BUSH WHACKED

Rachel Johnson explains why so many

women are going all the way and saying no to pubic hair

ACHTUNG! The subject of this piece is not something one wants to read about over breakfast. Those of a tender, Ruskinesque disposition, children and the fastidious may wish to turn the page.

I will not beat about the bush. The vogue for the Brazilian bikini wax — the most severe pubic-grooming technique yet — has been worrying me for some time. Why, I wanted to know, in a society where pre-pubescent girls are encouraged to pretend that they are grown-up, are their mothers and big sisters going to such lengths to ape the silky-smooth little girls that they will never be again?

Let's look first at the girls-pretendingto-be-women syndrome. There were predictable murmurings of disapproval when Argos, the catalogue retailer, launched its Tammy range of bras and knickers for girls, a fuss that grew louder with the arrival on our screens of GMTV's funsized version of Popstars (Tot Stars, open to tiddlers as young as five).

The problem with the Argos kit was not an aesthetic one, even though the tweeny lingerie sets came in a nasty, synthetic, pink satin. The problem was the design.

These were padded bras and G-strings for girls as young as nine, and the crotch of the panties was a little heart bearing the legend 'I love me'. Maureen Freely in the Times was adamant: 'I am not going to let my ten-year-old buy any.'

Of course, our young daughters secretly like nothing better than to be trashy in pink, but the volleys of concern duly ricocheted between the women columnists of our national broadsheets. Joan Smith in the Independent pointed out that this country has the highest rate of under-age pregnancy in Western Europe, and that our culture simultaneously eroticises children and lives in terror of child-abusers. It is hard not to recall this when 12-year-old Daisy from S Club Juniors gyrates in cutoff jeans for the band's video,' she writes.

Well, I think that we can all agree with Joan that society — in this case, the clothing, make-up, music and entertainment industries — conspires towards the onset of precocious pubescence in our children. And. yes, we all know by now what we think about the Pretty Baby/Lolita syndrome, where a knowing 12-year-old can scrub up to look scarily foxy.

But I long for someone to explain to me why it is not OK for our daughters to doll up like Madonna and Britney, but it is acceptable — almost compulsory, in fact — for grown women to pretend that down there nature's clock stopped at around the age of nine?

If you have a Brazilian or Playboy wax, hot wax is applied to your nether regions and — look away now if you don't want to know what happens — all hair is removed from front and back, except for a very narrow 'landing strip' left airside, as it were.

Brazilian aficionados also often ask for pubic topiary: on St Valentine's Day this year, apparently, many women asked for heart-shaped outcrops, pierced by Cupid's arrow. Another popular pattern is the Playboy bunny in silhouette, complete with floppy ears. But if you ask for a Hollywood wax, which is just as popular as the Brazilian, this is code for Everything Must Go.

I return to my point, though, about cultural confusion. A few months back, Zoe Heller in the Daily Telegraph wrote a terribly funny account of her own depilation in a New York salon. Yet the only questioning note struck was by Richard Littlejohn of the Sun. 'How, how,' he complained, 'could you give Columnist of the Year to someone who writes about minge hair?'

Well, many will think that he is spot-on, but I think that depilation is an important subject. The Brazilian wax started on the beaches of Rio, where young ladies disport themselves in gossamer bikinis known as fila dental. But why has it taken off in the cold, grey, buttoned-up climes of the Anglophone world? Why am I told, in a slightly bullying way, that I really should have one every time I go to have my eyelashes tinted?

My suspicion is that devotees of the Brazilian, Hollywood and Playboy waxes are pandering to one or both of two tendencies: the paederastic and the pornographic. 'Think porn star. Think pain. But also think fanatical devotion,' says the writer Christina Valhouli of her trip to the J Sisters salon in midtown Manhattan.

You don't know about the J Sisters? Jocely, Jonie, Joyce, Janea, Jussara, Juracy and Judseia Padilha from Brazil are credited with starting the whole thing off. There is a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow on the wall of the salon, signed by Gwynnie herself, saying, 'You changed my life!' Everyone who goes to the J Sisters mentions this. What they don't always own up to is Christina's reaction to her newly gleaming chassis: 'I feel like a 12-year-old,' she warbles excitedly, tut a naughty, Loin(' 12year-old. This is hot.' Another celebrity endorsement comes from the actress Kirstie Alley, who enthused, 'It feels like a baby's butt, only all over.'

Well, that's both porno and paedo so far. But I was still not satisfied. There must be a good reason why women submit to an intimacy that would make a hardened gynaecologist blush. And, yes, the answer is sex. Here it is from the horse's mouth.

'Makes you sexy,' says Jonice, the youngest J sister. 'Makes you fashion. When I don't have my bikini wax, I don't feel like to have sex with my husband. I feel dirty. And even himself say, "Try a bikini wax!" 1 feel free. I feel clean. I feel sensuous even when I take a shower.'

Phew! My beautician Natalie Garber from Academy Spa tells me that up to a quarter of women who have their bikini line waxed go the whole hog. She says that a lot of women have got the idea from watching Sex and the City. Australians and Americans are the most fanatical waxers. Only two of her four therapists will perform the treatment. Academy's Pei-Chuen, a dainty Malaysian, tells me that 'a lot, a lot' of her clients are asking for it. 'Pregnant women, women of 50, all woman have it done,' she says.

The baby's-bottom look is more crosscultural than I had imagined. A Muslim mother in my son's class told me that in the Lebanon it is common for women to depilate themselves completely on their wedding night to be completely clean for the wedding'. A Jordanian confirmed that Arab women are comfortable with the idea, and a Jamaican friend said that the Brazilian wax is common in the sun-soaked Caribbean, where girls bare almost all on the beach.

Then I asked my friend whether she'd ever had one. 'Lady, that's my situation down there,' she growled. 'That's a private situation, there.' An English friend living in Berlin told me that every other woman in the pool and the gym is fully shaved or waxed. 'It feels as if everyone else is in short skirts. and I'm still wearing a crinoline and no one's told me we're no longer in the Victorian Age,' she reports.

So, as you see, I have consulted widely. I have conducted interviews (including one with a young Venezuelan male, who told me that the Hollywood was his preference). I have, though, stopped short of taking up Pei-Chuen's oft-repeated invitation to experience it for myself.

Despite this omission, my conclusion is this: it is a porno-thing, as a brief glimpse of Playboy will confirm (where, I am told, the models are all sporting the Playboy trim); it

is a paedo-thing; it's a thong-thing; so, basically, it's a sex-thing. Surprise!

But fashions change, and the pendulum could swing back. The English-speaking world is having a bare-arsed South American moment, but next year. I suppose, we could see a return to real men, the Gloria Steinern look, and the odd tuft of body hair.