What are bush’s politics?

Yours,

Politically Confused

Joe: I have a dream that all bushes are created equal. In the bush-topia of my fantasies, any manicuring (or lack thereof) would be perfectly seductive to everybody. But unfortunately, PC, we live in a fiercely judgmental world. When navigating our partner’s “private” places, things can get a little hairy.

For me, bush politics centers on two factors: your own comfort and your partner’s desires. While your lover may be dreaming of freshly powdered Brazilians, waxing might be too painful, too expensive, or simply too unpleasant for your tastes. Conversely, even if you’re eager to shave, your partner might prefer a more organic bush. As the wholly mediocre actor Colin Farrell put it in a Playboy interview (I read it for the articles!), it’s all “just different flavors of the same lollipop.”

For this Hardy, avoiding gender specific language isn’t just some “postmodern” bullshit. Many men wax, shave, or trim their pubes; some even rock the bald eagle. While our patron saint Dan Savage attributes this to the gay male overlords of our culture, I’m not so sure. One close friend shaves his sack because his girlfriend won’t play with it otherwise. Another Hardy associate shaves bare to compensate for what he perceives as disappointing size (the theory being that the mountain appears taller without the foliage).

Although I tend to avoid such heavy manscaping (previous experiences with accidental, overzealous trimming have left me feeling like a shaved poodle), there is at least one uncontestable reason to keep things neat and clean: fellatio and cunilingus. Nobody—least of all Brunonians—enjoys pulling hairs from their mouth after a bout of oral sex. It reminds them of eating at the Ratty.

Finally, Frank and I had one of our more heated debates about whether pubes are political. He sided with Slavoj Žižek, who writes in “Fantasy as a Political Category,” that “Even the most intimate attitude towards one’s body is used to make an ideological statement.” But fuck ideology. And fuck you too, Frank! The only statement your partner is making if they accommodate your desires by shaping their pubic hair for you is that they care about you. And that, readers, should be enough.

FRANK: Well, then, Joe—I didn’t realize we were making this into a thing. Without straying too far from the bush or indulging our less savory brotherly quibbles, I should say that as far as I understand Marx and his critics (which is not very well), telling your partner you care through your pubes is a condition subject to Ideology because it is a culturally conditioned behavior and signifier (isn’t that right all of our political-theory leaning readers?).

But that’s not really important. The important thing about bush—and by bush you did mean pubic hair, didn’t you, PC, or did you just direct your question to the wrong columnists?—is that each one is special and unique, like a snowflake. While the hegemonic cultural forces of the 2000s (Ideology, again, Joe!) have conspired to naturalize the image of hairless bodies, especially for women, you don’t need to look far to discover that this a bourgeois myth straight out of Barthes’ Mythologies.

That is to say while different bush styles work better on some people than others, rest assured that however you wear yours, someone else is doing it too. Don’t worry about the expectations of first-time partners—they may have a preference, but if they knock your style, they’re not even worth your embarrassment. Ditch ‘em.

I’d like to close by way of a short anecdote. In Julie Delpy’s hilarious film 2 Days in Paris (see it), her character’s boyfriend is confronted by a Parisian man at a “kick back” who explains why he hates what we in America refer to as the “landing strip,” an extremely popular bush.

“We call it Hitler’s mustache,” he explains. “It—how you say it—makes my cock back away. Is this right?” he asks, regarding his English. So you see, when it comes to your bush, it’s impossible to wear it in a way that pleases everyone (I guess the French are particularly idiosyncratic in this regard).

Take a page from Saturday Night Fever. Do what looks good to you, and just maybe “don’t touch the hair.”

—xo xo The Hardy Brothers

P.S. Sorry we dropped so much theory this week. Even we’re annoyed. We promise next week there will be no theory, only good old-fashioned sex! Stay tuned.