The One Good Thing About Bikini Waxing

I’m taking a cue from Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes speech and outing myself: I’m a bikini waxer. I’ve been waxing regularly since 2001. But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten used to it. I’m not going to pretend like it’s no biggie. After more than a decade, I still think it hurts like a motherfucker. I take Advil before I go and use numbing spray, but it’s still incredibly painful. And for the record, I will never stop praying for full bush to come back in style. The ’70s were the best! But there is some really, really good news about crotch waxing that makes all the pain worth it.

According to some new research, all of our effort (men and women both!) to remain hairless down there has put crabs on the endangered species list. That’s right! Pubic lice is on the verge of extinction.

“Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations,” reports Ian F. Burgess, a Cambridge medical entomologist. “Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.”

Environmental disaster, meaning there’s nowhere for those bloodsuckers to live. In 2011, a study at Kenyon College found that about 80 percent of all college students in the US and Australia remove some or all of their pubic hair. Australia’s largest sexual health clinic reports that it hasn’t seen a woman with a case of crabs since 2008. And the cases for men have dropped about 80 percent in the last decade. Bye-bye, crabs!

The J Sisters, famous for popularizing the Brazilian on that episode of “Sex and the City” in the early-2000s are feeling pretty damn good right now. “It’s like a freedom,” said one of the owners, Jonice Padilha.“When we started the salon 26 years ago, we never thought it would be a success … Nor was it expected to aid in the fight against pubic lice.”

I’ll bet you weren’t expecting a feel-good story about pubic hair today. So, grin and bear the waxing, knowing that you are doing your part to make crabs extinct forever.