by Kate Lister
Despite Ruskin’s anxieties, some Victorian women did practise hair removal, as shown on the next two pages; we can even see some of the first ‘landing strips’ (2014).
The absence of the merkin suggests that a mowed lawn was coming back into fashion once more, or at least it was no longer regarded as a symptom of disease. It seems likely that the retreat of pubic hair in the Western world is linked to the emergence of photography and pornography. It is certainly linked to being ‘seen’. Roman and Greek women plucked their pudendum because nudity was commonplace, but as bodies were covered up and were called ‘sinful’, there were far fewer pussies on parade. With the advent of photography and film, genitals were once again seen. Of course, you can look at your own unmentionables, maybe even your friends’, but there’s nothing quite like looking at a sexualised image of a stranger to have you doubting your own sexual appeal. Fashion has certainly played its part: the removal of underarm hair is directly linked to the new fashion for sleeveless dresses in the 1920s, and a cunning advertising campaign that told women they smelled bad. Leg shaving increased as skirt length decreased, and as underwear shrank to something you could floss with (hello G-string), pubic hair disappeared too.
An anonymous Victorian lady showing that porn can be fun, as well as providing some evidence of pubic hair removal in the nineteenth century.
An anonymous Victorian lady shows off her shaven haven while enjoying the daily news.
I’ve heard many times that the heyday of the bush was the 1960s and 1970s, which simply isn’t true. But it was at this time that porn started to become mainstream. It was not that the ‘rug’ (1939) was back in fashion – it had never been out of fashion – it’s simply that we saw more of it. And, of course, the women were splendidly bewhiskered; no one had told them not to be. Pubic hair appeared for the first time in Penthouse in 1970. In 1974, Hustler published the first ‘pink shots’ of labial flesh, but hair was still very much on the menu. By the mid-seventies Playboy’s circulation surpassed 7 million. That pussy pelt has gone AWOL in recent years is often linked directly to pornography becoming mainstream, but perhaps we should cast our nets a little wider than that. Yes, porn is far more accessible, but we are living in an image-saturated society that constantly reinforces what is ‘normal’. But it is not just porn that cue-balls its women: toys, fashion magazines, newspapers, film, television, advertising, music videos, etc., will not show you a single trouser tendril (unless it’s in an arty, subversive manner). It’s like looking for a pube in a haystack. The reason people react so strongly to women with pubic hair is that they are not used to seeing it; it’s not their normal. The less we see it, the ‘weirder’ it looks when we do.
One of the slightly more disturbing associations with pubic hair removal is hygiene. I hear that all the time; it’s just ‘cleaner’. Research carried out by University of California found that more than half of 3,000 women surveyed who groomed their pubic hair did so for hygiene reasons, despite evidence that shaving pubic hair can make the vagina more vulnerable to irritation and infection.31 So, I’ll say this only once: if the hair on your head doesn’t make your scalp stink, pubic hair will not make your vulva ‘dirty’.
Ashes depilatory cream advert that ran in Harper’s Bazaar, 1922. This advert taps into two major insecurities – avoiding embarrassment and looking attractive.
In recent years, there have been rumblings that the bush is on its way back. In 2014, American Apparel displayed mannequins with merkins in their New York flagship store. In 2016, society bible Tatler announced the ‘bush is back’. Caitlin Moran has declared that all women should have a ‘big, hairy muff’. Gwyneth Paltrow revealed that she ‘works a seventies vibe’. I suspect that as more and more celebrities ‘normalise’ the mighty muff, it will become acceptable once more. Pubic hair is frequently placed on the frontline of feminism; growing a new band member for ZZ Top in your pants is often seen as a fuzzy fuck you to a patriarchy that leaves you literally tearing your hair out. However, more broadly I hope this chapter has shown that fretting about the quality and quantity of your ‘sporran’ (1890) has a long, tangled history, and so too do the many painful and dangerous methods of hair removal that we’ve invented. But for most of our collective history, pubic hair was not only normal, but regarded as sexy, healthy and luscious. So whatever you want to do to yours, I promise, it’s all been done before.
