April 09, 2020

The Quarantine Wave: Sexy Women Shouldn’t Have to Shave

5 Reasons to Dare to Grow your Hair

The year is 2020. You aren’t sure what day it is. You come across this article, and respond to the title thinking “Ha, wasn’t planning on shaving, putting on makeup OR deodorant today anyways.” Ah, the beauty of social distancing allowing us to be free of any worries about being your sexiest self, because you are LITERALLY isolated by law from seeing anyone you care to impress.

But what about the ladies out there who are quarantined with their significant others, trying to maintain the sexy norm that says women in this generation should have smooth, hairless skin?

For starters, if your partner doesn’t love you unconditionally, hairy genitals and all, he ain’t the one for you sis. Women have been pressured to shave their bodies for centuries now in order to keep up the ideal image of what’s considered universally attractive. But how many women are actually aware of the potential damage they can be causing themselves with constant shaving?

If you thought it was just the cut you keep getting from your cheap razor, think again, and think whole-heartedly with the love you have for yourself in mind when you read what we have to share below. Pay close attention ladies, because we promise some of these are going to throw you for real loop.

Here are five reasons why you should think twice before you take that razor to your skin.

Hairless does not mean Hygienic:

According to a study conducted by the University of California, 59% of females said they felt grooming their pubic hairs made them “cleaner” and “more hygienic.” The irony of it all is that grooming your pubic area is actually much more likely to do the complete opposite.

Let’s this start this off by putting this perspective into your head. Your skin loves you, it wants to take care of you just as much as you want to take care of it. So it creates a protective barrier on its outermost layer.

This barrier fights to keep you safe from infections and irritation, but you won’t stop shaving, so it inevitably deteriorates. Leaving your skin open to be attacked by armies of blisters, bumps, redness, acne and ingrown hairs that probably look worse than a little bit of hair. Not only will they look worse, but you’ll feel the pain on the inside. To all the women out there who are shaving to feel clean, we regret to inform you that are actually taking yourself further away from that goal, and into dangerous and frankly DIRTY waters.

Vulnerability to Infections:

As we mentioned before, frequent shaving removes a barrier that your skin makes to protect you. There’s always a presence of staph on your skin, however it only becomes a danger to you when the removal of your barriers opens up a pathway for it to enter your skin. What happens then?

A Folliculitis infection has found the grounds it needs to attack your vulnerable skin. According to MayoClinic, Folliculitis symptoms include most of the downfalls that come with typical irritation such as severely itchy red skin and clusters of pimples, but with some additional ingrown hairs filled with pus, and clusters of blisters (also filled with pus) that are likely to break and cause skin crusting.

Although we did say those symptoms wouldn’t kill you, dermatologists warn that certain cases of Folliculitis can turn into permanent scarring, hair loss, and an even more dangerous infection called Cellulitis. If your case of Cellulitis is left untreated or becomes severe, it can spread into your bloodstream and lymph nodes to the point where it becomes life-threatening.

Visits to the Emergency Room

In 2012, NCBI took 333 women in to study the complications and trends related to pubic hair grooming and removal. When the results came out, they showed that the majority of participants, 60% to be exact, had experienced at least one health complication caused by pubic hair removal. But when do “complications” turn into visits to the Emergency Room?

The study done by the University of California came out with some shocking reports about visits to the ER for genital-related injuries from 2002-2010. Reports showed that the number of people (both male and female) coming in for genital-related injuries increased by SIX times over the 8-year study. Can you guess what the most significantly common cause for each of these injuries was?

Pubic hair grooming showed the largest correlation to vast the majority of these ER visits. Experts suggest that the reasoning for this is probably attributed to the difficulty of trying to shave an area such as the genital region. The genital body area has curves that aren’t flat like most other parts of the body. This can make it much more difficult to shave in a consistent direction, thus making it much easier for you to injure yourself.

While we hope that most of you have never had an 'oopsie' this bad that you had to run to Emergency Room. We also hope that those of you who lucky ones who haven’t will start to ask yourselves if shaving off a little hair because it’s not considered attractive is TRULY worth endangering yourself to potential consequences like ending up in the ER.

STDs (Stop The Damage)

In case the ER visit segment wasn’t grasping your attention enough. We’ve decided to test your knowledge. We’re going to give you two phrases, and then you get to guess which one of these is a spell from Harry Potter, and which one is a sexually transmitted disease that can be easily attributed to abrasive pubic hair grooming. After you read your two options below, we want you to close your eyes, and picture a young Emma Watson holding her wand out with her a charming smirk and reciting these.

