Sex Made Easy (4 page)

We found that women do any number of things to their pubic hair, including rock these styles:

•
Totally natural.
Also called a “full bush,” “retro bush,” or “hipster bush,” this style involves nothing other than working with what Mother Nature gave you. For some women, this is a small amount of hair, mostly on the pubic mound. For others, there may be a large amount of hair extending above the pubic mound and onto the upper thighs.

•
Trimmed.
Some women find that smaller scissors help them to get in close to carefully trim their pubic hair. I know of one woman who was into crafting and discovered that her smallest pair of scissors (the kind commonly used in kindergarten classes) was the easiest to use when trimming her pubes.

•
Fashioned.
Women fashion their pubic hair into all sorts of different designs (for example, their or their partner's first initial, a heart, star, or V for vulva or vagina), with the landing strip—roughly a one-inch-thick vertical strip of hair—being one of the more common ones. This is usually done by shaving the hair around the shape that's meant to be left on, though some salons specialize in waxing women's pubic hair into preferred designs. In our 2010 study, removing only some pubic hair (as opposed to all of it) was the most common thing women did to their pubic hair, with about 29 percent of women ages eighteen to twenty-four, 39 percent of women ages twenty-five to twenty-nine, and 50 percent of women in their thirties and forties saying they had shaved or waxed some of their hair in the previous month but they hadn't gone bare.

•
Bare.
Taking it all off can be done through shaving or waxing. Some women enjoy the smooth feel of their hairless vulva. Others think that's fine and dandy, but the stubbly process of growing it back in isn't for them. And while some women say that having a bare vulva makes them feel too much like a prepubescent child, others feel sexy and grown-up when bare. In our study, women who had mostly gone bare in the past month were more likely to be young (college aged) or bisexual-identified, or to have recently engaged in cunnilingus.

There's a lot of hype about how women wear their down-there hair. Some magazines make it sound like every woman in America is bare, and that's just not the case. In our study we found that only 20.6 percent of women ages eighteen to twenty-four were typically bare down there. This number dropped significantly to only about 12.4 percent of women ages twenty-five to twenty-nine, 8.6 percent of women in their thirties, 6.5 percent of women in their forties, and 2 percent of women age fifty or older. That's not to say that the rest of the women didn't sometimes remove all of their hair, or that they never had, but it's safe to say that it was more common for a woman to keep at least some of her pubic hair than to get rid of it.

I
n 2008, a team of researchers set out to understand the curious nature of women's hair removal.
⁵
They asked 235 female undergraduate students in Australia a number of questions about their removal of underarm, leg, and pubic hair, including complete removal of pubic hair. Women indicated that some of the most important reasons why they removed their underarm and leg hair were these: all of their friends do it; it's expected of them; people “would look at (them) funny” if they didn't; and they thought that men preferred women without body hair. These women also strongly indicated that they removed their leg and underarm hair because it made them feel sexy, feminine, cleaner, confident, and good about themselves—reasons that were also largely given for removing some or all of their pubic hair. Women who removed some or all of their pubic hair also generally said that they felt it made their sexual experiences better.

When we set out to conduct our pubic hair study, we were curious about the issue of sex: namely, would there be differences in sexual function for women based on what they did with their pubic hair? We found that even after we statistically controlled for age, sexual relationship status, and sexual orientation, women who removed all of their pubic hair—even just once—in the preceding month scored higher on several measures of sexual function. Put another way, women who went bare tended to report higher desire, higher arousal, less pain during sex, greater sexual satisfaction, and greater vaginal lubrication during sex. We found no differences in regard to orgasm.

This doesn't mean that ditching your pubic hair will change your sex life. Then again, maybe there is something about the process of going bare that tunes women in to their bodies more, or that arouses them during the process (or later, when their genitals are more noticeable to them or their partner). Anecdotally, women describe diverse feelings about their pubic hair. Some have told me that they like having pubic hair, especially full “tufts” of pubic hair, because it helps to cushion intercourse and make it feel more comfortable. Some women prefer to trim or wax, rather than shave, given how uncomfortable stubble can feel as hair grows back in.

The take-home message when it comes to pubic hair is that you should
do what you like, what makes you feel comfortable, and maybe what makes you feel sexy—if feeling sexy is important to you. The nice thing about pubic hairstyles is that you can change them at any time. If you go bare and dislike it, you can grow it back. If you trim your pubic hair too short, give it a few days and it will grow longer again. And if you're tired of too-long hairs, then trim, wax, or shave. It's your hair, so do what you like and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

W
hole entire books have been written about the vagina and if you have tons of questions about this wonderful body part, I suggest you check out my earlier book,
Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to the Vagina and Vulva (2011)
or
The V Book: A Doctor's Guide to Complete Vulvovaginal Health
(2002) by Elizabeth Stewart and Paula Spencer. Here we will stick to some of the most basic things you need to know about your vagina as it relates to better sex.

