There comes a time in every woman's life when she needs to make a seminal decision: full-on bush, landing strip or bare?
You see, the grooming and maintenance of one's girly parts has slowly become an epidemic. You can't even blame Britney for the peek-a-boo show. The upper echelons of pop culture parading their hairless privates only demonstrates just how far the trend has permeated society (the trendy lack of hair, I mean, not lack of underwear - that's still never acceptable).
I can't help but think that the pressure to be perfectly bronzed, tweezed, exfoliated, buffed and bare has brought us to desperate measures.
See, the thing that guys don't know is that perfectly pornish, prepubescent-looking punani comes at a price.
Take the popular Brazilian wax. In financial terms, it costs around ,60. But imagine the other costs: growing the hair to at least an inch long beforehand, the Lamaze-style breathing and painful lip-biting during and the baby powder administering afterward.
The alternatives seem only slightly less grim - shaving leaves bumps and Nair smells. It certainly all adds more meaning to the adage "Beauty is pain."
But is the pain really worth the pleasure?
I agree a good degree of maintenance is always warmly received, but it works both ways and there should be limits to how far we go.
I shouldn't be expected to be perfectly coiffed, which basically entails being sans any coif at all, without expecting a little man-scaping on your part. That's right, boys: Trimming, like oral sex, works both ways.
Don't feel pressure to take it all off. In fact, please don't go too far off the metro edge. Nothing's worse than a man who spends more time grooming than I do. But some strategic and thoughtful pruning is always appreciated.
Basically, a little trim is one thing, but a total overhaul of the area goes too far.
Surprisingly, a sampling of some guy friends and my own boyfriend revealed they generally think the same goes when it comes to the ladies.
Turns out most men are just happy to see you pantyless; they only ask their lady friends to be "neat and clean" in appearance, and they're willing to keep up with their own manly manes.
And anyway, the trend, unlike the hair, doesn't seem like it's going to be gotten rid of anytime soon, so we might as well embrace it.
But as a lover of fashion, I can't help but ask the question: Are avant-garde styles and Swarovski crystal hair clips for your south-of-the-border carpeting that far behind?
