Plucked

Awhile back I discovered that my 14-year-old son Hugh had been exploring porn sites on the Web. It didn't take any fabulous powers of detection: he printed out pictures and then left them in the printer. On his dad's desk. I'm not really all that well-versed (well-visualized?) in porn, so I found the pictures fascinating. First, the absolutely enormous boobs. Compared to these women, even Barbie looks flat-chested. But it was the plucked crotches that really got me. I couldn't help but think of John Ruskin. A Victorian artist, writer, and critic, Ruskin was so shocked by the sight of his wife's pubic hair that he couldn't consummate his marriage. Up to that point, he only knew the naked female body through art and--think about it--most nudes, at least most nudes up to the mid-19th century, do not, as a rule, have pubes. So, when my husband came in and I showed him the porn pics and he asked me what I thought we should do, I said, "First, we make sure Hugh knows that real adult women have pubic hair." Keith found this a bizarre response, but it seemed to me an important parental responsibility. We don't want to send him out into the world unprepared.

Then I told Lori, my pedicure lady, about it. And Lori said, "Oh, no need to worry. Everyone gets the full "Brazilian" now." Everyone? Sigh. Once again, a standard I didn't even know about, let alone know that I was failing to meet it. So, like, all this time my gynecologist has been thinking, "Ewww! It's that hairy one again"-?