Google the phrase “wax before”, and an unwitting internet user will find herself amid the disturbing, troubling world of pregnancy message boards in which women across the world discuss what they believe to be the irrefutable merits – nay, necessity – of waxing bare their nether-regions before giving birth to their beloved children.  “I got a Brazilian and a pedicure before both of my babies were born,” wrote one Rebecca Eckler. “I know obstetricians and nurses have seen every type, shape and amount of hair down there, and that no woman should be embarrassed if her lady bits aren’t neat and tidy, but I’m just so used to being groomed.”  She added: “wouldn’t you want to look and feel beautiful for what is most definitely one of the biggest events in your life? I can’t think of a better time to look your best.”  I gave birth three months ago and had a difficult delivery and a rare complication that led to extreme hemorrhaging. I didn’t worry about looking or feeling beautiful while I was in labor – but here are some things I did worry about:  While in labor, here is something I never once worried about: what does everyone here think of the fact that not only have I not bothered to remove my pubic hair, but did not care to even coax it into any kind of neat, symmetrical form?  And while parenting writer Eckler suggests that a little pampering (in the form of a Brazilian) helps new mothers, three months in to this job called motherhood, I haven’t exactly figured out when I am supposed to shower, yet alone when to brush my teeth.  Being a mother is difficult: not only is labor and delivery physically demanding, potentially dangerous and wholly exhausting, but when it’s all over and done with you, you are then responsible for an impossibly small new human life. You are supposed to make sure this tiny person learns to walk and talk and read and write and chew with her mouth closed and be a good and decent contributing member of society. And on top of that, as a woman – regardless of the decisions you make for yourself and your family about child-rearing and work outside of the home – you will invariably feel stretched thin (both in theory, and physically). You will wonder how women have existed for so many thousands and thousands of years without being crushed under the weight and pressure of being a mother, of being so completely needed. You will be enveloped in awe that, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, so many people have, in a second, been introduced to the sensation of such unimaginable, exquisite, all-encompassing love.  And, if you are me, you will also wonder how many ponies you have to promise your newborn to get them to please take a nap.  Mothers – and parents of all genders – are instantly hit with a world of worry once the baby arrives, so there is absolutely no reason to worry whether your vulva meet some arbitrary standard of photo-readiness when it comes time to push a baby into the world. Women’s bodies are objectified and commodified all day long, in practically every aspect of modern society. Childbirth itself has also recently become fetishized, with Pinterest boards and Instagram accounts seducing women with picture-tales of the “perfect” birth story: in a bathtub, with candles, without drugs, with an earth-goddess type attendant who will graciously hand over the placenta for the new mother’s consumption. But labor is a process that, like the parenthood that follows it, is profoundly messy and hard and the opposite of anything that could ever be construed as having been sanitized, manicured, or perfect.  My husband – admittedly unintentionally – managed to take some pictures of the minute our baby’s head sprung forth from my vaginal canal and entered the world. It was not a moment we’d planned to document photographically and, had he asked me at the time, in the midst of all the sweat and the blood, I would neither have requested photographic evidence nor taken responsibility for any pain I might have caused the person asking the question.  But when, now, we look at those images (sometimes reluctantly – the physicality of birth is not ever pleasant to relive), we have never once commented on the state of my pubic hair, or the appearance of my once neatly-contained parts turned into nothing but a bloody gash. Instead, we just look at my daughter’s head emerging from my body and say, quietly: “Wow.”
If there is one time in in a woman’s life that she should feel totally justified in not living up to social expectations of beauty, it’s childbirth. And yet ...