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CHAPTER 1
How Coochies Look
My best friend from high school once asked me, "What's it like to look at vaginas all day long?"
I answered, "Really, it's just a bunch of different haircuts."
Which is pretty much the truth. Having rotated through a urology clinic, I can honestly say that penises vary way more than coochies do. From the other side of the stirrups, we all look pretty much the same. Sure, some women have bushy, bright red pubic hair, some have longer or shorter labia, and some have waxed their pubes into a question mark. Some have clitoral piercings and tattoos, while other have moles, warts, or ulcers. But mostly, we're not so different, you, me, and all the rest of us.
So how come the vast majority of questions women submitted for this book revolved around how we look? Why is this so important to us? As women, we are so much more than vaginas, and yet you wouldn't know it from the way our society behaves. Too often, others try to diminish us to nothing more than a piece of tail, but we are oh, so much more than that.
Let me tell you a story that shocked me. I am the founder of a Web site, OwningPink.com, which is all about being authentic, celebrating the various facets of our wholeness and humanity, joining in community, and getting your mojo back. When we launched Owning Pink, readers (we call them Pinkies) showed up in droves, craving the loving, encouraging, motivational words of wisdom we share. Or so we thought....
When our marketing team investigated where most of our traffic came from, they asked me to guess. What Google search landed people at Owning Pink? I'm thinking authenticity, empowerment, health, creativity, spirituality, women's issues, healing — something like that. But no. The number one reason people show up at Owning Pink is because they Google-search "pretty pussy" and wind up at the Pretty Pink Pussy Tour, a very benign and unsexy post educating women about their anatomy. This revelation inspired me to post this on the Web site:
Why are you all out there searching for "pretty pussy" when you could be interacting, loving, creating, even finding yourself some real, live pretty pussy to nurture and adore? Do me — and all the pretty pink pussies on the Internet — a favor. Humanize the pussy, please. Respect the person attached to that yoni, and let that respect overflow into the world at large. Those of us with pretty pink pussies (and beautiful hearts, souls, and spirits to boot) are grateful.
Given that this is the culture in which we live, it's no wonder that the majority of questions women ask me revolve around whether they look normal. We are products of our society and, as much as it breaks my heart, our society values pretty pussy.
Before I answer your questions, let me invite you to reflect for a moment on true beauty. I know it's a cliché, but I honestly believe beauty lies within you. When you tap into the wellspring of your heart and soul, you become radiant — no matter what you look like on the outside. The more you nurture your spirit, spread love in the world, and cherish who you really are, the more beautiful you become, even if your pubes are bushy and your labia are long.
Don't ever forget that you are more than just a vagina. Keep in mind that the vagina is a vessel, a place of possibility, a creative, fertile breeding ground where miracles happen — just like the miracle that is you.
Why do we have pubic hair?
It's important to understand that the vagina is one of our most delicate organs. It's like the pearl buried deep beneath slippery, soft oyster muscle, and armored inside a shell bastion. Nature protects the vagina well. Our prehistoric ancestors had hair all over in order to stabilize the body's temperature and protect its delicate skin from the outside world. Although we've lost most of our hair, evolution left us with a patch in the pubic region, which, in addition to keeping our pink pearl warm and debris-free, serves several important biological purposes.
For one thing, pubic hair functions as a reproductive billboard to potential mates that you are now biologically (if not emotionally) prepared to procreate. Of course, we thwart biology by covering our precious pubes with designer duds. Perhaps that's why we feel inclined to wear short skirts and plunging necklines when we're teenagers. We're just replacing one billboard with another!
Pubic hair also acts as a pheromone carpet. Pubic hair grows where apocrine glands live (in the pubis and under the arms) and traps the pheromones secreted by those glands. When broken down and mixed with bacteria and sebaceous secretions, pheromones gather in pubic hair and act as erotic aids, attracting potential mates to the promised land. Pheromones also tend to attract partners with specific genetics, promoting biologic diversity for the purpose of creating stronger, more genetically healthy offspring who are able to better ward off disease. Nowadays, pubic hair may seem like more of a nuisance than a biological advantage, but it's there for a reason. Embrace it.
Is pubic hair supposed to be the same color as the hair on your head?
Not necessarily. While in some people, the carpet matches the drapes, so to speak, it's not the case for everyone. The presence of two distinct colors of hair in the same person is called "heterochromia." My patient Molly is a fiery redhead, and she got teased her whole childhood by guys who nicknamed her "Fire Pie," referencing the bright red bush they envisioned. But Molly got the last laugh. Turns out her bush is a dark chocolate brown without so much as a fleck of red. It's not uncommon for people with light-colored hair on their head to have darker pubic hair. Keeps 'em guessing, I suppose.
