hoohas, happy places and healthy body relationships


There is nothing I loathe more than motherfucking 'body maintenance'. Honestly, it fills me with hairy rage.

This includes but is not limited to: shaving my bits and legs, eating healthy food, drinking water, doing my hair, taking my make up off before i go to sleep and moisturising. Because I am a swamp demon.

Now, I know that I am in no way OBLIGATED to do these things, yet I do them because I know deep down, that I feel generally better with them. Even though shaving your legs in the shower should really count as exercise and/or an olympic sport.

Certain societal pressures dictate that these are the norm for women and that I must uphold these ideals so I can be a viable candidate for dating/sexual appreciation. Yay for me. But in particular, body hair is a massive topic with a lot of double standards, taboos and unrealistic expectations.

Growing up, I dealt with immature/inexperienced men that had a serious, serious aversion to any body hair on women - anywhere. So as I grew, I kept this thought and the things that they had said to me, in my head and it influenced basically all my hair related decisions for many years.
After looking back on it and talking to male friends I now realise, their sweet teenage brains were likely influenced by the massive quantity of porn that they were exposed to - so I hold no grudge.


Recently, talking to some girl friends and chatting about definitely NSFW topics, we ventured into the topic of hooha hair and our preferences. My limited knowledge of what was 'normal' was apparently way off. Every woman I asked seem to have a different answer. ‘What does your partner think?’ I asked. Every one of them looked at me and answered simply, ‘They’re happy as long as I’m happy’.

Eager to learn more, I took to twitter to set up an anonymous poll. What did women *actually* prefer?

And here were the results. 50 women, 50 different personal opinions. I wanted women to answer based on their own feelings, not what society or their partners preferred them to have.


There are benefits and disadvantages to every option. It’s likely you won’t know exactly the right option for you, until you’ve tried one or two but extra info is always amazing.

What helped me the most, was fully accepting that whatever I chose to do with my body hair, should be my decision and mine alone. Understandably, if you are in a sexual relationship and you like a lot of head etc - it’s courtesy to ask that person if they mind - but at the end of the day, everyone has personal preferences and that’s totally fucking okay. My partner was totally chill with whatever decision i wanted to make and holy shit, was that just the loveliest feeling ever.

You reserve the right to choose what you want, and your sexual partners reserve the right to not agree. Having a preference is totally cool, disagreeing with something because of social stigmas is so not cool.

While we are on the topic of choosing - keep these handy tips in mind, to keep you and your vag happy and beautiful as you should be.



If you choose to shave - these are the glory golden rules of shaving:

Step 1: Exfoliate in the shower. Glove, sugar scrub.. anything scratchy but not sore.


Step 2: Slather up with your oil of choice. Coconut oil is the fucking BIZNESS for shaving.
Start with the mound by working in strokes with the hair. Usually that means in downwards strokes. Shave everything that can be shaved with these strokes before getting fancy. Continue applying the oil as needed. Once all the hair has been removed by downwards strokes: oil up again, pull the skin taught and go against the grain of the hair.


Step 3: Pat the area with a COLD damp face cloth - closing the pores.


Step 4: Moisturise the heck out of it - but not IN the vagina, only the vulva okay friends?



If you choose to wax - remember these handy tips:

Let your hair grow to the appropriate length before going back to get the next wax.

Continuous exfoliation of the hair follicles whilst it grows back is super helpful.

If you’re gonna attempt an at home wax - take heed of my warning. You can totally do it, but be prepared for it to take MUCH longer than a professional wax. A glass of wine or three can help too. Dont smoke weed and do it, I know a woman who did this and just ended up super high staring at her vagina for half an hour.






If you choose to let it be wild and free:

Air flow is important for a healthy hoohaa. Keeps good bacteria good and bad bacteria away. Wear cotton underwear and sleep with no undies on if you can handle it.






If you choose to keep it trimmed and neat:

A razor with a guard is your best bud. It stops things from gettin too wild and you cant cut yourself with it - bonus for us clumsy ladies.


It’s your body. No one has the right to tell you what’s okay or appropriate except yourself.

And there’s something so fucking fun about having a lightning bolt above your bits.

6 comments:

  1. What a great read (and so funny in parts as well)! It's great to know that so many of us are in a similar frame of mind with this sort of thing. It's hard though when there's a certain expectation from the porn industry that every girl is completely hairless, it's totally unrealistic as you said! I'm with you in that you do whatever you feel comfortable doing x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Cass! I've had such a good reaction to this post, I think it helps to know that a lot of women are in the same boat. x

      Delete
  2. u r the best. I've got to get back to my laser people in BNE because i forgot how crap shaving is. love your work beb x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isnt it so shit? Personally I hate it. Laser must be great, but rather expensive tho yes? thanks for reading bb xx

      Delete
  3. Loved your post! I have my personal preferences for myself but I do think men get these bizarre ideas from porn and the media and are so unreasonable to try and expect women to live up to them, but of course they don't do the same!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Lena! Yes porn has warped a lot of young people's minds (female and male) about both genders appearances, but this hair one is such a big one. I'm glad this post has made a lot of people think about their own personal preferences :)

    ReplyDelete

Popular Posts