Recently, I saw a pair of underwear that got me thinking about a woman’s right to choose. Not the typical right to choose, which of course there are one million columns to be written about. No. This is the right to shave, or not to shave. That is the question.

The book was “Cool Green Stuff.” The underwear, from greenknickers.org, had the phrase “Stop Deforestation” around the seam. It is a pun. You can stop cutting down trees, and you can stop cutting off pubic hair. Or leg hair, or any other kind of hair women aren’t supposed to have.

Well, I’m a woman, and I have all of the above hairs. Granted, it’s fairly easy for me to be a hairy hippie because my hair is really light and grows out thin. But that isn’t the point at all. I stopped shaving because it’s a waste of time and water in the shower, and it feels better soft then it does smooth.

Plus, have you seen those pictures of Britney and Lindsay sans underwear?   That’s a pretty effective argument for how creepy bikini waxes look.

I have no serious problem with women who shave every time they take a shower. I just hope they’re doing it for themselves. And I’m almost positive they’re not.

Somewhere along the line, around the same time corsets and high heels went from being a part of masculine fashion to feminine (It’s uncomfortable. Better give it to the women!), it became an expectation of women that they be as hairless as possible. Excepting of course the hair on their heads, which should be as full,   teased and treated as possible.

And so we find ourselves, centuries later, in a balding society. You might be saying, “Yeah, right! All the girls here are hairy!” First of all, you’re wrong. Second of all, Whitman is a bubble. I promise you’ll graduate and be shocked to discover that the majority of girls spend hours a day on their appearance, and the majority of colored glass can be recycled.

Part of the problem I have with shaving is how violent of an action it is. In order to properly flash a camera while getting out of a car, one must drag a blade (capable of severing the arteries of many a tortured soul) across the most sensitive parts of one’s body. Over and over again, several days a week. Just so you can look like a hypersexual 8-year-old.

Which brings me to my next point. There are very few arguments for why smooth legs and cooters are sexy that would not also apply to why babies are sexy. And babies are not actually sexy. They are babies.

I understand if you are grossed out by stubble. If you’re used to no hair, prickly hair is not a good reminder of what hair feels like. But the thing is, stubble grows out. And when it does, it’s beautiful and soft. I don’t want to wax too poetical on the qualities of long leg hair, but I do want to argue forcefully that you can learn to love hair on your legs just like you once learned to love smooth legs when you started shaving. Which, if you recall, you did actually start doing. It’s not an instinctual human need.

There are all sorts of things I could say about pubic hair and how it has been beneficial to me, but this isn’t a sex column. Suffice it to say, vaginas want to grow hair, and I say let them. They generally know what’s up when it comes to feeling good. If they wanted to be bald, women would be having orgasms all over the place when they got waxed. Have you ever been in a salon during a bikini wax? They are not orgasming. They are threatening to commit murder.

A few years ago, W magazine did a feature on Kate Moss. One of the pictures was just of her pubic hair.   I would say it was almost a religious experience. Here was a woman known to be at the forefront of glamour the world over, and she was proudly hairy. Stop deforestation, indeed.

I’m not saying Kate Moss is a great example in all that she does, but she does seem to understand that a woman can be the entire planet’s idea of sexy and also let her body grow the hair it wants to.

I’m arguing that you stop shaving long enough, girls, to figure out who exactly you’re shaving for. Also long enough that you get past stubble and figure out that hair feels really, really good. Trust me. And trust the vaginas.