Option 1: “Wingardium Leviosa!”

Option 2: “Molloscum Contagiosum!

One of these sounds a bit more magical than the other. If you chose the latter for your Harry Potter spell answer, we want you to know that it’s not your fault that whatever public/private education system you attended failed you so terribly. We are here to make it better and teach you all about the STD that can be spread from abrasive shaving.

If your school system didn’t completely fail you, you may be somewhat familiar with Molloscum Contagiosum, but probably only the type that is similar to chicken pox and infects young children. The Molloscum we’re referring to here is a second type of this disease (MCV-2), that is only spread by sexual transmission and predominantly effective in adults. However, it is still similar to its type 1 with the pox-like symptoms.

MCV-2 is an STD that can cause lesions that spread all over your body and face just like the pox, unlike most others that can be hidden around the genital area. Many of these lesions can show up in noticeable areas, and they aren’t pretty. If you want to see for yourself, just google MCV-2 lesions, but do avoid this if you’re currently trying to maintain an appetite.

So how does shaving cause a sexually transmitted disease? MCV-2 is spread through skin-to-skin contact. As we discussed before, excessive shaving can remove that skin barrier that protects you, in the case of an MCV-2 attack, the barrier covering your moll scum papules is also lifted, consequentially opening up your pores to let this VERY easily contracted virus in.

For those of you thinking “I’ll just use condoms to avoid this,” we’re going to go ahead and save you the trouble by nipping that idea in the bud. Condoms will not be effective in stopping an STD spread by skin-to-skin contact.

*Our hair talking to us*

You’re Doing it for the Wrong Reasons.

Before you read this last reason, try to clear your head of all the fear and gross images that the previous segments of this article have put there. Without even being aware of the serious harm consistent shaving can cause you, ask yourself why you feel like you need to do it to feel sexy.

The answers are everywhere, and it’s completely understandable. In The Guardian’s ‘To shave or not to Shave’ article, we are given numerous reasons that summarize the societal pressures that have been put on women to rid of their bushes since the 1990s.

Many associate the initial trend with the pornography patterns in shaving that began in the 90’s. The bush was out, and the naked mole rat hairless vulva was in. As we progressed into the 21^st century, this trend only became more predominant. The Guardian’s article shows survey analysis that had 30% of male participants admitting to calling pubic region hair a relationship deal-breaker. The article states that hair removal in modern day has a strong correlation with better self-esteem.

With all the pressure we have put on us to be as perfect and sexy as the models we see in magazines, and even worse now-all over social media. We couldn’t blame you for the negative connotations society has managed to embed inside all of our brains about pubic hair.

However, we want you to ask, who is the only one that is primarily responsible for taking care of you? Would society be the one that’s there to defend you when people ask why you have lesions on your face from an STD you transmitted from abrasive shaving? You know the answer.

They will be the ones judging you, once again, for the consequences that came from you trying to please their ideals in the first place. Here’s a dark truth for you, society will never truly be on your side, perfection doesn’t exist in a world where people live through ideals of comparisons, looking for flaws in others to try and appease their own insecurities. Society will never love you unconditionally, but you know who can? YOU.

Love yourself, own who you are, own the natural hair that grows on your body because it’s a part of you that is there to protect you. Once you have mastered the art of loving yourself unconditionally, which is a work in progress for most of us, you will begin to realize why trying to meet the expectations of a society that asks you to compromise your health, happiness, and morals is just silly.

The joke will be on everyone else that has yet to realize that the only opinion that every truly mattered was their own. Insecurity and control go hand in hand, you cannot control other people’s opinions of you, only the one you have of yourself. Want to stop feeling insecure? Start prioritizing the only opinion that truly matters. Whether it’s choosing to give your skin a break from shaving, or choosing to have a glass of water instead of that Long Island, lead with intention and be mindful of WHO you’re choosing it for.

In conclusion

Viblok is here to inform and help you, we will never stop about preaching about the self-love you deserve to have and encouraging you to embrace it.

However, we must be level-headed and realistic when it comes to what we actually expect as an outcome. We won’t patronize you for shaving or waxing, because we know many of you are probably still going to choose to.

We can only advise you to keep what you have read today in mind, shave less, shave smarter, and last but CERTAINLY not least, always apply your Viblok lotion after shaving. With your application of Viblok, you can help to restore and recreate that barrier that protects your one and only skin. If shaving causes you to lose that protection, Viblok will always be here to save the day for you.