There is one setting on the Schick Quattro for Women TrimStyle Razor & Bikini Trimmer, and I am not happy about it.
In fact, I’m pissed. I haven’t felt such awareness of acute discrimination since Women’s Studies 201 – I’m Vagina Monologue pissed. It’s a self-righteous, sanctified kind of pissed where I’m drafting an e-mail in my head to Schick’s customer service, determined to get a dignified answer for their prejudice; or at the very least a few coupons for their Intuition razor, which costs roughly the same amount as an eight ball of coke, and I can’t even snort the fucking thing off my coffee table.
To Whom It May Concern, I decide I will type. When did Schick decide how long my pussy hair was going to be?
I examine the instrument, which is teal. It’s surrounded by a pink, non-threatening box, and a cartoon woman on the front grins at me sheepishly. She has presumably used said trimmer, and as the box pledges, discovered “the confidence that comes with all-over smoothness and a neat bikini area.”
First off, let’s call a spade a spade, my letter will continue. The term ‘bikini line’ is just a sugary way of saying ‘vagina.’ You’re telling me I can’t be confident enough to screw dudes until my twat is trimmed to your specifications. The whole thing is one big shaving guard, because apparently one setting is fine enough, I don’t get to choose the length of my own pubes.
I am annoyed at Schick, but I am annoyed at myself for standing in the feminine aisle of Target surrounded by $7-raspberry shaving cream and razors with purple moisture strips. It was the commercials. They were Don Draper worthy. Women in towels walked past bushes that magically morphed into various neat shapes – a mound, a triangle, a landing strip. I was intrigued by their Alice in Wonderland quality, magical and whimsical. Plants, I thought, watching the screen. I like plants. They’re natural and healthy and serve as the perfect metaphor for my precious ladybits and I should buy that trimmer and have the most beautiful vagina in all the land.
I had my practical reasons for wanting to buy a pubic hair trimmer. I like things neat enough down there, but shaving was time-consuming and gunked up all my good razors. Those shitty one-time-use razors were out of the question because the cheap little fuckers left patches of razor burn that resembled medieval plague boils. One of my friends swore up and down that Brazilians were the way to go, but along with her testament of “the smoothest I’ve ever been,” came the less appealing report of “angry Russian waxer” and “taint burn.”
And I didn’t want to lose all my hair. I wasn’t trying to napalm the fucking thing. I liked my hair. It was soft and protective. It made me feel like a woman – the last time I had no pubic hair I was ten, and being that it was the age that I had a predisposition for hot pink stirrup pants and a life-threatening crush on a hateful 11-year-old Donnie Cross who used to snap the straps of my training bra, ten wasn’t an age I wanted to relive in any aspect.
I put the trimmer back on the shelf in revulsion. My letter turns indignant: I don’t need your woman-hating corporate fuckery, Schick! You can’t just lure me in with plant-life and then tell me that my vagina is going to look like every other woman’s who has bought your bullshit! I do not a have a Robot Twat! I want choice! I want guards, you motherfuckers! I want to pick a 2 or 3 or maybe even 8 if I want to keep it clown-hair length! You don’t own this vagina!
I figure that will be about the time the Schick customer service representative will be deleting my e-mail, possibly without the Intuition coupons. It was a very deflating thought, so much so that I give up on my e-mail entirely and walk to the next aisle to pick up body wash.
I find myself on the men’s grooming aisle. Blue and red and brown-toned bottles line the aisle, all looking very masculine, collectively smelling like a frat house. I pick up a bottle of Tom’s of Maine body wash and inhale because it reminds me of an old boyfriend, one who liked my vagina just as it was, though anyone who likes Tom’s of Maine is usually into a decent amount of hippie-love that I could have had an entire functioning vaginal ecosystem below the belt, complete with badgers, without any objection from his camp.
I’m taking a long inhale when I spot a Conair beard trimmer shining under the florescent lights of the grooming aisle.
It comes with several guards, a brush, a charging station, and a tiny comb that is conveniently vagina-sized. I look at the packaging. There is a picture of a man who has gone from a chin-strap to a goatee and is looking quite self-satisfied about the transition.
The whole thing costs twelve bucks and is sleek and silver, like a rocket ship, which I like just as much as plants, maybe even more. It lands with a satisfying thud in my basket.
I’m drafting another e-mail in my head to Schick, something akin to telling an ex-boyfriend that you’re engaged and said fiancé is a physicist for NASA who quit his part-time modeling job to spend more time volunteering to read to the elderly. I just wanted to let you know that there are other options than the Schick Quattro for Women TrimStyle Razor & Bikini Trimmer , it starts, and even if those options aren’t sold in the feminine aisle or come in a non-threatening teal or have a 22-year-old girl smiling at me happily from the box, I’m going to take it anyway. All I want is choice, the least of which involves how long my hair should be. Your days of pubic pigeonholing are over. We are nothing without our sense of self-respect.
P.S. – I have included my return address where your Intuition coupons may be forwarded.
