How the Old Gray Lady Talks About Pubic Hair

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The Paper of Record has long chronicled how women style their pubic hair. On Wednesday, yet another of its trend pieces punned its way to Internet infamy: "Below the Bikini Line, a Growing Trend." Just in December, The New York Times' published "For Women, a New Look Down Under." You'll rarely find anatomical terms in these stories — the Times performs Olympic feats of wordplay to avoid printing words like "labia majora." Sometimes it's hard to tell what the Gray Lady is even talking about. For the confused reader, we offer an incomplete glossary of the Times' phrases to describe pubic hair since the early 2000s:

Female Anatomy

• "Down under" - an adult woman's genitals
• "Once-neglected hinterland of female beauty" - an adult woman's genitals 
• "Particularly private area of the body" - an adult woman's genitals 
• "Virile equipment" - an adult woman's genitals 
• "Nether regions" - an adult woman's genitals

Pubic Hair Conditions

• "Barren landscape" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax
• "The bald look" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax 
• "The denuded look" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax
• "Full-frontal bareness" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax
• "Going bare" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax 
• "The revised birthday suit" - the look of no pubic hair, achieved with a Brazilian wax 
• "Bountiful crop" - pubic hair that has not been groomed in any way
• "Full pubic bloom" - pubic hair that has not been groomed in any way
• "Mossy covering" - pubic hair that has not been groomed in any way 
• "Untrimmed thicket" - pubic hair that has not been groomed in any way
• "Hidden in the underbrush" - pubic hair on the labia minora 

Pubic Hair Procedures

• "Below-the-belt treatment" - a bikini or Brazilian wax 
• "The full monty" - a Brazilian wax
• "Getting back to nature" - letting one's pubic hair grow 
• "He-wax" - a bikini or Brazilian wax for a man

Effects

• "Enlarging effect of the main attraction" - when a man's penis looks bigger because he got a bikini wax
• "Naked Barbie doll" - a woman whose genitals resemble a Barbie doll's (anatomically, this is disturbing) 
• "Hairless cherubs" - women in paintings who have no pubic hair 

Photo by Pressmaster via Shutterstock. 

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

Allie Jones is a former staff writer at The Wire.

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