Why does pubic hair stop growing at a certain length, when the hair on your head keeps growing?
It's not so much that pubic hair stops growing. It just reaches a certain length and then falls out before it has a chance to grow longer. How long your hair grows depends on how much time each individual hair is alive. While it may seem like the hair on your head has been there for twenty years, it hasn't. Whether it's a hair on your head, an eyelash, or a pubic hair, hair lives for a certain period of time; then it falls out and gets replaced. A hair follicle undergoes three distinct growth phases: the anagen phase, when the hair follicle actively produces hair; the catagen phase, when growth stops and the hair rests and then falls out; and the telogen phase, when the follicle rests. How long hair grows depends on how long the anagen, or growth, phase lasts. Those with ponytails they can sit on have hair follicles with very long anagen phases.
While the hair on your head has an anagen phase that lasts approximately three to seven years, pubic hair stops growing after a few weeks. So don't worry if you opt not to groom your pubes — you won't need to braid them anytime soon.
Is there a right way to shave my pubic hair? Does shaving my pubic hair make it grow in thicker?
Shaving remains the tried-and-true method of removing pubic hair: simple, cheap, quick, and predictable; we all know we can rid ourselves of unwanted hair in a blink if the razor is nearby. But shaving has its downsides.
We've all been there: It's a hot, sunny day, and the beach beckons. You don your pink polka-dot bikini, only to discover that your Fabulous Furburger is overflowing past the bikini line. Bathing suit still on, you grab the razor and maybe a little hand soap and set to work scraping the pubes off your inner thighs. Problem solved, right? Psych.
Two hours later, you're covered with fire-engine red bumps advertising your bikini shave to the beach-going public. And you can't even swim because you're so raw that the salt water makes you want to rip out your whole genital region and sling it into outer space.
Even in non-emergencies, when you do it right — soak in the bathtub first, lather up your pubes with the best shaving cream, and use a fresh, sharp razor — razor burn, ingrown hairs, itching, and burning often follow.
Why does this happen? In addition to slicing through hair, razors shave off the top layer of the epidermis, resulting in tissue injury. The skin responds as it's supposed to, by increasing blood flow to the area in order to heal the tissue injury, leaving you looking like a sunburned, plucked goose. Then there are the bumps, which result from shaving off and damaging puckered hair follicles.
The easiest way to relieve the red rash of razor burn is to stop shaving and grab some boy-short swimming trunks. However, if the bikini beckons and you're not interested in exposing your Furry Monkey to a beach full of hair gazers, don't fret. There are ways to shave safely and relieve the raging redness.
TIPS FOR SHAVING YOUR PUBES
1. Before you shave, soak in a warm bath, which softens the hairs and allows for a gentler shave. Then exfoliate your bikini region with a loofah or shower puff to remove old, dead skin cells that could clog your pores. Bath products containing salicylic acid or glycolic acid may help prevent ingrown hairs, but some people are very sensitive to chemicals in this delicate region.
2. Purchase high-quality razors and discard them after a few uses. Staph infections resulting from nicks caused by old razors can be a doozy.
3. Choose a shaving cream with aloe or other soothing ingredients, and avoid shaving with bar soap, which further dries the skin, rather than hydrating it. An old-fashioned shaving soap with a badger brush can work wonders. Try leaving the shaving cream on for a few minutes before you shave to further soften the hair.
4. Hold the area to be shaved taut but not stretched. Shave in the direction the hair grows — with the grain, rather than against it. Clean your razor with water between each swipe. If you must double back over an already-shaved area, lather on more shaving cream.
5. Apply ice to your freshly shaved bikini line to hasten the closing of your pores.
6. Try following shaving with products like Tend Skin or Bikini Zone, which you can buy at the drugstore. Aloe vera gel, witch hazel, and tea tree oil sprays offer natural relief.
7. Wait at least thirty minutes after shaving to apply moisturizing lotion. This allows the pores to close after shaving, minimizing irritation.
8. Treat redness and irritation with over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream. This topical steroid cream acts as an anti-inflammatory and constricts raging blood vessels. But save it for serious irritation. Chronic use can thin the skin.
9. If you break out into pimples where you shave, zap zits with benzoyl peroxide cream.
10. Ingrown hairs can lead to pustules. If you are plagued by them, apply warm compresses to the pustules twice a day to encourage the hair to bust through. If this doesn't work and the overlying skin is thin enough that you can see the hair, you can try unroofing the pustule yourself. Clean the area with hydrogen peroxide and use sterile tweezers or a needle to fish the wayward hair out of the pustule. Minimize squeezing and other trauma that can further damage the hair follicle and cause the ingrown hair to recur. When you locate the offending hair, don't pluck it, which can further inflame the area. Just free it and encourage it to grow in the direction of the other hairs. If a pustule is especially large, surrounded by a lot of redness, accompanied by fever, or hurts like the dickens, call your gynecologist or dermatologist right away. We don't want you neglecting those precious pubes.
