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AIBU?

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Original poster

Young teens, strings & pubic depilation

352 replies

tsunami · 03/07/2012 06:44

My eldest daughter is just 14 and I've found a lacy string in her room and now a big wad of pubic hair in her shower: suspect we're talking a close shave, and I dread to think how much she's taken off. I don't think there's a (serious) boy in the picture or if this is just peer-pressurised body-angst, but - while I'm no saint and have been around the block myself in my time - I really hate this current pole-dancer/porn shaved pussy trend. Call me a square (and maybe a hypocrite as I do wax up to my bikini line - sorry; TMI but I'm hoping we're all girls together in here - or can at least tolerate girl talk) I think total pubic baldness is unreconstructed pandering to male fantasy... IMO even Brazilians and landing strips are inappropriate for young teens. Still trying to cope with the string (yes, this is my first daughter, and she's growing up, so maybe I have to get used to it. We've had the high heels conversation, the provocative dressing and the make-up one...is this just the next step?)

I find it gutting that such young girls fall for this kind of stuff. OK - once you're older then it's your business, but kids need boundaries and should we and can we draw the line? Given the images they can get access to online - which they can and do, no matter what precautions you try to put in place at home - I'm not surprised they feel under pressure. Yes, I have looked - half the porn girls are bald; most have breast implants. Call me old fashioned, but - yeeuch.

I would've died if my mum had ever discussed my depilation issues with me. I can just see it: 'Darling...about your pubes...' 'Yeah, Mum, whatever: bog off.' You can't! Maybe I just tell her I don't think she should leave big clods of pubic hair in the plughole from a hygiene and self-respect POV.

What do I do? Do I do nothing, and leave it? It's her body...AIBU even to think of getting involved?

OP posts:
LynetteScavo · 04/07/2012 17:50

I want a vajazzle. Just for myself. (DH would just laugh)

This would so not be an issue for me, just like shaving armpits or legs. And I do the bare minimum down there.

Why I just shared that with the world, I've no idea. Confused

NigellaPleaseComeDineWithMe · 04/07/2012 17:51

Why does someone that swims need to do something about it - since when has a few odd pubes poking out of a swim suit been a problem - or does it slow down the swimmer too much. You need to get pretty close to see such things Shock.

RubyFakeNails · 04/07/2012 17:59

The vajazzle was at a charity thingy (I shit you not) but DH was concerned it may do him some kind of injury Confused I suggested a penazzle, he fled.

Nigella My dd1 was absolutely Shock Shock that the school swimming costume she has to wear leaves very little to the imagination nipple wise, if you want to then try and tell her that despite the disdain for pubes amongst her peers she should just embrace la bush, Good luck to you. But be warned, the door slamming will shake the entire house.

Also you can see stray pubes from quite far away, a certain lady on my recent holiday could have done well to remember that or not insisted on wearing itty bitty underwear with her forest sized lady garden

JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar · 04/07/2012 18:05

I do the sides so they're not sticking out. No need for anything else really. I think swimwear is often higher cut than it used to be - last swimmy I bought was a sensible one and even that revealed two little triangles on either side - like little ears.

I'm not blessed with a particulalry luxuriant muff, either.

I find bare pudendas on adults rather odd tbh - like Sphinx cats.

LynetteScavo · 04/07/2012 18:05

Nigella, you don't have to get that close! I had a friend at school with "principles" who didn't tame her bush. Was really quite obvious, but she didn't care.

Krumbum · 04/07/2012 18:07

It's sad that she's already feeling pressure the change her body for the benefit of men. All her friends will do it and she will believe she can't be 'sexy' if she doesn't.
It hard when there's so much influence telling her that her worth is based on her being a sexual object but you can explain that pubic hair is not unclean, that it is natural and healthy and there for a reason to protect the vulva! It would also help to take the lead yourself and fight against the pressure to remove your own healthy, protective pubic hair.

imnotmymum · 04/07/2012 18:08

It is not for the benefit of men FFFGGGSSS !Angry

Krumbum · 04/07/2012 18:13

Yes it is.

SardineQueen · 04/07/2012 18:14

The no hair on muff look is a porn aesthetic.
The reason for it is so that the person watching the porn can get a "better" view of what's going on.
At the most fundamental level this fashion has come about to please men.

Individual women I'm sure might remove it all because they discovered at 12 that they preferred it or whatever, but at a society level with a majority of girls and young women apparently doing this, the aesthetic they are meeting is the porn aesthetic.

