A dog hair is floating in my cereal milk like spindly canoe on a lake. What with North Korea’s take on Toni and Guy, the forgotten plughole blockage we left in our shower before Easter, and deadlines creeping closer, everything’s getting a bit hairy. Everything that is, except the old down there hair.

Yep, those pesky pubes are in the news again, struggling in a world where they are no longer petted fondly like the family pet, but increasingly treated with the same hostility as an Eddy B level 10 lift passenger. Not only has the British Medical Journal waded into the jungle undergrowth with research that shaving and waxing leaves skin susceptible to pathogens and the poxvirus, but on the other side is the sparkly new innovation of a ‘vajacial’ to exfoliate and soothe your vagina’s whimpering worries.

With heightened debate over a pressurised or pro-choice poonana, it’s all getting a little bit tense, and perhaps it’s time to take a step back and have a deep breath. Before everyone starts yelling and pulling down each other’s trousers in a coiffured craze, most important of all seems to be that everyone involved should assess their own incentives.

For some, it might be something they’ve always done as a preference and expense like any other beautification. It’s personal, not political.

Or if others are brutally honest, they might admit that they’re conforming to an emerging expectation and fashion. Regardless of whether it takes roots in an inexcusably blinkered porn industry, it has certainly progressed far beyond this and seems to have flowered as a female compulsion, one that has grown virulently amongst recent generations to the bemusement of those previous. It was a very confused parent I encountered after he’d read an article illustrated by some triangular topiary (always…why?!) Whilst some think men may want it as part of a fantasy, in many relationships, ultimately the real and natural might be less shiny, but nonetheless more valuable. And so really, the girls seem to have taken this militant mission upon themselves.

If it makes you feel confident, is there any problem with it? Well kind of, but only in the same way exchanging any sort of superficial gain, or loss, for a sense of self-worth should be ringing some sort of alarm bell. Even the new Dove real beauty sketches campaign that was supposed to make you feel gooey eyed in celebration of your gooey belly still blatantly reiterates that beauty is a prerequisite  for women. And more and more, a beautiful baby-maker must be balding, not as an option, but an obligation.  

Of course, unlike exams, the big depilation question will only ever be as important as you make it. We don’t live in a bubble, and unless we’re more headstrong than heartstrung, other people’s opinions matter to us. Just either way, make sure you’re left with a V for Victory.