I had a Hollywood wax on TV – I look like an eel from the eyebrows down

Experimental archaeology is where researchers attempt to learn about history by recreating various tools, practices, and living conditions. If you are a serious historian, this might look like staging battles in accurate replicas of medieval armour, or cooking using the same methods our Iron Age ancestors would have done. If you are a completely unserious historian like me, it might look like having all your pubic hair waxed off for a documentary about historic methods of epilation.

I am no stranger to waxing, but this was the first time I had a full Hollywood. For the uninitiated, the Hollywood is where all of the pubic hair is removed – the whole lot. You are cue ball bald and your junk is left looking like a baby bird. I normally go for the Brazilian wax, which is where the hair on your labia, inner thighs, and all up around the booty is removed, but you leave a tuft of fluff on the pubic area, the so-called “landing strip”, or “fanny mohawk”.

I was interviewing a very experienced waxer about modern epilation trends and methods, and we thought it would be funny if I did this while being waxed myself. It was hilarious – all tastefully done, obviously, this is History Hit, not Only Fans – but we had to draw the waxing process out for half an hour or so to get all the questions in; hence, taking all the hair off, rather than pruning the perennial stragglers. It was a question of timing rather than taste.

Now, look. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, and I fully acknowledge that the Hollywood is one of the most popular “intimate waxing” services out there, but goddamnit, dear reader, this one is not for me. I need the fluff, the love triangle, the happy trail. It turns out that swirl of hair makes all the difference to my sexual self-confidence. With no hair at all from the eyebrows down, I looked like an eel, and that little puff of hair reminds me, and anyone else that might be lucky enough to see it, that I am, in fact, an adult mammal.

There is no other way to put it: with no hair at all, I felt like a little girl. I am deeply self-conscious about it and can’t wait for my little bush, my shrub, to grow back. It defiantly stands between my feeling like a grown woman and well, my not feeling like a grown woman. Far from feeling sexy and like a porn star, I feel terribly embarrassed about it. I won’t be flashing this mangled mound at anyone until the stocks have been replenished – ETA, six to eight weeks.

Did it hurt? Yes, of course it does. How could tearing all the hair out of your genitals with hot wax not hurt? All waxing smarts, regardless of whatever anyone says, as does plucking, sugaring, and threading. Anything that requires pulling the hair out at the root is going to make your eyes water. In case you are interested, other historic methods of pubic hair removal include using shells as tweezers, rubbing your bush away with a pumice stone, and burning it all off with acids and arsenic. We never did get clearance to try the acids.

The practice of pubic hair removal goes back much further than you might think. It didn’t arrive in the 90s with Sex and the City – we have been plucking, tweezing, and shaving our thickets since the dawn of time. Sometimes it is done for religious reasons, but it has historically been linked to ideas of “femininity” and “cleanliness”. One early modern Italian text flatly warns women that their body hair was indicative of being “disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly” and that no man would want to marry such a bestial woman. Charming.

Interestingly, “cleanliness” is still the leading reason women remove their pubic hair today. According to one piece of research published in 2024 in the journal Women’s Health, “among top motivating factors for pubic hair removal were perceived cleanliness, comfort, and wanting to look good in a bikini.” It didn’t once occur to me that trimming my pubic hair was in any way hygienic. I do it because I like to keep my bush well pruned and because I absorbed a barrage of toxic messages in the 90s about how hideous body hair is.

It’s hard to conclude that the linking of pubic hair with cleanliness is anything but misogynistic shaming of women’s genitals, because we don’t see the same narrative about dirt being applied to men’s body hair. The truth is that hair is not dirty. The idea that hairlessness is cleaner is entirely constructed and rooted in very old, sexist ideas about women’s unclean genitals.

But it seems that times are changing and the bush is now making a roaring comeback. In 2024, Maison Margiela sent models down the runway, sporting merkins that were clearly visible through their sheer skirts. The following year, Skims briefly launched its own “merkin thong”, a skimpy knicker with hair sewn into the front. They aren’t selling them anymore, which is a damn shame, because I could really use one right about now.

And we’re not only talking about novelty merkins. The real thing is back. “Bushmaxxing” has been a viral trend on TikTok for the last twelve months, as young women vow to eschew the razor and love the muff. This was confirmed to me by my waxer, who said that most of her customers are now millennials and Gen Xers. The younger generations are free and fuzzy.

It’s funny how much of a difference a few hairs on my mons pubis made to my self-confidence. Perhaps if I grew the whole thing out, I would be the most confident woman in the world. I’m glad I tried it, but the vacuum-packed meat look is just not for me. I am going to stick to the Brazilian.

What I have learnt through researching the history of pubic hair is that our trouser tendrils are just as subject to fashion and social pressure as our barnets are. The bush comes and goes and then comes back in again, which is what we are witnessing right now.

What I would like to see dismantled, however, is the idea that hair removal is “clean”, because the tacit implication there is that hair on a vulva is dirty, and it’s not. Vulvas are not dirty, however their hair is styled.

Beating About the Bush: The History of Pubic Hair will be available on History Hit this autumn