RubyFakeNails · 04/07/2012 18:14

No it isn't Only in your opinion.

imnotmymum · 04/07/2012 18:15

So we are saying that the 14 year old in question at the beginning of this thread is shaving to please men ! Really ?? You are bonkers. If I lived alone never to have sex again I would still shave

SardineQueen · 04/07/2012 18:16

rubyfakenails where do you think the current fashion for girls and young women to remove all their pubic hair has come from then? Observe that the fashion has come about at the same time as this look became the norm in porn and porn became much more easily accessible.

SardineQueen · 04/07/2012 18:17

No imnotmymum I am saying that the fashion is a porn aesthetic, and porn is in the vast majority there to please men.

RubyFakeNails · 04/07/2012 18:18

Ok so saying that for the majority idea of total hair removal came form porn.

Now that it is a relatively mainstream thing (am thinking actresses, films, lots of media about it),

  1. Why is it such an issue that the original idea was from porn, if those wearing (?) it aren't involved in porn
  2. Why does it matter where it came from if it is now a mainstream idea and that is what is influencing women not the origins of the aesthetic
imnotmymum · 04/07/2012 18:19

Sardine we will have to agree to disagree I guess as this argument is done for me I think it has nothing to do with porn, you do. Thanks

Krumbum · 04/07/2012 18:19

It's to meet the expectations that patriarchy encourages women to look like and change their bodies for. Not an individual man, but a society that expects women to look a certain way that is controlled by men.

RubyFakeNails · 04/07/2012 18:19

Sardine my post about in your opinion was for krumbum

DunkyWhorey · 04/07/2012 18:21

I haven't read all the threads but we did this when we were that age - I grew up in Australia - it was more about a "beach" culture than a sex culture or a porn culture or any other culture - not to not offend "boys" on the beach but other girls or anyone or ourselves.

I understand the concern but I'd just leave it personally. You can introduce discussions on this kind of topic without targeting her, at a later date or a date not related to the incident, just flicking through a magazine or whatever, if you have a reasonably "chatty" relationship with her, I'd say.

DunkyWhorey · 04/07/2012 18:21

I am 35 by the way

AnyFucker · 04/07/2012 18:22

It's a measure of how deeply ingrained the influence of porn is on our society when you see women with absolutely destroyed sense of self awareness of what they are actually saying

"pubes are disgusting" means you think your own natural body is a shameful thing if it's in it's natural form

"getting good habits" = getting other women round your gaff to rip the hair out of your 14yo daughter by it's roots so she can "fit in"

grown women getting all giddy about sticking a few sequins on yer muff

wake up, fgs

look at the messages you are internalising, but worst of all, the ones you are passing on to the next generation

if it were up to me we would have a "no more body-abusing amnesty day" where all women just decided to stop messing around with what is natural and fuck what everyone else says

seeker · 04/07/2012 18:23

A porn aesthetic becoming mainstream has a huge impact on how women are perceived by society, how they perceive themselves and how men are encouraged to perceive them. If a woman looks like the women on a porn movie, then surely she could be expected to behave like one?

Not forgetting the looking like a pre pubescent girl thing.......

SardineQueen · 04/07/2012 18:24

Rubyfakenails I don't think individual girls are watching porn and deciding to do this (in the main), they do it because it is the fashion.

Ideas like this are very pervasive. Most women remove the hair on their legs and armpits because it is the fashion. We pretty much have to do it even if we don't really want to, a lot of the time.
The idea that from 12, say, girls in the UK are removing leg hair, armpit hair and all pubic hair, as a matter of course.... That thought makes me feel quite ill. The time, the money, the pain, the sheer pointlessness of it all (for most).

And of course the fact that a "shaven haven" as it is so delicately referred to by men is a porn aesthetic, that's where the fashion came from, is just horrible.

imnotmymum · 04/07/2012 18:25

Are we actually listening to the views of women who say there is no link to porn for them. This is the problem it is obviously us who just do not know our own minds and the brigade comes out to down cry our opinions because we are wrong and corrupting our children.

SardineQueen · 04/07/2012 18:27

Why on earth would people on a beach be offended by a woman in a swimming costume, who underneath it does not have an entirely bare muff?

I guess the point is you can tell in a swimming costume whether a person has pubes or not - so right there is a huge pressure to whip it all off lest you get comments from boys or girls or them whispering about you.

It's just awful.

14yo schoolgirls genitals shouldn't be a subject for judgement by wider society.

AnyFucker · 04/07/2012 18:27

Ruby, why does it matter then that the idea of teenage girls being forced to blow a group of boys one after the other came from porn ?

so the fact such sexual assaults are a growing problem and becoming more "mainstream" (as reported recently) makes it part of our society now, and we should stop examining (and condemning) where it came from ?

like I said, take a moment to think about what you are saying