If you routinely take a pair of scissors or a razor to your pubic hair and hack away at it while listening to a podcast, this one’s for you.
A study published in the Guardian recently revealed that over quarter of adults who say they groom their pubic hair have suffered from injuries while doing so, from cuts to burns to rashes. The study was originally published in JAMA Dermatology, and was the result of an observation made by Benjamin Breyer, a urologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Breyer noticed that a large number of adults coming to the emergency room with injuries to their undercarriage hurt themselves by trying to groom themselves. Inspired and perhaps confused by how this was happening, he co-authored a study that revealed that an awful lot of us trimming the snatch with whatever’s handy in the bathroom are not being as careful as we could.
According to the Guardian, cuts accounted for 61 percent of the injuries; an alarming 23 percent were burns, related most likely to “waxing or the use of hair-removal creams.” Even worse, 2.5 percent of those injuries were actually serious, and required stitches or “the draining of abscesses” which makes me want to fucking die.
A word of advice if you want to weed-whack your basement without causing grievous injury to yourself or others: be careful! Watch what you’re doing. Don’t put Nair on your vagina because someone told you that they consistently Nair their bikini line without issue. Watch it with the scissors. Be mindful of both sets of labia. If all of this stresses you out even more and you’re committed to having a smooth, hairless vag, pay a professional.