* * *
1 Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Ismā’īl, and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, S.ah.īh. Al-Bukhārī (Riyadh-Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 1997), 7.777.
2 Didem Muallaaziz and Eyüp Yayci, ‘Pubic Hair Removal Practices in Muslim Women’, Basic and Clinical Sciences, 3 (2014), pp. 39–44, p. 39.
3 Victoria Sherrow, Encyclopaedia of Hair (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006), pp. 111–5.
4 ‘Aristophanes, Lysistrata, Line 130’, Perseus.Tufts.Edu, 2018
5 John G. Younger, Sex in the Ancient World from A to Z (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 75.
6 Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 179.
7 Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, c.1270–c.1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 45.
8 Monica Helen Green, The Trotula (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 175.
9 This quotation is found in an illuminated manuscript, and attributed to the fourteenth-century Dominican Friar, John of Freiberg. P. J. P. Goldberg, Women in Medieval English Society (Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1997), p. 90.
10 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales ed. by Jill Mann (London: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 137, lines 3722–49.
11 Recettario Novo Probatissimo a Molte Infirmita, E Etiandio Di Molte Gentilezze Utile A Chi Le Vora Provare (Venice, 1532).
12 Francisco Delicado and Bruno M. Damiani, Portrait of Lozana (Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1987), p. 72.
13 William Shakespeare, Venus And Adonis, Shakespeare.Mit.Edu, 2018
14 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare.Mit.Edu, 2018
15 William Shakespeare, ‘Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun’, Shakespeare-Online.Com, 2018
16 Richard Head, The Rogue Discovered, Or A Congratulatory Verse upon a Book Newly Published (A Piece Much Desired, and Long Expected) Called the English Rogue, A Witty Extravagant (London: Francis Kirkman, 1665), p. 67.
17 Megg Spenser, A Strange and True Conference Between Two Bawds, Damarose Page and Priss Fotheringham, during their Imprisonment in Newgate (London, 1660), p. 7.
18 John Wilmot, ‘The Farce of Sodom’, in Book of Sodom, ed. by Paul Hallam (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 230.
19 Thomas Middleton, ‘A Trick to Catch the Old One’, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 407.
20 Quoted in James T. Henke, Gutter Life and Language in the Early ‘Street’ Literature of England (West Cornwall: Locust Hill Press, 1988), p. 77.
21 Humphrey Mill, A Night’s Search, Discovering the Nature and Condition of Night-Walkers with their Associates (London: H. Shepard and W. Ley, 1640), p. 249.
22 Gordon Williams, A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature: A–F (London: Athlone Press, 1994), p. 877.
23 ‘Pubic Wigs’, Oxford Reference, 2018
24 John Wilmot, ‘The Farce of Sodom’, p. 230.
25 Alexander Smith and Arthur Lawrence Hayward, A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious High
waymen, Footpads, Shoplifts & Cheats of Both Sexes (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 217.
26 Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies or Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar for the Year, 1788 (London: H. Ranger, 1788), pp. 39, 79, 130.
27 John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (London: LBA, 2007), Kindle edition, p. 125.
28 Ibid., p. 11.
29 ‘Full Text Of “The Romance of Lust a Classic Victorian Erotic Novel”’, Archive.Org, 2017
30 John Ruskin and others, The Story of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais Told for the First Time in their Unpublished Letters (London: Murray, 1948), p. 220.
31 Tami S. Rowen and others, ‘Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States’, JAMA Dermatology, 152.10 (2016), 1106
Filthy Fannies
A History of Douching
Have you ever wondered why the vulva has specialised cleaning products when the penis can happily make do with a flannel? Your ‘pipkin’ (1654) is entirely self-cleaning and does not require you to go at it with a scrubbing brush and a bottle of ‘Twinkle-Twat’ to be happy and healthy. Trust me, it knows what it’s doing. But clearly, we do not trust ‘Mrs Laycock’ (1756) to keep a clean shop. The human body has numerous crevices that can get a bit whiffy from time to time, but this is rarely anything that regular bathing can’t keep at bay. While everyone is on the sniff for any kind of body odour, smells coming from ‘south of the border’ (1945) seem to hold a particular terror for those in possession of a vulva. We would much rather it smelled like an alpine forest than like a healthy human ‘madge’ (1785).
