In a world where hardcore porn is only ever one click away from your fingers, it seems funny – almost quaint, even – that a picture of a lady showing her pubic hair should cause such controversy. Last week, in an attempt to stop slut-shaming, Amber Rose – model and founder of the Slutwalk events – posted a picture of herself on Instagram that featured her reclining on a flight of stairs in little more than a black bikini top and some body oil. Her bottom half was completely naked, revealing – shock! Horror! – a groin covered in hair.
No French, Brazilian or Hollywood for our Amber, instead she went au naturel in an attempt to bring back the bush. It wasn’t long before the picture was deleted by moderators at Instagram, where it’s completely fine to post pictures of yourself as long as they are filtered or photoshopped, but heaven forbid you put up a picture that shows you as God intended.
Predictably, the likes of Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins reacted with tweets and columns attacking Amber. The gist of which seemed to be, ‘Do what you want, love, but don’t try and pass it off as feminism.’
Amber retaliated with a picture of Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, completely naked bar a woman covering his groin (below). Did Piers have a problem with this, she wondered?
No, responded the Good Morning Britain presenter, because Adam was doing it for charity. Amber, clearly, was only doing it for self-promotion (as if posing naked for a charity wasn’t also, in some small way, an attempt at hitting the headlines).
But petty social media point-scoring is not
really the problem here. (And gosh, isn’t it exhausting?) It’s the policing of pubic hair that really bothers me. The fact that Amber felt the need to post a picture of her groin speaks volumes in itself – why is it we are shocked by images of something perfectly natural? We all know that, thanks to the ready availability of online porn, teenage girls are now expected to be hair-free down there. Young men are so used to seeing images of silky-smooth women going at it that they’d be forgiven for thinking that the female of the species only has hair follicles on her head. It’s even worse when a woman has the temerity to turn up at a film premiere or glitzy party having failed to shave her armpits or legs. Look, say the gossip websites, this fully mature woman has hair that all fully mature women have if they don’t remove it through waxing strips, razors or skin-burning depilatory cream!
Personally, I wish Amber had gone further and posted a picture of the full, untrimmed bush, which is what I generally favour, because why are you looking at my groin while I’m swimming anyway? What’s wrong with my cleavage, which is where men normally look? I gave up waxing my lady parts when, two days before my due date, I found myself booking into a salon so I wouldn’t scare the midwives. What was this madness in my mind? Why should I pay to be tortured with hot wax once every six weeks just so I could look a bit more like a porn star? Who are we doing this for, exactly? Why is hair so damn offensive on your groin but not on your head or your eyes? And if a bloke wants you completely naked down there, do you really want to be with him anyway? This is what I would say to any man who demands I get rid of it all: why don’t you first pop down to the nearest beauty salon and see what having all your pubic hair removed feels like for yourself? As I say to my husband: love me, love my bush. So far, there’ve been no complaints.
READ MORE: Inspiring Teen Posts Body Hair Pictures To Twitter To Highlight Double Standard