [Nerve]

Some friends and I were talking about this last night: why is there not a standard bikini wax option that gives one the full "amenities" of the Brazilian without the resulting porn star 'nether-do? Why, in short, can't you get a Brazilian (with all the intimate softness this implies) with a normal, minimally-groomed tuft atop? When you get just a standard wax - ie, a little cleanup around the edges for swimsuit season - it all looks normal enough; no freaky, geometric triangles, pre-pubescent baldness or sinister "landing strips." Why can't we take the best of Brazilian technology and combine it with a more natural aesthetic?

Understand, please, that I'm not even a committed waxer - certainly not at this time of year - but I do think some of this (besides, you know, money, laziness and not really caring) is due to the fact that one is compelled to choose between half-assed (no pun intended) normalcy and Penthouse-style graphics. It's not that you can't get the combo I'm talking about - you can, but it generally takes persuasion, much explanation and the occasional sketch. It's just not in the catalogue of approved styles, and this is what we need to remedy. It's not French, it's not Brazilian, it's not "basic" - it's something far more subtle and modern, a nod to nature with a secret adherence to pre-Recession hedonism.

My friends and I batted around various names for this style: the "Ukrainian," "Bolivian" and "Canadian" were all rejected. Obviously, the answer was "The Swiss" - a neutral blending of cultures and languages that doesn't wear its sexiness on its, ahem, sleeve. "I'm getting a Swiss Wax" - it sounds efficient, clean, almost automotive, with none of the Frederick's of Hollywood tawdriness one doesn't always wish to encounter post-shower. The Swiss is not designed to titillate, particularly; it is a wax designed for women, by women, that looks normal but still gives one the self-satisfied 'groomed' feeling of the whole shebang. To all my non-waxing chums out there, well, this will seem not only frivolous but doubtless a problematic reflection of nefarious societal pressures, and you wouldn't be far wrong. But for anyone who's looked down in horror at a sharply-defined arrowhead reminiscent of The Point and wondered who the hell finds this alluring...well, the Swiss Campaign has begun, and every bush counts.

Earlier: Live-Blogging America's Next Top Model Menstrual Cycle 9