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It’s an odd phenomenon when you think about it: Using hot wax and sharp razors to get rid of the hair that naturally grows between our legs. It sounds like a medieval torture method and yet almost half of us engage in the painful “ladyscaping” routine.
Last month, a survey of 1,000 American adults found that only 37 percent of women believe they should remove their genital pubic hair, and yet 41 percent of them do it regularly?and for women under age 30, that went up to 55 percent. These numbers aren’t shocking; I’d speculate that younger women?who may be likelier to be single, sexually active with more than one partner, or wearing bikinis at the beach?wax or shave more than older women, but in an age where our gender has made enough progress that we’re getting put on the face of US currency, why in hell are we doing something to our bodies that we don’t want to" Blame it on our culture. “Shaving and ‘scaping’ is much more common in American culture than European,” says Loryn Ashton, a women’s-health nurse practitioner with Maven digital health clinic. “When you walk into stores, there are whole aisles dedicated to feminine hygiene, with tons of options to rid yourself of pubic hair: This tells us that hair is unwanted, that it is unfeminine and not sexy. I have had multiple clients apologize for not shaving or waxing before their exam.” And it doesn’t help t...