Those of you who read Frost regularly will know a number of my colleagues love fashion. Nothing wrong with that, I just wish I could afford it.
I once had an eye-opening trip to Milan where I went into Prada and had the epiphany that designer clothes aren’t actually TK Maxx stuff with a nice label sewn over the top of “Croydon Denim Inc.”
The assistants were, naturally, Italian, universally good-looking and stunningly dressed. They made me feel like a British string-vested oik with a knotted handkerchief on my head, broiled a warming lobster red.
So ladies, I get it. Well, most of it.
I physically want to get hold of Jennifer Love Hewitt and shake her until her brain falls out of her ears every time I hear her self-gratifying and terribly twee quote of: “After a break up, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady,” she said. “It shined like a disco ball so I have a whole chapter on how women should vajazzle their vajayjays.”
It’s not just the Swarvoski bit, although that screams, ‘look at me, I can afford to stick over-priced jewellery on my ****’, it’s ‘vajazzle’ and ‘vajayjay’.
Personally, if anyone, man or woman, used the term ‘vajayjay’ in a conversation with me, I’d be looking for their doctor, or possibly their carer. But ‘vajazzle’ seems to be passing into an accepted term where women decorate themselves with clever designs around their nether regions.
Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but I have NEVER met a woman who admitted to decorating herself. Which is probably fortunate. I have enough issues with topiary.
Yes, I understand the arguments about hygiene – and swimwear etc. etc. Anyone who’s seen the “Smack The Pony’ sketch with an unshaven Doon Mackichan and Sarah Alexander will probably keep a lifetime’s supply of Veet or razors in the bathroom cabinet while examining themselves every five minutes in case of strays. But it seems there’s now an increasing pressure for women to conform to a perceived accepted norm.
I blame it on celebrities and porn, or maybe celebrity porn.
Porn, of course, gives the impression that all any man wants out of sex is a woman with bleached blonde long hair, false eyelashes, false lips, false breasts, veneered teeth, long nails, high heels worn in bed, an orange spray tan, a overwhelming desire to be spat on – and in porno terms – a shaved pussy.
As an aside, I’d expect any woman receiving some brain-dead bloke’s spit to stand up and kick him in the bollocks so hard, he’ll never find them again.
Anyway, thanks to countless, easily accessible porn clips on the internet, a generation of boys have grown up with shaven women and see it as the norm – and expect their teenage girlfriends to do likewise.
Don’t fool yourself ladies. Shaving came about on film just so slavering men could better see the ‘oh, so realistic’ lovemaking. OK, it’s called a Hollywood, but if you ever see Hollywood actresses in nude roles, they’re invariably sporting a neat natural triangle. Nope, the Full Monty on celluloid is almost exclusively the domain of the sleazy side of the industry.
Then the Brazilian came into its literal shining glory. Originally from Brazil (ah, so that’s where the name comes from) Brazilian girls had been shaving themselves for decades for the Rio carnival and its ilk so they could they wear the tiny thongs that South American countries favoured without fear of causing offence.
Not bad in a predominantly Roman Catholic country. Of course, maybe some priests approved because it reminded them of children.
Poor joke aside, that’s one of the arguments often put forward against shaving. A number of people of both sexes think it’s a sinister way of getting a woman to look like a little girl.
I should say that this is a point of view that conveniently forgets that the woman in question is an adult with a right to choose. Instead, I’d hazard it says more about the state of mind of those putting forward the argument. No, my thoughts are purely about aesthetics. Very simply, it’s a myth that every man wants a hairless woman.
In the 1970s, razors apparently didn’t exist. Anyone who’s seen ‘Emmanuelle’… (OK, bad example given that actress Sylvia Krystal was Dutch in a French film and therefore revelling in hair). Anyone who’s seen the ‘Confessions of’ films, or a Mayfair magazine from the era would know that women never shaved – or certainly not to the extent that they looked like they had.
And I can attest that was equally true in the 80s and into the 90s.
Now, 20 years later, women are being both pushed and encouraged to bare all in a complete u-turn. It’s a matter of centimetres as to whether a woman has a Brazilian, a Playboy, a European and even a Hitler. No doubt Der Fuhrer would be very proud that his legacy didn’t completely run to world devastation.
And now, men too are getting in on the act. Yep, brothers are doing it for themselves.
It’s odd. As a guy, I can reveal that we spend our puberty years praying we won’t be the last to grow pubic hair. Anything not to resemble a little boy in High School and so successfully stave off years of abuse. And now some guys are shaving it off?
These have to be men who obviously never play sport or appear in any environment where they have to undress in front of other men. Even when all grown up, the ridicule would be unbearable – no pun intended.
Men who shave their chest hair are in a tiny minority and really, really need to have that model physique before revealing their quivering man boobs shorn and shivering. I also know, in the straight world, a ‘back, sack and crack’ wax never set the male imagination alight.
Perhaps in the more body conscious male gay scene, a smooth operator is more desirable, but now that ‘bear’ has taken on a whole new meaning, I doubt it even more.
I don’t know. Do ladies prefer their men bare down there? Or are some men so blinkered that it produces an optical illusion of a few extra inches. If so, chances are that they’ll be found out if they ever find a woman who wants to sleep with a plucked chicken.
The money shot is that men don’t shave to please their woman and it’s all about a misplaced vanity. Equally ladies, shave and shape if that’s what makes you comfortable, but don’t do it just to please your man, or because you think it’s what every man expects or wants. You’ll be wrong.
We love you the way nature intended too and if a man isn’t prepared to accept you that way, he’s a clearly an immature boy – still desperately waiting for his hair to sprout.
Photo: Beware, merkin, by Miriam Nathan Roberts, 2006
There is a scene in Sex & The City where Carrie and her friends go to Los Angeles, Carrie goes to a new beautician for a wax who ‘takes everything’. Later, when the girls are discussing their shock about being ‘totally bald down there’, Samantha tells Charlotte that her husband Trey, who has been having some problems in the bedroom, might finally be able to consummate their marriage as ‘he probably hasn’t been to Brazil before’. After this episode, the Brazilian wax became hugely popular. But what is it, where did it come from and should women really be getting them? Let’s find out.