A Public Pubic Announcement: I owe my pubes an apology

I have spent an extraordinary amount of time and money landscaping my lady bits. Ladyscaping if you will.

I have groomed the hell out of them. Landing strip. Brazilian. Trimmed. Bald. Lasered into permanent submission.

What started as shaving in my teens, turned into waxing, then onto lasers since, well, it's easier and less work tidying up my clam.

I have paid women to pour hot wax perilously close to my clitoris and rip the hair out by its roots. I have stood naked in front of a stranger in protective goggles while she repeatedly fired a laser at my crotch. Then spread my cheeks to get at, yes, my other hole.

All in the pursuit of what, exactly?

A more hygienic vagina?

A more attractive vulva?

The vague cultural understanding that somewhere around 1998, pubic hair became unacceptable?

Whatever the reason, I fully committed. For decades.

Which makes it particularly irritating to discover, at nearly 50, after a lifetime of recurrent UTIs, that my pubes may have had an actual job.

And I fired them.

The 1976 Theory That Nobody Bothered to Test

His name was Han M. Hanafy, and he wrote a short letter to the journal Urology noting that women in the Middle East seemed to get fewer recurring urinary tract infections than women in the United States. His explanation was that Middle Eastern women customarily shaved or epilated their pubic hair. Other urologists agreed with him, he said.

He offered no data. None. It was the 70's, he was a total vibe, and was published in a medical journal.

But like a broken record I seem to be playing of late, nobody tested it. For forty-seven years, the only thing resembling a scientific position on pubic hair and UTIs was one man's groovy hunch, pointing in exactly the wrong direction, while an entire generation of women went bare on the theory that hairless meant clean.

Then in 2023, somebody finally checked.

Why Pubic Hair Isn't Dirty (The Hygiene Story, Reversed)

Before we get into our bush, it's worth sitting with how backwards the hygiene story turns out to be.

Researchers have looked at the bacteria living on men's faces, and the results are not kind to the clean-shaven. In one study of hospital workers, men without beards were about ten percent more likely to be carrying Staphylococcus aureus and more than three times as likely to be colonized with methicillin-resistant staph than their bearded colleagues.

These are surgeons. These are nurses. In operating rooms and interacting with patients daily. The smooth-faced ones were dirtier.

Another study found non-bearded healthcare workers carried a higher bacterial load on their faces than bearded ones. A third found that bacteria living in beards produce compounds that inhibit the growth of E. coli and Staph aureus.

And hair itself is not passive. Researchers have identified antibacterial proteins and peptides inside human hair shafts. The hair is not just sitting there looking rustic. It's a full participant in our skin microbiome game.

So the entire premise, that hair harbors filth and removing it is a sanitation measure, has it backwards. Which is inconvenient, because hygiene is the single most common reason women give for removing pubic hair. Sure, hygiene.

Your vulva does not become more hygienic when you strip it bald. Your vagina certainly doesn't, because your vagina is internal and largely self-cleaning and has never once asked for landscaping or a power wash.

I wish someone had mentioned this before I bought the laser package.

What Pubic Hair Actually Does for the Vaginal Microbiome

Pubic hair is relatively insulated from the outside world, and it hosts its own specific bacterial community. Stable enough, in fact, that forensic scientists have looked at using pubic hair bacteria for identification. Your bush has a signature.

And in women, that community includes Lactobacillus species. Different ones than men carry.

Lactobacillus is the genus that keeps the vaginal environment acidic and inhospitable to bad bacteria. It's the thing that suppresses E. coli, which causes the vast majority of UTIs and a big reason anyone in women's health says the word "microbiome" with some feeling. For more on how the microbiome connects to bladder health specifically, see Your Bladder Health Starts in the Gut.

So the working theory is now that pubic hair is a protected habitat for the same bacteria doing defensive work a few centimeters away. Not this optional landscapable white picket fence nonsense.

Which means every laser session I paid for was, potentially, like killing off another coral reef.

The 2023 Study That Finally Linked Extreme Grooming to Recurrent UTIs

In 2023, researchers in Poland surveyed 2,409 women between 18 and 45 about their grooming habits and their UTIs over the previous year.

They defined "extreme grooming" as removing all pubic hair at least weekly.

Sixty-seven percent of the women qualified.

Let me repeat that, because it reframes this from my personal problem into a generational one. Two out of three young women are removing their full bush, every week.

Extreme groomers were not more likely to have had a single UTI. The association showed up only with recurrent UTIs, defined as three or more infections in twelve months. There, extreme groomers were about three times as likely.

Three. Times.

Oh, hello there. That's me.

I have had recurrent UTIs for much of my adult life. Mine were overwhelmingly connected to sex, and there is very good science explaining why sex is a major UTI trigger. For the full breakdown on the sex-UTI connection and what to do about it, see How to Pee After Sex (so you don't get a UTI).

