Too close for comfort: An Indonesian amid depilation culture

Rahayu Ratnaningsih Contributor Los Angeles, California Being Asian and smooth-skinned, I am lucky not to be confronted with the need for waxing. It's an alien concept to me.

I do shave my legs, or my shin to be precise (there is not much hair there), my underarms and trim my you-know-what every few days. So naturally I was intrigued to know what bikini waxing actually entailed.

I could imagine brow, legs, arms waxing, but bikini sounds a bit dubious to me. OK, I had some idea why women needed to do that as, as per its name, we don't want some shorties peeking out when we are strutting around in our bikini. But I wanted to find out what exactly was entailed in this close shave.

I found the answer on my recent trip to Borders bookstore. This African-American stand-up comedian Aisha Tyler explained it in quite vivid -- and agonizing -- details of what it all meant in her book Swerve: Reckless Observations of a Postmodern Girl.

I went "Eeeuww." Being a frequent gazer of girlie magazines I have long known that cleanly shaven -- or at least a neatly trimmed -- nether region is in vogue in the West, especially in America. It is so hip that it seems that today you can only find a natural born woman in a jurassic museum.

It is actually a source of constant mourning for some healthy old-fashioned men who like their women as adult women are meant to be, the way Mother Nature made them. Then again, a sizable crowd of post-modern men do love prepubescent looking female organs for various reasons that -- thank God -- the subject of this article doesn't cover.

It's part of beauty procedures these days to have this part of the body taken care of by "professionals." It amazes me how pubic hair has become the most talked about mainstream subject these days (and look who's talking about it now).

Where I come from in Bogor, talking about going to a beauty salon to style your pubic hair would be a joke that would surely create a few giggles. That a lot of women actually do that as their beauty care routine here in America will surely make my folks' eyes leap out of their sockets.

So going back to my "eeeuuw" response: I was wondering why all these women so decadent as to let themselves lie on a table unclothed from the waist down to have their very private parts being tampered with by a female stranger in a procedure extreme -- and embarrassing -- enough to be called sadomasochistic. Why don't they do it themselves, if they really have to do it?

Tyler reasoned the uncomfortable stubble and the itch were unbearable, but then she justified the painful, almost inhuman procedure of having all the hair plucked in one ruthless protocol by a woman stranger only interested in getting the job done at whatever material cost it may incur upon her subject. Good grief.

She said it gets better the more you did it. Excuse me here, sister, I can say the same thing with shaving it! I swear on my mother's grave, you shouldn't give up after the first try. I know it!

So drop bikini waxing, it's just so degrading. Seriously. The US$10-$75 fee every three to six weeks can instead feed hungry kids in Ethiopia, the way Oprah makes the world a better place in South Africa.

So let's get a bit inquisitive on this depilation culture that swept America like Hurricane Hattie. Tyler thinks that the hair serves no purpose whatsoever, unlike that on our head or other parts of the body. We can debate in one full lunar cycle why pubic hair is or is not important, but to some healthy old- fashioned, God-fearing, law-abiding men, it's an offense for any woman to tamper with this god-gifted adornment that, like our hair, is a crown that frames our feminine beauty.

Thanks to the porn industry which sets the standard of groin esthetics, this is sadly no more sanctified. Tyler admired her new look, but my boyfriend, a conservative when it comes to this type of coif, would disagree with her.

However, like any vogue, it will change with time. The signs of a reversed surge have been indicated by certain insiders in the adult industry. As the bikini has gone back to the more modest (and actually very pretty) 1970s low-rise cut, the pendulum is swinging back, and very soon bikini waxing may be out.

I can't imagine what will come next pertaining to this beauty zone, perhaps going back to the old days of pubic wigs -- a trend in the 1970s introduced by fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. Good Lord, please spare me that hair-raising experience!

The writer is the director of the Satori Foundation.