First, the vagina is the inside part, also known as the birth canal. Second, the vagina is only about three or four inches long, though it can get longer and wider when a woman becomes sexually aroused (a process called vaginal tenting). Third, it needs attention! At least once each year, or as often as your health care provider recommends, bring your vagina (and the rest of you) in for an annual gynecological exam. Fourth, the vagina has simple tastes; it neither needs nor wants to be covered with douches, deodorants, baby powder, or fragranced bath soap. Fifth, the vagina is surrounded by pelvic floor muscles that help to support your genitals and other internal organs. These same muscles can help to enhance sensation during sex. Many women do
Kegel exercises
(pronounced “kay-gull”) to

• Help strengthen the pelvic floor muscles

• Support the internal organs

• Reduce the risk of incontinence that comes with childbearing and older age, and

• Maintain vaginal sensation during sex

Here's how you do Kegel exercises. First, identify your pelvic floor muscles by squeezing as if you're trying to stop yourself from peeing midstream. Or insert one finger into your vagina and squeeze it. Feel that? Good. Now that you've found your pelvic floor muscles, it's time to put them to work. Squeeze them for ten seconds, then release the squeeze and let them relax for ten seconds. Repeat this over and over again for five or ten minutes at least once per day. You might also want to ask your health care provider if he or she has any favorite Kegel exercise “routines”; providers vary, and some recommend holding them for longer, squeezing and releasing more quickly and rhythmically, or doing them more than once a day.

Just as health care providers vary, so do women: if you are a woman who experiences vaginal or vulvar pain, check in with your health care provider or a physical therapist who specializes in genital pain disorders before starting a Kegel exercise routine, as some experts believe that some genital pain conditions may be caused or made worse by pelvic floor muscles that are already too tight.

Another important aspect (the sixth thing on our list) pertains to
vaginal lubrication.
As women become sexually aroused, blood flows to their genitals. This causes fluids to pass through their blood vessels and through the walls of the vagina to create vaginal lubrication. A woman's estrogen levels also influence her vaginal lubrication,
⁶
and women with higher estrogen levels tend to find that they lubricate more quickly and more easily than women with lower estrogen levels, such as those who are menopausal or breastfeeding.

E
veryone, it seems, wants to know about the G Spot. Every semester that I teach human sexuality, men and women alike want to know how to find the G Spot and whether it really exists. Readers of my sex columns write to ask how to know whether or not they have a G Spot in the first place or how to stimulate their partner's G Spot. Here's what you need to know.

The G Spot got its name in the 1980s and pays homage to Dr. Ernst
Grafenberg who, back in the 1950s, described an area along the front vaginal wall that—when stimulated—is erotically sensitive for some but not all women. The G Spot is often described as being located about two inches inside the vagina on the front vaginal wall. Women can try to locate it themselves although sometimes, given the angle of stimulating one's own vagina, it can be easier to have one's partner attempt G Spot exploration using one's fingers or penis or a sex toy. Although sex toy companies make G Spot vibrators and dildos that are curved for easier stimulation of the front wall, one does not need a G Spot vibrator or dildo for G Spot play. Fingers, a penis, or a non-curved sex toy work just as well (as long as the vibrator or dildo is made for vaginal insertion).

The G Spot remains controversial even among sex researchers. There hasn't been much scientific research conducted on the G Spot and what has been done has shed only a little bit of light on the topic. One researcher in a 2001 article published in the
American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology
went as far as to describe the G Spot as “a modern gynecologic myth”
⁷
given that the existing research at the time was mostly based on small samples of women and in some cases was difficult to interpret. The issue was further muddled when, in 2008, Italian researchers published an article in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
claiming that ultrasonography could be used to identify the G Spot in women.
⁸
They based this on data from a study that involved only twenty women. The researchers suggested that the space between the urethra and vagina was thicker among the nine women in their study who reported experiencing vaginal orgasm compared to the eleven-women who reported not having vaginal orgasms and; on this basis, they felt that they had “found” the G Spot. This study made headlines in magazines and on blogs and yet, in the opinion of a number of scientists (myself included), it was flawed—not only because it involved so few women but because it is difficult to determine who has “vaginal orgasms” and who does not. The researchers had simply asked women “Have you ever experienced a vaginal orgasm?” Based on this question alone, I am not certain that they would have successfully been able to separate women into groups of who had and who had not had a vaginal orgasm.

The whole idea of a “vaginal orgasm” is contested territory. Because the
clitoris has branches that extend backward into the body, some researchers believe that vaginal stimulation likely stimulates the clitoris too. There is also evidence that the vagus nerve, which carries sensory information from the cervix, is one pathway to orgasm. Because one cannot easily stimulate the cervix without stimulating the vagina too, it's likely that multiple parts of a woman's body are stimulated during vaginal intercourse, fingering, or sex toy play. Can we really put women's orgasms into neat little boxes of vaginal orgasms, clitoral orgasms, G Spot orgasms, and so on? Probably not.

Two years after the Italian study was published, another study was published also in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
that claimed the there was no evidence for the G Spot.
⁹
How did they come to this conclusion? They asked women in their study, “Do you believe you have a so-called G Spot . . .?” They didn't examine the women. They didn't ask detailed follow-up questions about their sexual experiences, orgasms, or experiences with G Spot stimulation. Nor did they acknowledge in the article that the use of the phrase “so-called” may have biased or influenced their participants. I was at a scientific meeting when one of the researchers presented the study and was met with a great deal of criticism from other scientists who questioned whether the study was able to answer the question of whether or not the G Spot existed (most scientists who spoke out did not feel the study could adequately address the issue).

Perhaps you can see the challenge the G Spot presents, even among scientific circles. One day, scientists say, “Eureka, we've found it!” and the next, another team of scientists says “Not so fast—we've just proven it doesn't exist!” and the cycle continues. Of course, this is both the blessing and the curse of science. Most important discoveries are not instant “Eureka!” moments. In science, it often takes a number of studies—and often significant disagreement and then fine-tuning of subsequent studies—to produce greater knowledge.