If you have a hard time maneuvering around the knees, or want to just remove small areas of hair–like, say, the bikini line–then a straight razor is perfect for you. Secondly, straight razors are a great option for people with sensitive skin who are prone to ingrown hairs and razor burn.
You can shave everything with a straight razor or a safety razor. Your legs, unnderarms, back hair, hair on your head, pubic hair, anything.
Using shaving cream also may help protect your skin from cuts and irritation. If you're nervous about cutting yourself, you can try an electric razor instead.
Use a Venus Pubic Hair shaver. They're made for women, but anyone can use one. They're different from the razor you'd use on your face. The blades are angled differently to handle the thinner and more sensitive skin.
A straight-edge razor's aggressiveness can be adjusted on the fly and more fine-tuned with pressure. Because of the control of pressure and blade angle, ingrown hairs can be minimized if not eliminated completely.
Another downside of using an electric razor is that it may require more passes to cut the hair since the blades are not exposed; this means you might not get as close of a shave as you would with a manual razor, and you may need to shave more frequently to maintain smoothness.
Safety Razors
A favorite among the skin-conscious and sustainability enthusiasts, single-blade razors, like Lane44, are known for their gentleness on skin and durability. These razors cut hair at the skin's surface, thereby reducing the likelihood of ingrown hairs, as the hair is less likely to grow back into the skin.
This practice may result in adverse health consequences, including genital burns from waxing, severe skin irritation leading to post inflammatory hyperpigmentation, vulvar and vaginal irritation and infection, and the spread or transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STI).
Just be sure to use shaving cream and a sharp razor. Shaving doesn't make hair thicker or darker, though it might look that way. If you want to avoid the stubbly look you can get from shaving, you can use depilatories or wax. A depilatory is a cream or liquid that removes hair from the skin's surface.
Pubic hair grooming, described as partial or complete removal of pubic hair, is considered a prevalent practice in both men and women [1]. Notably, The prevalence of this practice is reportedly high in groomers with more than 80% of women actively engaging in it, as evidenced by multiple studies [1,2,3,4,5].
Modern electric shavers are incredibly high performance, but they cut the hair above the surface of the skin, so no matter how good your shaver you are never going to get as close a shave as you will get with a proper wet shave.
Pubic hair can vary between being tightly curled or relatively straight. Curly hair is more common and can help with reducing friction. But if you've got straighter hair, you're not alone—it's less typical but totally normal.
You can shave in any direction that feels comfortable, but shaving “with the grain” will help to avoid excess shaving irritation. Clean the blade in water every 2-3 strokes to keep your hair from blocking the blades. Rinse and repeat as you shave the parts of your pubic area that you feel comfortable grooming.
From the gynecologist's perspective, shaving regularly to eliminate pubic hair has drawbacks. Razors harbor bacteria and cause some abrasion of the skin; especially in a moist environment. This creates a setup for a bacterial skin infection.
For one thing, a straight razor shave gives you more control than a standard bladed razor. If you have a hard time maneuvering around the knees, or want to just remove small areas of hair–like, say, the bikini line–then a straight razor is perfect for you.
However, shaving and trimming are techniques you can easily master at home. It's also okay to decide not to shave your pubic hair at all! It's quite normal to let it grow out, though you must wash and dry it properly. Otherwise, you can cause itchiness and rashes from dried-out skin or clogged pores.
While some women shave every day to keep their bikini area smooth, we do not recommend it. Shaving every day can lead to ingrown hairs. It's best to give your skin a chance to recover and heal between shaving days. To keep the area smooth, aim to shave every two to three days.
Most women (64.3%) and men (62.2%) preferred complete removal of female pubic hair, and this preference was more pronounced in younger women and men.
Just like the hair on the head, the hair on the rest of the body, including the pubic area, is subject to graying. As people age, their skin produces less melanin. Melanin is the pigment responsible for giving skin and hair its color. The hair follicles contain melanin.
If you sense a little body odor, it's because your pubic hair is doing its job of trapping sweat, oil, and bacteria.
To get a clean shave, consider using a manual razor. But if you'd like to remove some—not all—of your pubic hair, a dedicated trimmer can be helpful.
The butterfly safety razor utilizes a twist-to-open mechanism head to make changing the blade easy and convenient.
You should exfoliate your skin prior to shaving, as exfoliating first can help prevent the razor from becoming clogged with dead skin cells (which can reduce its effectiveness). In other words, exfoliating first is a serious pro tip for a closer shave.