Virgin. Radhika Sanghani

I started to shave the triangle area. My never-cut pubic hairs immediately got tangled in the razor and it started yanking them painfully. I persevered for twenty minutes before I realised I should have trimmed them to start with. I grabbed some nail scissors and started.

      I finished snipping away with the scissors and went back to the razor. This time it was much easier, and the hairs disappeared. It got trickier around the more delicate areas, where I tried to pull the skin taut for a cleaner shave. When I got to the lips, I was navigating in total confusion. I was so terrified of cutting something important that I just left all the hairs on the side of the clitoris. I rubbed around with my hand to check if there were any other obvious patches I’d missed, but I couldn’t find any.

      Until I headed down south and realised with horror there was a line of hair going up to my anus. I had no idea if you were meant to get rid of this bit, too, but figured I may as well finish what I’d started. I held my bum cheeks wide open and leant forward in the water, wishing I hadn’t put so much bubble bath in. I held my breath, carefully shaving upwards. It was hard to keep the razor close to the skin but I managed to get most of it off. I swapped sides and then breathed out in relief. I felt as though I’d just had a gruelling Pilates class.

      I was about to climb out of the bath into the comfort of my dressing gown when I remembered Lily saying the lips were the one area where boys didn’t want hairs in case they went down on you. There weren’t exactly any boys queuing up to go down on me—but then, I reasoned, they wouldn’t if it got around that I had a hairy vagina. With a resigned sigh, I pulled the lips apart as far as I could and found the hairs growing only a few millimetres away from the clitoris.

      Picking up my razor again, I slowly started steering it around the delicate parts, wishing I had invested in a special bikini razor.

      Then I screamed. I had cut it. I had actually cut my clitoris.

      I grabbed the shower head and turned the cold water on max. It numbed my vagina, and gradually my cries turned into self-pitying whimpers. I had another peek at it and it looked OK. It was only a tiny nick. I thanked God that I hadn’t accidentally lopped the whole thing off. I got out of the bath and dried myself gently before limping off to bed.

      By the next day, I’d forgotten about the cutting incident. It seemed to have miraculously healed and I spent the entire morning feeling deliciously smooth. I even spent a full twenty minutes admiring my naked body in front of the mirror. The mass of hair that had used to terrify me and make me feel anything but sexy was gone. Post-shave I felt like a New Woman.

      A few hours later, everything changed. I sat on the loo to pee and screamed in agony. The urine was trickling against my cut and it was more painful than anything I had ever experienced. I couldn’t pee without crying. I was fucked.

      The only option was to dehydrate myself and not pee. I wandered around school for the next couple of days in a state of hell. Dante’s seventh circle of hell had nothing on my life post-shave. I was thirsty, faint, and had to stop wearing mascara because I cried so much every time I peed.

      On top of that, the hairs had already started to grow back as stubble. It was itchy as hell and I couldn’t stop scratching. I had to hide in corners in public to scratch my vagina, and I winced whenever the outer lips rubbed together. In the mirror, it looked as hideous as it felt. The stubble made my poor lady bits look like a middle-aged man’s beard.

      It took four days for the cut to heal and I spent every evening writing I hate my life all over my diary in five different felt tips. Eventually I worked up the courage to tell Lara exactly what had happened and she laughed so much she cried.

      When I mentioned it again four years later, she was still laughing.

      ‘Oh my God, I totally forgot that,’ she sniggered.

      ‘It wasn’t funny,’ I snapped. ‘It was agony and I’m never letting a razor go anywhere near my vag again.’ I paused. ‘So what do I do instead?’

      ‘Why don’t you use a cream?’

      I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘I can’t really see a cream having much effect down there. The hairs are kind of thick.’

      ‘No, it’s fine. The creams are designed to work on all types of hair. Why don’t you go ahead and trim, and I’ll go to the supermarket and buy the cream?’

      ‘OK, but if it goes wrong, I’m blaming you,’ I warned as I chucked her my wallet and walked into the bathroom to start the preparation. I hated trimming my pubes. I didn’t know what length to trim them to, and Lara was useless in this area because she was so fair her entire body was hairless. I doubted she had ever had to decide which hair removal method was best because she definitely didn’t have any. I’d noticed in Year Seven when we changed for swimming.

      I started trying to pull the hairs together in clumps so I could trim them in mini sections. I channelled my inner hairdresser, sectioning the hair in between my fingers and cutting the ends of it. I snipped away as best I could, struggling as I did the lips. The hair fell away into the loo bowl and eventually I was left with a relatively evenly trimmed vagina. I leaned over so my head was in between my legs. Then the door swung open.

      ‘Jesus, Ellie, what are you doing?’

      I snapped my head up and pulled my dress back down. ‘What happened to knocking? I was checking for stray hairs but I’m tempted to give up on them now.’

      ‘Yeah, you can just get them with this,’ she said, as she triumphantly waved a tube of hair removal cream and a bag of M&M’s. As I reached for the chocolate she threw the cream at me.

      ‘I figured we’d need extra chocolate for this. We can eat them while we’re waiting for the cream to de-hair you.’

      I rolled my eyes but dutifully pulled my dress up. Lara groaned, ‘Ellie, I seriously wish you wouldn’t just whip all your clothes off without some kind of warning.’

      ‘What? I went to an all-girls school.’

      ‘We went to the same school.’

      ‘Exactly, so you should be fine with it. How much of this stuff do I put on?’

      She examined the packet. ‘Right, you need to make sure all the hairs are covered, so I’d just put loads on if I were you. And then we leave it for ten minutes but you’ll probably need fifteen because it says leave it on for two minutes longer for tough hairs.’

      ‘Twelve minutes, then.’

      ‘You’re standing in front of me with your vagina out. Trust me, you need fifteen.’

      I slathered the white cream, which stank worryingly of chemicals, over my pubes. Then I sat on the loo with my legs spread wide open so the cream wouldn’t wear off against my thighs. Lara was lying in the empty bath, passing me M&M’s.

      ‘I don’t understand how a cream can be as effective as a wax wrenching the hairs out. How can this stuff do the same thing?’ I asked.

      ‘Judging by the strong smell coming from between your legs, there are enough chemicals in there to burn them off.’

      ‘Ohmigod, do you think that if I leave it on for too long it will burn me?’

      ‘Nah, probably not. Shall I check the instructions, though?’

      I tried to reach for them to chuck over to her but I couldn’t without getting off the loo. Instead I held my hand out for more M&M’s.

      ‘What does the timer say?’

      Lara glanced at her iPhone and announced, ‘You officially have forty-five seconds and then you’re free to wash it off.’

      I jumped up in excitement and gestured for her to get out of the bath.

      Gingerly, I switched the shower on and did a silent prayer. I moved the shower head down and waited for the hairs to wash away.

      Two minutes later, I was still waiting. Panicking, I started to rub them, and a few came off in my hand. The rest stayed,