Summer Bikini Season: Don't Forget to Shave

Unwanted Hair Down There

Now that finals are over and college students across the country are headed to the beach for summer, a student columnist at Santa Clara University has reminded her fellow classmates with vaginas to be sure not to let any stray hairs show on their bikini lines.

"It seems to be a standard rule: As the air gets hotter, the hair "down there" diminishes to less and less," writes Santa Clara student Katie Powers in a column in the university's student newspaper.

"Most men don't have to worry about these down-there hair issues, suavely covering themselves up in their long swim trunks, but for women in three-sizes-fits-all swimsuit bottoms, spreading your legs wider than two feet can result in the embarrassing display of a few stray pubic hairs," she writes.

"Putting our vaginas in the spotlight puts them open for judgement -- trimmed, wild or bare," Powers wrote, adding "If you "let yourself go," you're dirty in society's eyes. If you trim and don't know what else to do, you're wavering between social expectations. Then if you get rid of it all, well, you're buying into false sexiness."

"I admit I am not completely liberated from the way society has spun pubes to seem strange and gross, but I do not think being hairless equates to sexiness," she wrote.

"A hairless vagina is like a porn star -- unnatural and objectified," Powers said in the column.