white brown white brown white brown white

A naked blonde doing a cartwheel.

"Now we have to DYE our pubic hair?"

The word have is what really caught my attention in this piece. Usually, when we say "I have to" it means that we are obliged to, that we feel or perceive a duty to; in other words, that we have little choice but to do X (or no choice at all). What strikes me is the instantaneous jump from this products introduction to the idea that woman are obliged to use it on the part of this particular tipster. Just because a company comes out with a product does not mean that you must use it. I understand the pressures of media imagery upon people's self-esteem/image [and upon my own], so it's not that facet of this article that strieks me; merely the speed. We must truly be an advertising befuddled group if people are so easy to give this product the benefit of being an obligated usage.

At the end of the day, do we not maintain the agency to resist such advertisements and go in whatever pubic direction we wish, pressure be damned?

Men will use this more than women. Particularly gay men.

Maybe they can come up with a scented one?

This isn't new. Years ago, Cosmo mentioned a hairdresser mixing up "a batch to match for the snatch."

I do not think the feeling that we "have to" comes from advertising. I think it comes from guys. Certain guys don't care. Certain guys make certain remarks about this sort of thing, and certain women take those remarks to heart. Certain guys' remarks on topics like these aren't like "it's nice but not necessary." Certain guys' remarks on topics like these are if you don't do it you're the ugliest thing that ever polluted the planet. Some women feel the standards of what's considered even acceptable vs. get-out-of-my-sight-Medusa have been going up, up, up and every time we turn around there's some additional expensive, time-consuming thing we have to do in order not to be outright scorned. I think it's partly consumer culture and partly porn culture and partly women take it to heart and (here's one for brightstar) women want to date the wrong guys.

I wonder, are you supposed to bleach down there? With what? You can't just put on some blonde color and get blond from brown. You have to bleach first. (For those who don't know.) Is bleach part of the kit? Well, since this happened when guys started to bleach a few years ago and didn't know any better, YOU CANNOT, MUST NOT BLEACH EYEBROWS AND/OR EYELASHES. You can go blind. Google it.

Pubic hair again. I think this is a special obsession at Salon. If readership is sagging, put up something about pubic hair and watch the clicks begin! Wheeeee!

Honestly, who the hell cares?

In our porn-influenced, improvement-obsessed culture...

Speaking as a man whose consumed a great deal of porn, I can say without hesitation that there's not a noticable amount of pubic dying occuring there. The "shaving-as-porn-influenced-trend" argument has some traction, but not everything that involves a woman's pubic region has to do with porn. Get over it. As for being "improvement-obsessed", I'm not sure there's anything to that claim either. I can see dyed hair as being different, having a certain novelty, or if there's an issue of greying, being a matter of vanity, but I don't think there's much of an argument to be made that a magenta muff is an "improvement" on the factory-issue model.

Still, being presented with yet another way to enhance oneself can feel like the last straw;

Good grief! Oh what agony, to suffer a wealth of choices.

Here's a tip for coping with all the fashion/grooming/health choices you modern women have to face: don't chose options you find distasteful. Amazingly, if that's how a majority of women feel, said options will go away. Remember visible thongs on low-rise jeans? Sometimes, a fad is just a fad, and not an outrage against the dignity of women everywhere. If this product is really unwanted, if it's not anything people will appreciate and use, then it will go away. Probably rather quickly.

And the marketing relies on more squirm-inducing euphemisms for the vulva than any modern woman should be expected to stomach...

(Would customers really run from anatomically correct terms like "pubic" and "vulva"?)

Oh please. I'm subjected to commercials featuring a woman who pours a blue fluid (why is it always blue?) onto a menstrual pad, then proceeds to pat herself down with the pad in a supermarket isle as a demonstration of how well it absorbs 'fluid'. A commercial break on "Oprah" has several times more squirm-inducing euphemisms.

Ever since Summer's Eve douche introduced the phrase "not-so-fresh feeling" with a mother & daughter walking along the beach, I've suffered through a lot of squirm-inducing euphemisms for female anatomy. If an inability to market a product without explicitly using the techincal terminology for anatomy was a disqualifier, marketing for hemmeroid products would have long dsince been thrown out.

For a finisher, the site goes all sexist and heteronormative, promising, "Your new plumage is more than certain to attract plenty of male attention. So go on and wash that man right into your hair." Yech.

The statement isn't "sexist" or "hereonormative", it's just stupid and obtuse, as a simple parsing will show:

"Your new plumage is more than certain to attract plenty of male attention."

(yes, because pubic hair normally fails to attract attention when it's visible. Of course, if you feel a compulsion to share your new grooming choice, that will attract male attention, but then, starting a conversation with "Hey, I just dyed my pubic hairs! Want to see?" is probably going to attract anyone's attention. Not necessarily positive attention, but attention.)

"So go on and wash that man right into your hair."

(It's a tired play on a broadway show-tune. Any man who appreciates the "South Pacific" reference probably isn't all that interested in your pubis anyways. And really, how plausible is the argument that a prospective partner would reach the stage of disrobing, look at an undyed pubis, and say, 'you know what, I just can't get excited about a box unless it's got nice wrapping!' Really now.)

There are plenty of things to get worked up over. Women having yet another product offering them a choice in their grooming and appearance hardly seems worth the effort.