You may feel like shaving replaces every hair with two or transforms a thin strand of hair into a coarse, black rope. But the myth that shaving thickens hair growth has no scientific backing. Hair growth and thickness depend on the hair follicle and are unrelated to shaving. Because stubble grows back all at the same length, it may seem darker and coarser. New stubble may come in with sharp tips, making it seem thicker than older hairs that may have softer edges. But these are both illusions — once fully grown, your bush will be the same thickness it was before. So if you prefer to groom your pubes by shaving, shave away.
Is it okay to wax your bikini line at home?
Since I've never seen scientific studies about waxing your bikini line at home and nobody every mentioned it in medical school, I can only comment from my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt. Most of my life, waxing held no appeal for me. Going to the gynecologist once a year was mortifying enough. (Yes, even gynecologists get uncomfortable in the stirrups.) So baring it all for the waxing gurus to strip away layers of skin cells, stripes of hair, and my remaining modesty for the sake of pubic beauty just wasn't my bag.
But one hot summer day, I decided to try it by myself at home. After all, I'm a gynecologist, I reasoned. How hard could it be? With no one around and bikini season upon me, I pulled out the home waxing kit a friend had given me as a gag gift and plugged in the wax. One simple step and I'd be bikini ready.
Or so I thought.
Hours later, I found myself sitting on one of the blow-up donut pillows we send home with women after they give birth, slathered in aloe vera and numbing myself with an ice pack. Needless to say, I learned a few things.
LESSON #1:Do not apply hot wax without testing the temperature first. Hot wax burns the bejesus out of you. And that butt-ugly burn sticks around.
LESSON #2: Let the wax cool completely before pulling it off. Otherwise, the wax will not come off in one fell paper-ripping swoop. Instead, it leaves a gummy hornets' nest of sticky, hairy, tangled goo that scissors can't cut and additional strips won't remove.
LESSON #3: Go out and buy nice skinny wooden applicators, rather than using the humongous two-by-fours they include in the kit. It's impossible to craft a porn star landing strip using a canoe oar. Without the help of a nice, delicate, wooden applicator, you'll wind up with a cue ball for a coochie.
LESSON #4: Don't use the fancy-schmancy scissors you use to cut your bangs to chop out clumps of wax-laden pubic hair. They'll end up in the trash can, stuck to the toilet paper you tried to use to mop up the extra wax.
LESSON #5: Make sure you pee before you start waxing. Nothing like acid on a wound to send you through the roof.
LESSON #6: Load up on that wax removal product the kit recommends buying. Since my waxing was a spur-of-the-moment decision, I proceeded without any clean-up aids. Hours later, there I was, pubes tangled in the equivalent of chewing gum, careening bare assed through the kitchen in search of utensils or products that might rescue me from my waxy nightmare.
LESSON #7: Avoid all alcohol while waxing. Halfway through this ordeal, I sought solace from a leftover margarita, still in the martini shaker from the previous night's Mexican fiesta dinner party. All this achieved was a reduction in my inhibitions, resulting in Lesson #8.
LESSON #8: Vegetable oil does not clean up bikini wax. Sure, it works great to remove the beeswax I use for my art. But bikini wax plus vegetable oil equals bloody disaster (literally, by this point).
LESSON #9: Make sure you put your head hair up in a clip before embarking upon a bikini wax adventure. When the wax meant for your pubes ends up in your locks, it gets ugly.
LESSON #10: Think twice about whether you really want to be a middle-aged woman with the va-jay-jay of an eight-year-old. I have to say, once all was said and done, I felt robbed.
And even if I didn't, I'm far too scarred from my one horrifying experience to fly my airplane down that landing strip again, if you know what I mean. Is it safe to wax your bikini line at home? Maybe, when forethought and sense are employed. However, the moral of my story is this: Do yourself and your coochie a favor and seek professional help.
I know it's normal to have hair above my girl parts, but what about between my bum and my vagina?
Don't worry; you're completely normal. Chances are that your mother has hair there, too.
The distribution of pubic hair tends to be genetic, and it also varies depending on your ethnic background. In my practice, I've noticed that women from India and Latin America tend to be hairier than most Asians. Women from Mediterranean backgrounds seem to be bushier than those of Scandinavian heritage.
Why do we have differing amounts of hair? An individual's escutcheon (the fancy medical term for pubic hair distribution) tends to follow apocrine and sebaceous gland geography. Since it's common to have peri-anal apocrine glands, it's not surprising that you also have hair there. You're not alone — millions of other women do, too.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Sex, Orgasm, and Coochies"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Lissa Rankin, M.D..
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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