Pubic Hair for the Public

As of next month, I'll be married for thirteen years- and pretty happily actually! Yaaaay! 

And probably not unlike most people that have been married (happily or not) for that long, some personal hygene standards have, well, dropped. Boooo!

I realized when I was, err, grooming in the shower the other day that I was doing it mostly to save embarrassment at the gym swimming pool. Cellulite thighs, can't control that. Besides, those big, shimmering thighs help my not-totally-embarrassing speed while doing laps. 

However little, squiggly black hairs sticking out of the bottom of my suit- Ew! Those CAN be helped and those do not hasten my speed in the pool. That said, they certainly hasten my speed from the locker room into the pool when, on occasion, I realize upon undressing that I forgot to shave and the only place I can count on hiding my unruly pube's is by submerging them and me in the pool.

As stupid (or narcissistic as it sounds), once I realized that I shaved, groomed and/or waxed largely for other naked women (that probably were NOT checking out my pubes anyway) I began to wonder:
Is my Pube-Do still even fashionable these days?

And then:
How do you know when your pubic hair-do has gone out of fashion?

And finally:
How do I learn the latest fashion in Pube-Do's? Or the Pube Don'ts, for that matter?

All I really want to do is a few laps now and again and hopefully a sprint triathlon in the spring but now I feel I have to worry about a freakin' fashion statement. I remember back when I was a pre-pube kid and Big Bush was just fine for everyone (see Porky's if you don't remember or any other movie made in 1982) but ah, things have changed a lot since the feathered hair of the glorious 80s.

These days people are worried about all kinds of things like large labia and the color of their butt cracks and stuff. I mean, imagine the humiliation of showing up at the gym with a flabby labia (I like to call them, "flabia"), a non-albino ass crack and god-forbid, a FULL, untamed bush! I would like to claim that I don't care about these things but I'm happy to say that I am still young enough that it does matter to me, thank god.

It's not as though I'm looking at other women on purpose in the locker room, it's just that some things cannot go unnoticed. For example, the woman in her 70s that swims on the same days as me. Both of us are apparently creatures of habit as we wind up using the same lockers at the same times on the same days every week. As a result, I get to see her unmanaged shock of grey pubes every time she's getting out of her swimsuit and into her wrinkly birthday suit. 

I'm not trying to say she's "yucky"- the ultimate insult for the Under Four crowd in my house- I'm just trying to say that this older woman has obviously lost sight of what is an acceptable length to wear one's Locks of Love.

Either that or she just does not give a shit.

Anyhow, I'm not ready to give up on the idea that my pubes can still look decent. Yet sadly, even though I teach high school and am aware of the latest teen fashions as well as the regrettable resurgence of Day Glo tank tops, I still don't know how the kids are wearing the hair underneath their thongs. And even I can admit that it would be somewhat inappropriate to ask any of my female students about the hair-down-there and frankly, a little presumptuous of me to assume that they all wear thongs. Even though I'm pretty sure they all do.

So what now?

Do I need to start watching the latest porn to see what I'm supposed to look like?

Do I need to watch porn that specifically made for people over the age of 35 so I can wear a style that is age-appropriate? 

Do I need to worry that the whole reason that I'm concerned about my pubic hair has nothing to do with what my husband thinks about my Land Down Under?

And the scariest question of all- should I ask my husband his opinion on the matter??

And what the hell do I do if he says, "landing strip"???