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]

• Researchers have found that having a TV turned on can injure the parent-child bond even when it is just "background noise." They discovered that parents spoke to their children 20% less when the television was on and became less attentive and responsive. • Taking matters into her own, um, hands, a Cincinnati woman allegedly spanked a stranger's two-year-old son in a Salvation Army store; she faces assault charges. • A memorial service for murdered antiabortion activist James Pouillon was held at the Owosso High School football stadium, and some attendees said they would hold a service outside a local Planned Parenthood as well. • Star Trek actor George Takei and his husband Brad Altman will be the first gay couple featured on The Newlywed Game. • After years of deliberation, the UN will create an agency devoted to women's and gender issues. The agency will be much more powerful than existing UN groups that deal with women's rights. • A Spanish employment tribunal ruled that calling your boss a "son of a whore" is not sufficient grounds for termination — because the term is "common usage in conversation." • A teen's lawyers claim he only "simulated" his role in a gang rape in which the victim was forced to perform oral sex on her own son. • A Georgia man is accused of kicking a female Army reservist in the head and screaming racial slurs in front of her seven-year-old daughter, after the woman asked him to be careful with the door at a local Cracker Barrel. • Wondercat Clyde made a real-life incredible journey from his home in Tasmania, across a 185-mile strait and 2,000 miles of land to the Australian town of Cloncurry. He was identified by a microchip under his skin, and is now back home with his family. • A 98-year-old woman has been evicted from her apartment in England for assaulting terrorists, harassing neighbors, and using her panic alarm 563 times in a month. • A group of girls from the United States and Mali has written a guide called Girls Gone Activist! about "how to change the world through education." • Anti-abortion activists are stepping up their protests against the Susan G. Komen's Race For the Cure, because the foundation doesn't warn women about the (nonexistent) link between abortion and breast cancer. • Another Komen critic: the blog AdRants, which says the foundation's new ads depicting "women cupping their breasts as they pledge allegiance to their girls, hooters, tatas and gazongas" are merely "the American Pledge of Allegiance [...] re-written as a boob joke." • The VOICE Study (Vagina and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic) hopes to determine whether taking anti-retroviral drugs, either as a vaginal gel or as a pill, can prevent HIV in women as well at treating it. If successful, the study could provide women with HIV-prevention measures that — unlike male condoms — they could fully control. • Chemicals called PBBs and PCBs may decrease the number of female births, according to a recent study. The chemicals are now banned, but may still exist in animal fats. • According to Debenhams department store, British men are becoming increasingly interested in grooming their brows, which inspired the store to hold men-only "guybrow" nights. Apparently, the perfect "guybrow" is somewhere between Noel Gallagher and Sylvester Stallone. • Working as a delivery nurse, Astrid Skreosen became familiar with all the mess that comes with giving birth. However, she realized that the little pads placed beneath the mother were simply not enough to absorb all the blood and fluid that comes with labor, so she created a super-absorbent sheet for use in the delivery room. • Four men have been arrested for the rape of a Hofstra College student. Five men reportedly lured her back to a dorm after stealing her cellphone, and proceeded to sexually assualt her "one by one." Police are still searching for the fifth attacker. • Doctors have found a link between diet and acne in girls: Teens who ate significantly fewer raw veggies and fruits were more likely to have acne than those who consumed fresh vegetables regularly. They also found that acne is directly related to mental health. • A government fact sheet from the Equalities Office in the UK has been criticized for leaving out Margaret Thatcher. A spokesman for the Equalities Office said: "We have acknowledged the oversight and have taken steps to amend it." • The FDA has issued a warning for Evenflo breast pumps. They say that the Ohio-based company failed to investigate claims that their breast pumps gave mothers electrical shocks. • A letter written by Mary Queen of Scots on the morning of her execution will be on view until September 21st at the National Library of Scotland. "Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence: I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning," she wrote, over four hundred years ago. •

Actually, the post begins: "One of my biggest pet peeves is a girl who is not probably groomed on all parts of her body." Dude. You mean "properly." Right? Stop looking at yourself in the mirror and get an education.


The "Philly fameball" continues:

If you are a hot girl, then it is imperative that everything is shaved, or clean to the point that there is minimal hair. I have had many experiences with beautiful women where they have been amazing looking (especially Internationally), but upon further investigation they are not properly groomed, and I have actually stopped in the middle of the act. One of the many things I notice on a girl while talking to them, and figuring out whether I am going to have them is their: nails, hair, make-up, and skin, and this will many times separate girls who are hot (8's and 9's) from girls who I want to take it to the next level with that night (10's). I remember once going home with a girl from Bungalow 8 in NYC who was a 10, and when I saw her naked and ungroomed, I became so disgusted that I asked her to leave my apartment, and when she said "What's wrong?" I told her, "I am not into the hair thing". She told me she hadn't been with anyone in 2 months, and wasn't planning on anything that night, so I decided to let her stay over. That next weekend when we hung out she was totally shaved.

Just FYI, according to the "Kade Scale", Megan Fox and Gisele Bundchen are 10s; Halle Berry is an 8 "a cute girl, but not date-worthy" and Salma Hayek is a 7 ("cute and somewhat sexy, but not someone that I would date.")

Friends, this is a sad, sad day in America. On the planet Earth, even. Because no matter how far we have come — I mean, we kind of almost had a female president of the United States, right? — there will always be shallow, narcissistic dudes who think that porn stars and Victoria's Secret models are illustrative examples of what it means to be a woman. Hair has nothing to do with a woman's "cleanliness" or hotness, IT MEANS THAT SHE HAS HIT PUBERTY and is no longer a child. How do these people exist? How can you, in this day and age, assign a number to a woman and judge her on her appearance and pubes? What kind of family raises a son who would write this:

The woman taking my blood at Quest Diagnostics had a visible mustache. I actually felt uncomfortable having her take my blood because of this, and I contemplated mentioning to her that I wanted a new nurse.

Seriously? Too bad he didn't suddenly pass out or suffer heart failure and require MOUTH TO MOUTH resuscitation from her. Because if there is a God, surely she would smite you for bodysnarking a fucking medical professional.

Grooming [ArthurKade.com]

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.

Historical context!

The end of pubic lice?

And the "Beyond Gross" Award Goes To...

The Today show sure thinks so: This morning saw a segment called "Scruffy Man Makeovers" in which the hosts dragged out grizzly, bearded dudes in need of shaves and haircuts. After the "afters", the women in their lives gushed about how handsome they were, and every single guy had the same, that was a fun thing I don't have to do again for awhile expression on his face. There's no way these men were reformed — or want to be! A man either sees the point of upkeep or doesn't. There's a difference between vanity and hygiene, and there's a difference between a makeover and an ambush on someone's personal choices (or lack thereof.) If a guy doesn't want to cut his hair or spend any time shaving, so what? Wouldn't most women would love to cut down on the time they spend primping? Why do we feel the need to change a man who's living the ready-in-no-time dream?

A Half-Hour To Groom? Guys Are Becoming More Vain [Daily Mail]
Scruffy Man Makeovers [Today]

Muscovites (that's chicks from Moscow) tend to have home-made face mask recipes and hair-enhancing secrets. There's also something called the "shark shower" which involves the thighs being pummeled with jets of hot and cold water, ouch. In any case, don't these fun, inventive grooming rituals make our national favorite (lather, rinse, repeat) seem really boring?

Beauty Sans Frontieres [Telegraph]