Anyone who grows up with a vulva soon learns it is a dirty place. No one ever sits us down at school and tells us this, but it’s a message that comes through loud and clear when we first trudge through the lexical fields of meat, seafood and general putrescence that characterises vulva slang. When we realise tampons and sanitary pads are sold as ‘feminine hygiene products’, we learn that periods are unhygienic. We overhear fish jokes, stinky finger jibes and watch people wince at the word ‘period’ and start to panic about our own bodies. Vaginal deodorants, magazine articles that recommend eating pineapple to ‘taste better’, and panty pads that will help you ‘stay fresh’ all tacitly reinforce the message that the ‘bearded oyster’ (1916) is some kind of a swamp that requires careful maintenance. Little wonder that the ‘vaginal odour’ business is booming and is projected to expand by 5 per cent every year from 2018 to 2022.1 But the fear of smelling bad has consequences far more serious than the occasional purchase of specialised lady wipes. Research carried out by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust in 2018 surveyed over 2,000 women and found that 38 per cent of their respondents didn’t attend their smear test because they had ‘concerns over smelling “normally”’.2 The shame around not having a vulva that smells like a bag of bon-bons is now so great that people are putting their lives at risk.
It’s a shame we have been so desperate to make pussy smell like potpourri, because all the research shows that the natural smell of your ‘flue’ (1620) is actually pretty important. Research published back in the 1970s found that on average a vulva contains 21,000 ‘odoriferous effluents’. The research concluded that ‘the olfactory signature of an individual is complex, highly individual and composed of many “mini odours”’.3 In other words, every vulva has its own signature scent that is completely unique to its owner. Other studies carried out on primates, rats and hamsters found that the odour in vaginal secretions causes a spike in testosterone in a nearby male, which plays a significant role in sexual arousal.4 Human vulvas produce and secrete a mixture of five fatty acids called ‘copulins’ – not to be confused with the northern chain of bakeries, Cooplands – which also smell pretty good. Copulin research is still quite new, but studies have already shown that men exposed to copulins experienced an increase in testosterone and after a whiff will rate themselves as more sexually attractive than men in the placebo group. What’s more, men exposed to copulins will rate women’s faces as being more attractive than men not exposed to copulins do.5 Why on earth would anyone want to wash this mind-melding superpower away? But sadly, water-boarding one’s ‘whim-wham’ (1602) in order to eliminate anything close to a smell has a very long history indeed.
A mid-fifteenth-century miniature showing a clyster (enema) in a pear-shaped anal douche.
Vaginal deodorants, soaps and wipes are quite late arrivals at the paranoid pussy party. The oldest method of swabbing the decks is douching. A douche is a device that squirts water into the vaginal cavity – or the anal cavity, if you prefer. At its most basic, a showerhead can be used as a douche, but more elaborate contraptions that come equipped with baking soda or alum to add to the water are readily available online. Despite evidence proving that vaginal douching is linked to ovarian and cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, bacterial vaginosis, infertility and thrush, as many as one in five women are regularly douching their vaginas for ‘hygiene’ reasons.6
Although douching can be traced back to the Ancient World, it really came into its own in the nineteenth century, when doctors sanctioned it as a reliable method of birth control.*
The douche was the first form of birth control widely advocated by physicians and embraced by women from all races and socioeconomic backgrounds, but this wasn’t just about preventing pregnancy. Douching has always been caught up in paranoid narratives about the dirty ‘daisy’ (1834).
