If you’re one of those girls who takes regular trips to the salon for a bikini wax, you probably know how it feels to have hot wax poured over your tender lady bits followed by a heartless woman mercilessly pulling off the not-so-tender bush down there.
Feeling smooth down there might be all aces in your book, but getting a bikini wax poses a lot of health risks for your vagina. Here are four reasons why you should let your pubic hair rest in peace.
Bikini wax can burn your vagina
Obviously, the wax used for hair removal is nothing short of hot-sticky lava taken out of an erupting volcano aka the wax heater. At least, that’s what it feels like when the wax touches the sensitive skin between our thighs.
Needless to say, if your waxing lady gets a tad bit careless with the temperature of the wax, you can very well end up with burnt skin. In fact, the heat burn isn’t the only kind you’re likely to get. What if the wax doesn’t suit your sensitive skin and you end up getting a chemical burn? Yup, that happens.
Cleaning your hay? Infection is on its way
FYI ladies, your coochie is as delicate as your heart simply because it is made of mucus membrane, which isn’t as pain- and infection-resistant as the skin on the rest of your body.
Your pubic hair acts like a knight in shining armour and actually traps harmful bacteria, stopping them from penetrating through the membrane. So what happens when you remove this armour? You let bacteria pass through and allow it go down your urinary tract. In short, removing pubic hair puts you at risk of infections like bacterial vaginosis and UTI.
Wait! There’s more… If your waxing lady is not very hygienic or if her weapons of destruction–namely, the knife, strips, and wax aren’t maintained properly–you can even get pelvic inflammatory diseases (PID) as a result of all the germs travelling up you veevee, warns Dr Anuradha Kapur, gynaecologist and obstetrician at Max Smart Super Specialty Hospital, Delhi.
Bikini waxing is ‘abscess-olutley’ risky, babe
Because the skin down there is so sensitive, waxing can cause tears and cuts. “These can become a breeding ground for bacteria and even infect your hair follicle causing acute folliculitis, which can only be cured with a course of strong antibiotic medicines,” says Dr Anuradha Kapur.
The trauma may not end there. You can also get boils and abscesses, which may need surgical intervention.
It’s time for serious reflection because you can also end up with an STI
Bacterial infection isn’t the only kind of infection you need to be scared of when jumping on the clean-vag bandwagon.
If you thought, condoms were your saving grace, here’s a reality check: according to a study conducted at the University of Texas Dell Medical School in Austin, women who groom their pubic hair are three to four times more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such as herpes, human papillomavirus (HPV), and syphilis.
