Long, beautiful hair.

That woman's husband sounds like a real prick. And it isn't just the actual thing, "his spiky sharpness sticking into me (her), my (her) naked puffy vagina” - that makes him come across as a jerk, if we’re assuming the narrator is a reliable source. He’s an adulterer (and continues to be an adulterer even after the German therapist, between her faux-understanding passive-aggressive posturing, suggested the wife do a pretty one-sided ‘compromise’ by letting her husband shave the vagina for her - is it really a compromise if the woman still has to see “a little blood in the bath tub” or feel “screaming red bumps” or deal with crass male hands clipping something even the narrator’s empathic hands have difficulty cutting?), self-centered, and doesn’t seem to care much for the emotional or spiritual side of marriage if he has no guilt “screwing around.” While the physical nor sexual component of marriage shouldn’t be ignored, marriage is as much mired in emotions as it is in the sheets. Comparisons can even be made to Marie & the Dominican's relationship from “Between the Pool and the Gardenias.” The narrator does use the words “make love” to describe sex between her and her husband, suggesting emotional attachment to him, regardless of whether the husband considers it lovemaking, sex, or fucking. Judging by the fact that he tells the psychologist his wife doesn’t “please him sexually”, he most likely doesn’t see their physical relationship as lovemaking, but rather just sex. They’re both seemingly on entirely different emotional planes. However, with all of this pushed aside, we don’t really know whether the narrator is all that interested in (she does seem to be a little ennui-crippled but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt here) the emotional or spiritual aspects of marriage, either, and it’s equally likely she’s just as shallow as him, so it is possible the husband isn’t the only target worthy of criticism.

As you can probably tell, stories like this one make me feel quite irritated, especially because of how truthful they from my experiences. I’ve known guys just like her husband, who are absolutely repulsed by the sight of any hair on a woman’s body; it isn’t limited to just genitalia, either. Even just a little peach fuzz on the arms turned them off. It’s not something an idealistic, naive kid like me really understands: love should bypass any barriers of hirsuteness, correct? However, what I find most interesting about the first monologue is the narrator’s observation in the first paragraph. The juxtaposition of the narrator “feeling puffy and exposed and like a little girl” after shaving her vagina while the husband is “excited” whenever he got to make love to her bald genitals. The narrator is making a pretty stark comparison to pedophilia here, in that her husband likes a vagina to look unrealistically bald and naked and pure (he even describes the narrator’s unshaven vagina as “dirty” looking) like a child’s, and I can see where she’s coming from here. We do live in a society which tends to oversexualize young girls to the point where even twelve year olds are getting routine bikini waxes. Although no real research has been done on the connection between men, pedophilia, and pubic hair (or lack thereof) preference, a Salon article on waxing makes a pretty pointed observation about how most pornographic actresses now are getting bikini waxes due to the fact that it makes them look younger, more youthful, and in some cases, even underage. Since the mainstream pornography industry is a reflection of the times, and it projects the majority preference, it’s an interesting connection to be made, and one that I feel should be looked into more. At the very least, waxing - especially amongst the young, like in this MSNBC article which describes a mother arranging a waxing appointment for her eight year old daughter and the reluctance of the cosmetician - adds a whole extra dimension to the pressures with body image many pre-teens and teens feel.