Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The dangers of bikini waxing

The evolution of hairlessness is one of the most popular bayblab post judging by the amount of traffic we get. Well rejoice:

"A 20-year-old Australian woman with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes presented with life-threatening Streptococcus pyogenes and Herpes simplex infection of her external genitalia following a routine perineal "Brazilian" bikini wax. Extensive pubic hair removal is now common among young adults in Australia and elsewhere. However, the infectious risks of these practices, particularly among immunosuppressed individuals, are often underappreciated."

The paper covers in great detail how bad the infection got, the pictures are too gross even for the bayblab:

"During the subsequent 4 days, worsening vulval swelling, redness, and pain were noted, as well as a copious vaginal discharge. On the day of presentation, the patient reported excruciating perivulval pain, severe dysuria, fever, and a diffuse erythematous rash."

The worst is that after going through all that, the woman tried to shave again and got a second infection. I would mostly agree PZ myers over at pharyngula:

"
I've never quite gotten the appeal of this practice. Is it to appeal to men with pedophilic tendencies? Or is it more of a desire to look like you've got a mollusc in your crotch? Everybody has their own little kink, so if hairless pubes appeal to two people, I'm not going to worry about it…but it seems to me it ought to be OK for a woman to want to look like a female mammal, and that individuals ought not to feel obligated to follow a very weird and highly artificial standard of beauty to the point where they suffer severe illnesses.
"

Plus, I hear they have a special at the laser hair removal for the ballz-&-all...


3 comments:

The Key Question said...

My eyes! Damn my vivid technicolor imagination!

Heh :)

You have a funny and informative team blog here. I write a science blog called Fresh Brainz mainly about evolutionary biology and some random insider jokes for weary grad students.

Would you like to exchange blog links?

Best regards!

Anonymous said...

The picture looked like she went through some discomfort but at least it was attractively hairless.

Beatriz said...

geeez, those spa/salons which offer these kind of treatments, don't they have those medical check-up or papers that can forbid patients to get a brazilian bikini when they already have a history of infections? that should be the standard operating procedure of every aesthetic spa/salon!