It’s that time of the month again. Twice, I have booked an appointment, and, twice I have wimped out and cancelled. But, it’s only a matter of time before I crack and succumb to a perceived need to get my “lady garden” groomed because, well, it’s part of my routine. I might not spend money on fancy manicures, facials or “pampering” but every month I trot off to the nearest torture chamber, sorry, salon to have hot wax poured on to my most sensitive areas and brutally ripped off.
I was first introduced to the “wonders” of the Brazilian wax while researching a feature on the world’s best spas for a travel magazine. I didn’t get to visit any of them, sadly, but I did get a free wax from one of London’s leading pruners, lucky me. Despite the extreme pain and indignity of the experience, which lasted over an hour and ended with me frantically applying an ice pack and swigging vodka, I quickly became hooked on the fuzz-free look, partly buoyed up by positive remarks from boyfriends.
For the past decade, I have reassured myself that waxing it off is worth it and have extolled the benefits of a Brazilian to anyone who would listen. If I ever fail to execute this one beauty mission I feel unclean, unattractive and berate myself for being so "lazy". But a new photography exhibition, provocatively entitled Project Bush, has made me question why a few stray strands of pubic hair can evoke such strong feelings of identity and even self-loathing. Composed of anonymous portraits of 93 women, aged 25 to 40, who dared to bare their lady gardens to celebrity photographer Alisa Connan, it is designed to convey the message that waxing is a choice not a necessity and that there is no “normal” look for one's bush.
The work of the hip creative agency, Mother, it was inspired by research carried out in conjunction with Elle Magazine and Charlotte Raven’s trailblazing online publication, The Feminist Times, which revealed that girls as young as 11 and 12 are regularly getting Brazilians waxes largely as a result of peer pressure. While we fret about Page 3 and equal pay, a new generation of women, who are maturing in the wake of the internet porn revolution, feel they have little choice as to how to present their bodies.
Mother London’s communications director Liam Fay-Fright, 30, who has spearheaded this “passion project” (advertising speak for something which doesn’t make any money), explains; “We were struck by the infantilisation and pornification of women in today’s society. There is now a waxing salon on almost every street corner and all the girls we spoke to who were under-25 said they waxed in order to feel sexually attractive or because their boyfriends had asked them to do so. This struck me as an insidious modern phenomenon.”
Much has been written about the troubling impact of exposure to internet porn on young teenagers and the genericised view of sexuality it breeds. Reports have shown that boys and girls learning about sex from the internet believe that the sort of extreme practices often depicted there are normal. And, since the last the time there was a fully grown bush on display in a porn flick was sometime in the 1970s, it seems clear why young women think there is only one acceptable look for “down there”.
“I am so pleased that I had finished adolescence before the rise of internet porn. For my generation sex was an amazing, if occasionally embarrassing, process of discovery, “ says Liam. “As a prospective parent, I would like to prevent my children from accessing sex on the internet but I don’t think it’s possible. It’s so widespread. It terrifies me that our children’s sexuality will manifest itself in a very different way to ours.”
While it’s a worthwhile debate, I’m not sure how this exhibition alone is going to solve the problem. The team behind Project Bush clearly can’t take it into schools to educate the target age group because the pictures are definitely NSFW, never mind NSFS. Taking it on face value though, it was a rather liberating experience with many of the women in the Prosecco-quaffing crowd volunteering information along the lines of “that one’s mine”. I even found myself feeling strangely embarrassed that an image of my bush wasn’t plastered on the wall, but more than anything I was struck, and slightly inspired, by the sheer variety of pubic hair on show.
Where Project Bush does succeed is in communicating the message that not every modern woman has to be a waxoholic like me. The notion that my monthly ritual is somehow perpetuating a culture which forces young girls to wax it all off in order to avoid being labelled a “gorilla” by their peers is disquieting. While, I’m not about to start cultivating the jungle look (there are far more visible feminist statements one can make), I have decided to give the beauty salon a miss this month and face my fear of the fuzz. Let’s see how long I can last….
Find out more about Project Bush
