Grouchy feminist speaks out

Yesterday I was in one of the women’s bathrooms at a local spa (after a wonderful massage), and I glanced over a the shelf beside me to find a little box with the words “Blonde Betty” on it.  Curious, since the name Betty always makes me think of famous feminist Betty Friedan (see Kelly Love Johnson’s piece “Being Betty” in her new book), I picked it up.  Here’s what it said:

Are you a true blonde?  Of course you are!  Finally, the first safe color for the hair down there.  Blonde Betty answers the true blonde question.  Blonde Betty color for the hair down there, naturally colors or enhances to match your glorious locks above.

Let’s just say that Betty Friedan has nothing to do with this product.

First of all, are we still concerned about the “true blonde question”?  If I’m sleeping with someone, I don’t think my primary concern is going to be whether he recognizes that my pubic hair is a different color than the hair on my head.  Who the hell cares?  Let’s have sex!

Second, “the hair down there”?  I recognize that this is an advertising campaign, and they’ve come up with their little rhyming slogan, but don’t they know that there’s a whole piece in The Vagina Monologues making fun of that terminology?  “Down there” is what your repressed grandmother calls the vagina.  If you’re actually going to go to the trouble of smearing paste all in your pubic hair to dye it blonde, can you not at least call it by its name?

For the record, my pubic hair is fine just the way it is.