Brazilian waxing vs. pubic lice
Another species of wildlife is facing extinction.
By Patrick Rogers, Allure magazine
Cue the violins: News has reached us from the United Kingdom that another species of wildlife is facing extinction, and from a most unexpected predator. You may remember—but then again, you may be too young to remember—a problem that once plagued college students, involving a persistent itching in the crotch that cropped up after random sexual encounters and wouldn’t go away except after an embarrassing trip to the drugstore. Yes, pubic lice—or crabs, as they were called at my alma mater. Well, according to an insect specialist in Britain, the onetime campus scourge is fast disappearing thanks to the prevalence of Brazilian (and other) wax jobs.
Related: The Top 21 Drugstore Beauty Bargains
An estimated 80 percent of college students, both women and men, now engage in some form of grooming of these parts, and as any Greenpeace activist can tell you, such heavy deforestation is naturally going to lead to habitat loss and then to extinction. As Ian F. Burgess, an entomologist at Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England, told Bloomberg, “Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations. Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.”
Related: The 10 Commandments of Mascara
Environmental disaster? More like cause for global celebration and perhaps a Nobel Prize nomination for the J Sisters. And to think they used to say waxing had no genuine health benefit.
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