Too close for comfort: An Indonesian amid depilation culture

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.