Hairless vaginas are a public health hazard

The Brazilian wax has been on its way out for a while. But what may be its final death throe comes, according to the Atlantic Wire, in the form of unshaved mannequins on display at American Apparel.

Feminists and women who don't like pain have reason to celebrate, but here's another group that should embrace the natural trend: doctors. American society's aestheticization of hairless female genitalia apparently came at the cost of a veritable epidemic of grooming-related injuries. And while the Brazilian trend got lots of attention, the attendant carnage did not. Luckily, a team of doctors led by Allison Glass of the University of California, San Francisco, was on the case. For a 2012 paper in the journal Urology, they analyzed Emergency Room data on relevant injuries caused by pubic hair grooming related injuries and found:

•"Between 2002 and 2010, the number of injuries increased fivefold.
•Of the cohort, 56.7 percent were women. The most at-risk group was women aged 19 to 28.
•Shaving razors were implicated in 83% of the injuries.
•Laceration was the most common type of injury (36.6 percent).
•The most common site of injury was the external female genitalia (36 percent).