in brief: cameron diaz wants you to let your lady pubes roam free

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Actress Cameron Diaz has published her first ever book entitled The Body Book: The Law of Hunger, The Science of Strength, and Other Ways to Love Your Amazing Body, in which there is a section entitled ‘In Praise of Pubes’. In an excerpt that is currently making its rounds around the Internet, Diaz encourages women to keep their pubic hair fully intact.

Diaz claims: ‘I hear that there’s a bit of a fad these days of young women undergoing laser hair removal on all of their lady bits…Personally, I think permanent laser hair removal sounds like a crazy idea. Forever? I know you may think you’ll be wearing the same style of shoes forever and the same style of jeans forever, but you won’t. The idea that vaginas are preferable in a hairless state is a pretty recent phenomenon, and all fads change, people.’

It is notable to reinforce that what she is talking about here is in fact physical bodies, not dispensable items of clothing or footwear. It’s certainly true to say that, like fashion, there are certain fads, trends and styles in terms of bodily presentation – yet ultimately, the person in supreme control of your own body is you. The choices you make concerning your own body are yours, and are not dictated by societal fads, trends, what everyone else is doing, or even what Cameron Diaz tells you to do.

It’s an admirable message in the sense that pubic hair, like any other bodily feature, has a practical purpose; namely, providing a cushion against friction that can cause skin abrasion and injury, protection from bacteria and other unwanted pathogens.

This is where Diaz gets a little bit confused between her sentiment and the so-called ‘science of strength’ that the title suggests. Rather than providing the above reasons for leaving pubic hair intact, Diaz compares it to a curtain or ‘wrapping paper’ – ‘Twenty years from now, you will still want to be presenting it to someone special, and it would be nice to let him or her unwrap it like the gift that it is’. Or, as this Entertainment Online article words it, ‘pubic hair serves as a “pretty little draping” and that ladies should consider leaving their vaginas “fully dressed.”’

One certainly can’t argue against her opinion and honest, frank advice to her readers. It certainly has worked in generating publicity for her first venture into the publishing world, in addition to even more talk about this issue.

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