In 1832, Charles Knowlton, a physician from New England, published a medical treatise advocating an antiseptic douche after sex as being ‘conducive to cleanliness’ and preventing pregnancy.7 This must have come as welcome news as Victorian doctors were already hell-bent on scrubbing out ‘cunny court’ (1604) for reasons of hygiene. In 1829, an article in The Lancet suggested women wash out their vaginas ‘six or eight times in the course of the day’ by syringing in tepid water to keep everything in tip-top condition.8 This kind of advice persisted throughout the nineteenth century. In 1880, for example, Dr Wing announced that ‘a woman should have a clean vagina as well as clean face and hands’ and recommended regular ‘vaginal injections’ of hot water and carbolic acid.9 In 1889, the Massachusetts Medical Society recommended douching women in labour so ‘that the woman may start with a clean vagina, not solely for the benefit of the woman but also for the benefit of the child’.10 And in 1895, The International Encyclopaedia of Surgery recommended a vaginal ‘injection, night and morning, of one gallon of hot water (110° F), followed by two quarts of a solution of bichloride of Mercury’ to treat venereal disease.11
The Victorians took their douches very seriously, and in 1843 Parisian doctor Maurice Eguisier (1813–1851) unveiled the Irrigateur Eguisier, a pressure-controlled cylindrical pump and hose made from metal and porcelain. The Irrigateur Eguisier was produced in a variety of sizes and designs. Many were beautifully painted with delicate scenes of flora and fauna, which must have been something of a comfort as you squirted cold water and carbolic acid up your chuff.
In 1866, the Obstetric Society of London held an exhibition of historical gynaecological instruments. The event was hugely successful, and the Obstetric Society published a catalogue describing all the instruments that had been on show, as well as the most up-to-date instruments used in obstetrics at the time – including douches.12 Viewing the other contraptions on offer, one can see why Maurice Eguisier’s lightweight and portable Irrigateur Eguisier proved to be so popular. One of the most cumbersome douches in the catalogue was designed by John Wiess and looks like a table, holding a large rubber balloon of water. The user would sit down on the balloon, forcing the water into the attached pipe and hose. J. Lazarewitch from Russia, meanwhile, had designed a clunky cylindrical metal douche, which had a sieve at the bottom to prevent anything undesirable entering the vagina (beyond an enormous Russian douche
shaped like a fire hydrant, that is).13
Douches such as this one, although unreliable, were one of the most common methods of contraception in this era. The cylindrical metal supply vessel has a pump mechanism which controls the passage of rinsing fluid to the hose, 1912.
Douching with water is damaging enough, but in order to prevent pregnancy, doctors started adding all manner of chemicals to douche water in order to kill off the sperm. Charles Knowlton, for example, recommended douching with ‘a solution of sulphate of zinc, of alum, pearl-ash, or any salt that acts chemically on the semen’.14 In 1898, the Monthly Retrospect of Medicine & Pharmacy lists the following ‘fluids to be used for vaginal douching’ to prevent conception: alum, acetate of lead, chloride, boracic acid, carbolic acid, iodine, mercury, zinc and Lysol disinfectant.15
Lysol brand disinfectant was introduced in 1889 to control a severe cholera epidemic in Germany.16 But its antiseptic qualities were soon put to other uses, and by the 1920s Lysol was being aggressively marketed as a vaginal douching agent. Birth control was a highly controversial issue in the 1920s and certainly not something to be openly advertised. By focusing on the issue of ‘feminine hygiene’ within marriage in their advertising campaign, Lysol could raise the subject of sex and intimacy without ever having to use the word ‘sex’. Soon, a product that was used to scrub out bins, drains and toilets was being used to clean vulvas as well. One advert featured in Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1920 recommended using Lysol to sanitise ‘toilets, closets, cuspidors, garbage cans, and places where flies gather’, and goes on to point out that ‘women find Lysol Disinfectant also invaluable for personal hygiene’. The suggestion that a cleaning product used to clear blocked drains was needed to douche out the ‘nether eye’ (1902) can have left the public in no doubt: vulvas stink.