What could go wrong? These were my exact thoughts one day about eight years ago as I shaved my pubic hair off in the shower. I was ready to be a new woman, have a vag makeover so to speak. I was single, dating, and well, after being in a committed relationship for 20 years I heard through the grapevine that getting rid of your pubic hair was what all the cool people were doing.
So I took a deep breath and watched as my love patch swirled down the drain.
I thought about waxing of course, but having strips of wax ripped from my upper lip and eyebrows was deeply unpleasant. What the hell would it do to my undercarriage? Not to mention the pain of all that.
Standing in a nice, hot shower getting rid of my pubes on my terms was much better and it would grow back in no time if I changed my mind.
For years, having a bald bush felt amazing, free, and I rather liked seeing my vagina. It was nicer than I thought it would be.
But a few months ago, I decided that it might be nice to have a landing strip again. Hey, maybe I’d get real crazy and fro it like the days of yesteryear. In all the years of shaving, I never thought that one day my pubic hair could, on all its own, just disappear. That’s exactly what happened when I gave up keeping it hair-free. At the time, I figured we were starting from a blank canvas and maybe I was being impatient. But the days turned into weeks that turned into months and nothing.
While yes, there are a few hairs that are hanging on and growing at an alarming rate, but it looks all wrong. I was going for a sexy ‘80s bush and instead was getting something that disturbingly resembled Gollum’s head (you know from Harry Potter).
Perhaps if someone had told me that fine day I was sharpening my razor that one day my pubic hair would fall out, never to return, I would have held onto it for longer.
I was talking to a friend of mine about this. She has a few years on me and I decided the best way to see if what I was going through was normal was to come right out and ask. Fortunately, my friend rules and she gave it to me straight: pubic hair can fall out and there’s damn near nothing you can do about it.
I mean, we can’t exactly get pubic Rogaine… Can we?
I’m sure the timing of this is different for everyone. I’m guessing it happens to most of us between going completely gray and our first hot flash. You know, the fun sexy stuff.
As for me, I’ll be 50 in a few months and I can tell you my friend down there is sparse. Like, so sparse I’ve decided to continue shaving the very few hairs that I have so it looks like my bare muff is actually my decision.
I mean, when it comes to hair, sometimes it’s best to fire it before it quits you, right?
Katie lives in Maine with her three kids, two ducks, and a goldendoodle. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, at the gym, redecorating her home, or spending too much money online.
