Well, well, well. It looks like the ladies at The Frisky aren’t the only thing getting fatter this winter. The amount of different bylines is expanding in size as well! I’ve counted at least three new authors (oh my God, they’re terrible) during my most recent scan of The Most Important Women’s Periodical On The ‘Net. There’s a chick named Aspen who’s most recent post — I’m not fucking with you — is about how she’s so in love with her own looks she actually believes people on the street mistake her for a TV actress. It’s the most masturbatory blog post I’ve read since all the last time I stopped to read my own writing. But at least I don’t pepper my blog with photos of myself. That would just be too over-the-top. Aspen needs a nose job before anyone will think she’s attractive. There’s another new author named Josephine Ledger (no photo on her profile, no Facebook to stalk just yet…) and her three articles are titled “Girl Talk: My Brother Is Getting Married,” “Dealbreaker: He’s Saving Himself For Marriage” and “Girl Talk: I Don’t Like My Brother’s Fiancee.”
Uh…am I just reading too much into this or is there something really weird about Josephine Ledger’s relationship with her brother that might require closer examination?
Today Jo-Jo penned a new blog entry that either has nothing at all to do with how much she wants to murder her brother’s fiancee and fuck the shit out of him, or is a thinly veiled puff piece about her vagina intended specifically to inform her brother of all its gory (and they are gory) details. It’s called “Hey Bro: I’m Saving My Pubic Hair For You.”
No, just kidding. It’s called “The Soapbox: Why I’m Keeping My Pubic Hair.”
Isn’t the Frisky supposed to be a website for women? Do women really care about articles like this one? I mean, I used to subscribe to Maxim when I was in high school but I don’t ever recall reading anything about dudes’ genital grooming habits. I’m pretty sure it was mostly interviews with attractive women and sports and guns. Why on earth would a woman care that another woman is “keeping [her] pubic hair”?
“When pubic hair first appeared on my adolescent body, I was mortified. I wanted it gone as quickly as it sprouted. It just felt, for lack of a better word, bizarre to have it there. But at the age of 11, waxing was not an option. Well, maybe it is nowadays, but in the late ’80s that was not something that happened.”
First of all, I don’t know rules about peddling child porn, but can republishing a quote about an 11-year old’s vagina land me in jail? I feel dirty even reading that paragraph, and it’s the opening salvo of Josephine Ledger’s 4th article for her new employer(s)! Think about it for a moment: That’d be like me going to work for GQ and, after three creepy editorials littered with references to subconscious sexual desires for a family member, I submit an article about the specifics of my cock, between the ages 11-28. Hey Amelia, control your writers, please?
Jo-Jo’s self-consciousness rears its ugly vagina when, in college, a boy goes down on her for the first time (you poor, poor late bloomer) and comes up with a snagglepube caught in the back of his throat. Most of us get this uncomfortable exchange out of the way in high school (for me it was with a girl a year younger than me when I was a junior, and I didn’t really give a fuck about the pube because I was giving and getting head from a chick). Assuming this happened for Josephine when she was a college freshman (in 1996) that would now make her…33 years old? I’m two or three paragraphs into this story and I feel like a 22-year-old, doe-eyed J-school grad should be writing this, not someone five years my senior.
Oh man, choice quote: “It was my mother who took me to get my first wax. Bikini line only. She suggested that I get it done along with my mustache.” I think I just found my answer why Jo-Jo’s byline doesn’t include a photo. She continues, “It hurt so bad I cried. I am a dark-haired girl, with a coarse carpet to match the drapes.” Does that mean she has werewolf-ian eyebrows? Is she one of those girls that can grow sideburns? I dated one of those in high school, but she couldn’t keep them a secret for long. I dumped her, of course.
As I read about Jo’s first brazilian wax and the horrifying details of the process and the immediate aftermath, I’m pretty much gagging on her invisible discarded pubes. I’ve dated someone who worked in a waxing studio and I never heard shit like this happening to anyone. Look, Jo, I’m sorry that you’re an idiot who didn’t bother to research different waxes and waxing techniques before you scheduled an appointment to have your most delicate parts tweaked, but that’s no excuse for you to take it out on people who do by getting all holier-than-thou about your dense forest of pubes.
Our exchange really made me think: Why are more women going bald? Is it really for us? Are we doing it (even subconsciously) because it’s easier for men to deal with us that way? That’s not an acceptable reason to me. I know that most of us shave our legs and our armpits. But pubic hair is different. It’s more closely related to sex, and our sexuality.”
Are you kidding me? Every girl I’ve ever been intimate with (discounting one-night stands, where the intimacy extends only to sexual intercourse) has talked about grooming as a hygienic choice. Not a single one said they were doing it for me. I can think of one example of when a girl specifically told me that something she did was for me. Every other girl, from that high school girl with sideburns to one of my most recent partners, has brought up the hygiene angle. So either they’re all liars, all of ‘em, or you’re a moron. You even answer your own question: “I know that most of us shave our legs and our armpits. But pubic hair is different.” How is it different? Because of it’s location on your body? That’s ridiculous. In fact, it’s probably more ridiculous that women shave their legs than it is their vaginas. Do some research. Harper’s Bazaar, 1915. An article about underarm hair being “unsightly” sets off a cultural firestorm and women begin to perceive underarm hair as evil. Just like how showing “sideboob” became a cultural phenomenon in recent years. Just like how the popularity of models weighing 40 pounds usurped the long-held belief that full-bodied women were the gold standard for attractiveness. There’s that hygiene aspect for underarms and vaginas I alluded to earlier, but if this “really got [you] thinking” (please don’t think too hard) why not think about why a woman shaving her legs is way more unnatural than the other two areas. Again, more research would teach you why and how these practices gained popularity. Are you really that dumb that you think waxing your vagina is that far removed from maintaining bare underarms and legs? My God, you’re retarded.
It takes one more paragraph for you to reach the conclusion that everybody already knows: a vagina is a vagina, and dudes are lucky to have but one vagina in their life so they’re not going to complain no matter how it’s presented. And it’s true. From disgusting distended labia to gnarly afro-bushes, there’s a guy for vaginas from all walks of life. And since you wasted several hundred words exploring the (very much hollow) caverns of your mind in search of a reason why it’s okay to keep your pubes, don’t you think at this point your article is irrelevant? You’ve basically reduced your article from a study on the history of women’s body hair to a few paragraphs from your sexual autobiography that’s so poorly written it might as well receive the Bad Sex In Non-Fiction Award for 2011.
The most hilarious passage from Josephine’s article: “Female sexuality is such a complex thing, because it’s so tightly intertwined with the male gaze. Even for lesbians.”
Oh my God…the laughter…I can’t stop the laughter. This is the best trainwreck in The Frisky’s history since that time Simcha wrote about why we’re all bad at dating. Just kidding. All “The Frisky” articles are trainwrecks. That’s why they’re so much fun to dissect!
Learn to write, ladies.
Von Himmel – Sunspots [MP3]
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