On Shaving

Early last month, something super-hot happened. In fairness, this has been a year of super-hot stuff happening (seriously, 2015 will live long in the erotic memory), but this was squirmy and sexy and different enough to be bookmarked and filed away in its own special mental folder…despite being, on the face of it, really fucking simple, and – superficially at least – not overtly sexual.

Context is everything, I guess. I’ve written before about shaving (or being shaved) as a kink – in a short story in April this year, and as part of one of my earliest Sinful Sunday posts – but until recently it was something I’d never explored with a partner in person. Not really. When that changed though, it changed in a big way…

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Wielding an old-fashioned straight razor and perched on the bench seat in my shower, Malin James slowly, carefully (and with unbroken concentration) stripped away all the hair above and around my twitching cock.

She had flown over from San Francisco a few days earlier, and this was just one of many things on our mutual ‘to do’ list. On one level it fed into a broader, more general D/S dynamic, due to the control she’d have over my body at the time, but it was also something that I’d initially raised as part of that basic, longstanding sexual fantasy.

I flinched at first, as Malin unfolded the razor, but I trust her implicitly and she knows that. She also knows how that trust gets built and reinforced; calmly, she skimmed the blade across her own arm, to show that it couldn’t do any damage.

All I had to do was stand naked in front of her, shivering on the inside while doing my best to remain stock-still. Everything about her radiated control, from the slight frown on her face to the way she pressed her fingers against my hip to hold me in place. I looked down at her lissom body as she massaged shaving gel into my skin, only then to lift it clear with deft, deliberate flicks of the sharp, cold steel, until I was completely bare. Leaning in, she kissed the base of my cock in a way that almost made my knees buckle, and I knew then that it was definitely time to get out of the shower…

I’m not going to write about what happened next, because that isn’t really the point of this post: it’s enough to say that we were both very happy with the results. For days afterwards, I found myself sliding fingers down under the waistband of my jeans to stroke the smooth, hairless skin – on more than one occasion, the resulting tingle was enough to have me stroking other things too.

Why did that whole process turn me on so much? Why does writing about it turn me on again now? And does it really matter either way? Let’s come back to that last one.

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Back in September I asked people to send me all the sex questions they’d like answered from a male perspective. I got close to a dozen responses, and one of my 2016 resolutions is to make sure I address all of them in some way before the year is out. To kick-start that process, I thought I’d tackle this query from a Twitter follower, @emerlee__, who wanted to know what guys think about female pubic hair…

“Do men truly care/not care about how a woman chooses to groom down there? Be that not at all, or somewhat, or completely?

I have my own preferences, of course, of how I like my cunt to look but I still find myself nervous when the likelihood of first time sex with a new partner arises. I almost feel I need to somehow (sneakily, or not so sneakily probably) find out *his* preferred look and adapt accordingly before things go down, so to speak…”

Ok, the short answer is yes, there are men out there who clearly do care. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. ‘Care’ is a bit of a slippery word in this context, but sure, we all have a vested interest in what we’re nuzzling up against when we kiss, hug, or go down on a sexual partner. Those are all incredibly intimate acts, which demand (or induce) an instinctive physical response, and whether you’re male or female it’s natural both to hold and express the preferences associated with them.

Equally, there’s nothing wrong with accommodating, discussing or negotiating those preferences when they’re expressed by someone else. There’s no such thing as a perfect partner, after all, and it doesn’t make sense to grumble about other people unless you’re also willing to recognize that fact in yourself. The recent Marie Claire article on pre-sex grooming attracted a lot of criticism for its attempt to universalise/standardise female behaviour, and with good reason (crass, tone-deaf, simplistic, etc etc); but at the same time I have no real problem with the idea of wanting to impress a sexual partner, whether that involves nice underwear, make-up, cologne, or just some killer facial/pubic hair.

The key point is this though: never, ever do something that makes you unhappy or uncomfortable, just to impress another person. If he ‘cares’ more about your pubic hair than he does about you, ask yourself whether he’s really worth another second of your time. Why does he care, and how does he articulate that? Is his preference genuine or gendered? Has he talked to you about it, or has he tried to impose it upon you? Does he respect the fact that it’s your body, not his?

Those are the questions you ought to be asking about him. Of yourself, you need only ask this: how much do I care? Because honestly, for a lot of people the answer will be “fuck it, I don’t give two shits.” And that gives you flexibility. When I was sketching out this post, I started thinking about it in graphical terms. Relationships are about compromise, after all, which in this case is best explained by two fairly broad axes:

• Cost of conformity (AKA “how much do I care?”)
• Level of partner satisfaction (AKA “how much does s/he care?”)

A quick example. Five years ago, I was getting ready to move out of my flat in Oxford. I was seeing someone at the time, and she encouraged me to use it as an opportunity to throw out a bunch of clothes I no longer needed. Inevitably, our definitions of ‘need’ varied wildly. Two items in particular drew her attention: one, a pair of skintight salmon pink jeans; the other, my fuchsia Ralph Lauren corduroy trousers. She hated the salmon jeans and thought the fuchsia cords were ridiculous; I was fairly indifferent to the former, but loved the latter with a fierce, possessive passion. Outcome: one went into the bin, while the other came with me to Swindon, Warsaw, and ultimately the wardrobe I can see from my bed right now.

Plot those on a graph, add a few other things we bickered about, and you have something like this:

She thought it was weird that I stored – and enjoyed – gay porn on my laptop. She’d have preferred me not to have facial hair. She thought I should throw out underwear the second a hole appeared. Left to my own devices, none of these things would have changed. Again though, relationships are about compromise, so of course I started to weigh them up in my head, and this is roughly where I ended up:

In reality we all do those mental calculations, even if it’s on a subconscious level. What’s important to me? What’s important to her? How important is it? Do I think she has a right to care? We use the data gathered to help us figure out when to acquiesce/conform/compromise and when to stick to our guns. Like it or not, “love me for who I am or don’t love me at all” will only take us so far in life; at some point, when we’re comfortable in ourselves and our relationships, we will all change something about our appearance or behaviour in order to make a partner happy, and there’s NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Nothing at all.

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So @emerlee__, I say this to you: some men will care about your pubic hair. Some won’t. Some men will care far more about their own pubic hair than they will yours, because that’s just how they’re wired. All of that is irrelevant though, until you’ve decided how much you care about it (and them!). If you see body hair as a political battleground, you’re probably not bothered by some random fuckboy’s opinion. If you have a strong aesthetic preference, perhaps that will matter most; alternatively you might not give a crap either way, at which point it becomes one of those things you can start to play around with a bit, whether in a sexual context or not. Each of those is a valid position to take, and you shouldn’t let yourself be shamed for coming at it from your own, personal angle.

My pubic hair is 4/5 important to me. Keeping it short makes me feel good, and having it shaved made me realise what a strong, visceral role it can play in my sexual expression. Once I’m sure my partner respects my own preferences, I’m far more likely to incorporate hers into what I do with it.

With her pubic hair, I can honestly say that as long as she’s happy, so am I; fully shaving/waxing, or rocking some sort of landing strip, can make oral a bit easier, but there’s not much different either way, and it’s far more important to me that the person I’m in bed with is comfortable and relaxed in her own body/appearance.

Of course, I can’t speak for other guys, and in this case I really wouldn’t want to. As I said, some will care and others won’t. However, if any of them see it as a relationship dealbreaker – or even a sexual one – I’d suggest you might want to view that as a red flag and act accordingly.

First though, figure out how much you care, and what role different types of grooming play in your own pleasure. As I learnt this year, you’ll reap far more value from that than you will worrying about what other people think, or how they see you.