But apparently there may have been another variable sitting right in front of me.

Or technically, no longer sitting in front of me.

Even after researchers accounted for things including sexual frequency, previous UTI history, spermicide use and new sexual partners, the association remained.

Does that prove shaving your pubes causes recurrent UTIs?

No.

This was an observational study. It relied on women reporting their own grooming and UTI histories. The participants were predominantly young Polish women, and the researchers didn't even collect which hair-removal methods they used.

So nobody gets to announce that Brazilians cause UTIs.

But if you've had recurrent UTIs for years and have also spent those years religiously removing every hair from your vulva, it is enough to make you look down and think:

Well, shit.

Because sex plus irritated skin suddenly makes a lot of sense.

The Northwestern Bush Swap Study

In 2021, researchers at Northwestern recruited women based on their grooming habits, sampled their vaginal and urinary microbiomes, and then made them switch. It's like Freaky Friday but with your bush aesthetics.

Women who went bare grew it out. Women with hair had to remove all of it. The control group did nothing.

Forty-two participants made it into the analysis: sixteen who went bare-to-hair, sixteen hair-to-bare, and ten controls.

At baseline, there was no meaningful difference between the hairy women and the bare women. Whatever you've got going on down there, your microbiome had already made peace with it.

But after the switch, the vaginal microbial communities of the women who changed shifted measurably compared to the controls.

Forty-two women is tiny. But we've got to start somewhere.

And this is something we obsess over at Good Kitty: your body is an ecosystem, and it responds to disturbances, including well-intentioned ones. Aesthetic preferences may be disturbing the shit that's home-grown protection. Bacteria love conflicted environments.

Why the Pre-Sex Shave Is Doing Your Vulva No Favors

Most UTIs start when bacteria, usually E. coli from the gut, travel to the urethra and up into the urinary tract.

Sex is extremely good at facilitating that trip. Bodies rub. Bacteria move. The female urethra is short and located in the middle of all the activity.

Now consider our pre-sex ritual.

We shave. Super close. Get it all neat and ready. Sometimes that same evening.

We drag a blade across some of the most delicate skin on the body, which produces exactly the outcomes you'd expect: the most common complaints after pubic hair removal are itching, then irritation, skin infection, rash, cuts, acne and ingrown hairs, and the overwhelming majority of those complications happen to women using a razor.

Then we put on underwear, go out, come home, and introduce significant friction to freshly abraded tissue. A lot of friction, depending on your evening.

This doesn't mean shaving causes a UTI. But I find it increasingly bizarre that we've been taught to prep our vulvas for sex by making them completely hairless without ever discussing whether the process might affect the tissue or microbial environment we're trying so desperately to protect.

My Pubes Are Staging a Very Weak Comeback

Unfortunately, I got enthusiastic with the laser.

My mother, meanwhile, had what can only be described as full structural Afro bush for most of her life. I mean, she was an actual hippie. Magnificent. Unapologetic.

She's almost 80 and is still magnificent but her bush sadly looks like it has mange. As we age, we lose hair on our heads and our puss. Another delightful fun fact about female aging that nobody puts on the brochure.

Mine is slowly returning. Partly because I stopped trying to annihilate it, and partly, I suspect, because the testosterone cream in my HRT has given the surviving follicles a renewed sense of purpose.

They're trying.

It's less 1970s centerfold and more a few determined plants reclaiming a parking lot.

And weirdly, I want it back.

Not because everyone needs a full bush. What you do with your pubic hair is entirely your business, and if a lightning bolt brings you joy, get the lightning bolt. Ninety percent of this is aesthetic preference and preference is allowed.

But I do wish we'd been handed the actual information before two-thirds of a generation started removing all of it every week on the theory that bare meant clean.

What This Means If You Get Recurrent UTIs

Pubic hair isn't dirty.

Removing it is a choice but isn't necessarily more hygienic.

And if you get recurrent UTIs and you remove every hair every week, maybe try natural or reduce your grooming frequency. A new variable to test out.

You don't have to grow out one to rival my mom's. Maybe just stop treating every surviving pube like an intruder.

If you're already in the recurrent-UTI population this piece is calling out, grooming is one variable to test but it's not the only lever. Multi-mechanism daily prevention is genuinely worth exploring alongside any grooming changes. UTI Biome Shield is what Dr. Meg and I built for exactly this population, and the reasoning behind why single-ingredient supplements often fall short is covered in Why D-Mannose Alone Isn't Enough for Recurrent UTIs and D-Mannose vs. Cranberry PACs: Why You Need Both.

After everything I've done to mine, I feel like I owe them an apology.

Turns out they may have been trying to help me the whole damn time.