Pudendalocks and the Three Bares

Pudendalocks and the Three Bares

Once upon a time, it was, and a very long time ago,
or possibly in will be in the future, it’s very hard to know,
There was a girl called Pudenda – (I think her parents were caned,
They may have not realised the full meaning when she was named)
But I digress, this tale is not one about her family,
But more about the way she came have a natural affinity
With her body and her name and that which grew upon her,
I talk of course of the locks that develop around a vagina.
I skip ahead again, I really must get my head and words together,
To tell the tale, properly, of Pudenda’s developed nether.

Pudenda grew up happy, noisy, loud and ran carefree,
She was not restricted in her life’s full rich possibility.
She’d climb up trees and wear high heels, although not at the same time,
At least not after the first attempt to make a higher climb
In which her heel got caught in a really gnarly thickened branch,
And she fell and it took a while to get the blood to stanch…
But anyway the point of this is that her life was an open book,
She believed and grew up knowing she could do anything, just look
At the world around her and decide one day eventually,
What it is that she really wanted to do and may want to be.

Slowly as she grew though she came to realise that
Not everyone held the view of freedom that she had.
She looked around and saw the ideals that the world seemed to push,
On hair and face and body and clothes and even her new-grown bush.
Hard to believe, in fact she could barely credit the truth.
Why would the world care what developed as she grew out of youth?
Could it really be so important what look she may sport down there?
Whether hairy, groomed, shaved into patterns, or completely bare?
She’d barely hit puberty when it seemed the world crashed in,
And suddenly she had all these rules to follow in order to fit in.

At school she heard the teasing and the laughter of the girls
In the changing rooms during gym lessons, pointing at the curls
Of the newly pubescent developing growth of the young body
Although as all of them were experiencing the same puberty
It seemed to Pudenda that they were only laughing at themself
And it must be nervous fear of being left somehow on the shelf
Of not conforming and not attracting their future partner for life
And of attaining that idealised goal of someone’s most-loved wife.
Pudenda’s upbringing had taught her that her life would be full of choice,
But now the choices seemed limited by an outside pressuring voice.

As Pudenda grew a bit older into her burgeoning sexuality
Understanding her attractions and with whom she wanted to be
She saw how the culture in which she and her peers existed
Had a very narrow view of the way in which women were depicted
More than that and more than the restrictions she had realised
Was that her own vagina had been specifically idealised.
Her labia apparently had a correct width and length it should be
And as for her pudenda-locks, it seemed less was more to see!
It meant that as soon as puberty had hit and her bush had grown,
In order to be attractive her bush had to be shorn, shaved and mown.

Her name had been an embarrassment but now she took it as a sign
That she would be a voice in the wilderness to shout “what’s mine is mine!”
And whether Brazilian, Hollywood, French, the traditional Three Bares,
She did not see any reason to conform, to be told how to style her hairs.
Mainstream porn, the major source of a young boys sex education,
Meant that normality for them was to see all bared to the nation,
And when she said bared, she meant bared quite literally,
Naked pre-pubescent pubic mound, completely hair-free.
Choice is good, choice is fine and she thought informed choice the best.
But how can such a choice be made without facts? She must protest!

So many different terms she found for what existed down below,
Vafro and jewfro two terms discovered; there would be more to know.
But all describe an area that is as varied as each person is in life.
So why is it necessary to conform to one ideal, to avoid perceived strife?
As Pudenda had relationships and became more sexually active,
She realised that no-one really cared about hairiness, she was still attractive.
The pressure and the torture and the pain she had endured
Was pointless and wasted and yet still went on as girls matured.
It angered her to know that in this and in all things physical
Young girls were pushed and oppressed through the body critical.

Pudenda then embraced her name and it became her raison d’etre
To shout out loud and everywhere, to campaign to make things better.
She became Pudendalocks and made it her life to fight the Three Bares.
To enable all the women and girls she knew to own what was theirs.
To strike at the heart of raunch culture and its narrow confines.
To free the minds of everyone from what society defines
As the way a woman could and should and would always be.
As the gender boundaries blur people would be proud to say “I’m me!”
Not boxed in or suppressed or confined or restricted in choice.
Pudendalocks would be her name. Freedom would be her voice.

So that’s the story of Pudendalocks and how she grew into her name.
The way in which she developed into the fighter she became.
Like all fairy stories it would end in a happily ever after.
But it will only end that way if you join in her thereafter.
Pudendalocks has a voice and she fights for freedom from oppression,
I intend to help her and all others in the fight against suppression.
Although as my readers you will know happily ever after isn’t real,
But the fight goes on and is the thing, to fight with grit and zeal.
Fairy tales and nursery rhymes aren’t real, we know that obviously.
But discrimination is, so let’s join with Pudendalocks, for equality!

© Tina Price-Johnson
28.09.2014

This poem got a very good reaction particularly from young (i.e. 18-21) women in the audience who approached me after I performed it to discuss what it said and how they felt, and to ask what a pudenda* was  … really, we do need to have a better, more informative and detailed discussion about our bodies in which no gender is excluded, and include informed consent in that discussion!

Please read, please share, please let me know what you think!

*the exterior area of a person’s genitals, most often applied to women in the area in which hair grows – let’s face it that could be anywhere from halfway down the inner thighs to the navel, and all or no areas in between.  We aren’t all identical!

Advertisement