Dear Ugly, I am a thirtysomething, straight, cisgender woman who is recently divorced. I’ve started dating again and I already feel completely lost when it comes to how I should be “styling” my pubic hair. With that said, the last few weeks I have been receiving ads on Instagram to laser my bum hair… I have multiple questions. Is that safe? Should I buy a laser hair remover so I can do this in the privacy of my home? Is my anus supposed to look like a naked mole rat? Are women actually doing this? – Lost In The Bush From one thirtysomething divorcee getting targeted ads about at-home asshole hair removal to another, let me start by saying I see you. I hear you. I am you. You and I came of age in the early 2000s: the era of low-rise jeans, whale-tail thongs and belly shirts. Girls were going wild, Carrie Bradshaw was getting a Brazilian wax, and internet porn was at our Hard Candy-painted fingertips. Yet for all those montes pubis sightings, the only female pubes I saw as a young teen – not counting a cartoon in The Care & Keeping of You, that classic “body book for girls” – were my own. How could I not internalize the idea that hair down there was unacceptable, unattractive, unsexy? How could I blame boys for feeling the same? Hairlessness had become the norm. I soon traded my burgeoning bush for a razor-burned bikini line dotted with spots of dried blood and ingrown hairs. Ah, yes. Much sexier. Millennials were hardly the first to be shamed for their short and curlies, though. “Body hair has long been seen as unclean and uncivilized as far back as the Roman Empire,” says Dr Michael Reed, a California-based OB-GYN known as the Cosmetic Gyn. “Men and women removed body hair and pubic hair [with tweezers] to mitigate infestations of lice, while wealthy people in old times could afford things like soap and hot baths, so they had the luxury of shaving. This made being hairless a sign of being upper class.” The trend cycled. Pubic-hair removal was considered “a non-necessity by most Europeans and Americans” by the 18th century. By the 19th century, it was back in style thanks to a new safety razor from Gillette. The free love movement of the 1960s and 70s freed the bush once more, then the 80s and 90s brought a grooming boom. “Especially over the last 10 years, more than 80% of women groom their pubic hair” to some degree, Reed notes, and there are ever more methods to choose from: trimming, shaving, waxing, sugaring, depilatories, epilators, lasers and more. Not all hair removal is sex-driven. Plenty of people prune their pubes for sensory purposes. The practice can also be part of the performance of class, cleanliness, femininity, youth, beach etiquette, yada yada yada. But what I love about your question, Lost In The Bush, is that you’re very clear on your why: you’re not “doing it for you”. You’re doing it because men will be seeing your various holes, and you want those holes to look hot (or at least average). Now to your questions. First: is the at-home bum-hair removal device you’ve seen on Instagram safe, and should you use it on yourself at home?