This whole shaving thing is just weird and gross. TMI.

I can understand neatning up a bit so you're bush isn't hanging out of your swimsuit, but do we all have to keep our pubes groomed like porn stars? How much time do women have to spend keeping themselves up now? You know there are other things we could be spending time and money on. Pube maintenence seems like another distraction.

One of Hef's girlfriends, Holly, was talking about the "fur bikinis" of the 70's. Somehow, in the far far past, men didn't find normal pubic hair totally disgusting.

Did internet porn do this? The only guy who ever asked me to shave down was really into porn. Never again!

My wife was a big Nads fan for a while (for her legs, as opposed to her nether regions). While I was never particularly interested in ripping any of my hair out by the roots, even if I was, I doubt I could have got past the name. Geez, don't those people have market researchers?

That will show them...

you guys ARE tough!

Just when you thought that there wasn't enough stupid crap in the universe to worry about. Now a medicore depilitory product wants to convince me that I have the ability to prune my bush in all sorts of amusing and naughty shapes in the privacy of my own home.

Let me start off with listing all of the reasons why this is a monumentally bad idea.

1) This is a very sensative area of the body. Most women experience at least some pain when undergoing a bikini wax done by a professional. Do you honestly think that they're going to have the stomach to rip out large hunks of their pubic hair on their own. If you think pulling off a bandaid is painful...

2) Again, because this is a sensative area, it is easy to cause injury. Even if this is a non-heat product, waxing is not something easy to master. You can easily tear the skin. This is NOT an area on the body to risk doing that.

3) To do a proper Brazilian wax, you not only have to remove the hair from the outer area of the groin. I can testify from personal experience that you get waxed all over, including down the crack of your ass. Is this something that anyone can manage to do at home? If you don't remove everything, you end up looking neatly prune on top but with massive undergrowth the instant you open your legs.

Bikini waxing should come with the same disclaimer we see on stupid stunts on TV -

"DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS!"

Look, there are plenty of stupid fasions out there. People wear hats, pants, belts, their hair, jackets, etc that I find to be silly. Hell, I see folks walking around with carefully cultivated expressions on their faces that I think are absurd. Ultimately, though, I don't care. I don't write blogs about it. I don't act offended, as though somehow my race, sex, social class, or neighborhood is being dragged down by it. I don't plan to take pictures of myself copying their style in some ironic in-your-face mockery. Because if I did any of this, I'd be even more ridiculous than the people with the silly styles.

I just have to wonder about the marketing wisdom of calling the triangle shape "Bermuda Triangle," though I suppose the faux sense of danger may appeal to some.

I wonder how many women do it for themselves and how many do it because their man wants it, or they think their man wants it, or they think that men in general want it. I, for one, prefer bushy to shaved. But maybe that's just me.

I can't wait for the letters section to hit 300!

Muff-maintenance magic strikes again!

I’m sure 100 or more posts will follow and half of them will talk about how great taking it all off is and the other half will accuse the first of being self loathing pedophile porn stars who’s husbands must spend all their free time checking out porn. Yawn.

It seems like pandering to me and, in the long run, I doubt it’s worth the zillion page hits this tantalizing subject is going to win Salon.

First Cary Tennis, now Broadsheet. Can we go a week without giving a rat's ass about pubic hair on Salon?

Thank you Seymour Skinner, and the Simpsons.

Another day, another reason for RT to be offended. Well, I'm off to trim up, the wife and I are getting funky tonight.

I love pubic hair on a woman.

And vaginas.

Trimming the topiary is fine, too.

Traister, get your nose out of women's crotches and let them do what they want!

Yeah, I do think it's stupid and I do think it's (yet another) example of the "pornification" of everything...the way images from pornography manage to get into the public consciousness so sneakily that we start seeing porn images (i.e., skinny women with huge breast implants, shaved pubic areas) as the "new normal". What is bad about this is that eventually it ends up affecting women, especially young women (i.e., your daughters)in how they feel about their own bodies.

I grew up (and so did my mom and grandmother, etc.) in a culture that insisted that adult women should not have ANY hair whatsoever on their legs, as if real adult women have naturally hairless legs, when in fact this is utterly untrue. Hairy legs are every bit as much a sign of female adulthood as public hair or underarm hair, etc. Yet I have entirely accepted this my whole life (while intellectually understanding how stupid it is), and find even the tiniest bit of leg hair to be gross and intolerable. This means that I have to spend a considerable amount of money and undergo pain and risk of bleeding when I slash at my legs every few days with a razor. I know it's stupid and yet I can't not do it, because I have been inculturated to find leg hair on women to be gross. (Ditto underarm hair.)

Isn't this bad enough? Do we want our daughters to feel this way about their public hair as well? What a terrible burden to have to have, to feel that public hair is the new "gross out", that it's somehow ugly or unfeminine (when in fact, it's the most feminine, adult, sexually mature indicator there is!). Worse than removing leg or underarm hair, because it's a more sensitive area, more painful, and not normally seen in public anyhow.

It's taking another entirely normal female characteristic and turning it into a kind of defect that must be "managed", at great cost and time and inconvenience. For that reason, I am against it.

Hopefully, it is just a fad. Hair, after all, always grows back.