Whether it’s shaving, waxing or laser hair removal, pubic grooming has become commonplace – but more than a quarter of those who remove hair have met with mishap in the process, research has revealed.

The study found that 76% of US adults quizzed said they removed some or all of their pubic hair, with almost 26% of those who groomed reporting that they had sustained at least one injury while doing so, ranging from cuts to burns and rashes.

The research, say the authors, was prompted by an analysis of the type of genitourinary system problems that landed people in the emergency room.

“We were, quite frankly, quite surprised how frequently people were presenting with injuries relating to grooming,” said Benjamin Breyer, a urologist at the University of California, San Francisco and co-author of the study. “Three per cent of the time [adults] are coming in [to the emergency department with a genitourinary injury, it’s] with a grooming injury.”

To explore whether certain practices were linked to a greater risk, the team carried out a nationally representative online survey of US-based adults aged 18-64 which ran during January 2014. Among the questions, participants were asked the age at which they began grooming their pubic hair, how hairy they thought they were, and whether they had ever sustained injuries through grooming.

Published in the journal Jama Dermatology, the results reveal that 5,674 out of 7,456 participants reported that they had, at some point, groomed their pubic hair, with almost 67% of men and just over 85% of women saying they had done so.

While most reported removing their own hair, just under 4% said they had it removed by a professional while 9% said they were groomed by a partner and 0.5% said a friend did the job. Shaving was the most common method, with nearly three-quarters of participants using some sort of razor.

But the study also found that 27% of women and almost 24% of men came a cropper while tidying up their pubic hair, with 1.4% of groomers saying they had had to seek medical attention as a result. Among the trends revealed, men who thought they were hairier were at higher risk of injury.



Cuts were the most common injury, accounting for 61% of mishaps, while 23% were down to burns, likely to have been from waxing or the use of hair-removal creams.

While the scrotum was the prime site of injury for men, the pubis was most likely to be the location of injuries for women.



But the blunders were rarely one-offs – two-thirds of those who had sustained injuries reported that they had been hurt more than once, and almost a third said it had happened on five or more occasions over their lifetime.



The study also revealed that those who removed all of their pubic hair were more likely to report having been injured. “You are getting at all the nooks and crannies of your body – you are going to get places you can’t see very well and that probably in turn leads to a greater likelihood of getting injured,” said Beyer.

While the authors note that the majority of injuries were minor, 2.5% of those who reported injuries said they were severe and needed surgical intervention, from requiring stitches to the draining of abscesses.



Illustration: Mona Chalabi

But, Beyer notes, it is difficult to say which method is the most hazardous. “Razors were associated most [with injury], but they may be the ones that are by far used the most,” he said. “Using electric shavers seems to be not associated with high degrees of injury – probably because you are just less likely to get cut – but you don’t get as fine a shave.”

The study follows previous research from the team which found that 59% of more than 3,300 women reported grooming their pubic hair for “hygiene” reasons, while another study by the team found that both men and women who groom their pubic hair were more likely to have sexually transmitted infections and lice.

However it wasn’t clear whether the link was a result of such grooming leaving individuals more vulnerable to catching STIs, or whether they removed their pubic hair because they had caught an STI or lice, or whether those who tidy up their nether regions might be more likely to shun safe sex.

While Beyer says the new research has its limitations – not least that it was based on self-reported answers that might not have reflected the whole truth – he says people should take care to prevent blunders.



“If you have had an injury, think about altering your practices,” he said. “The things that we know can be protective is doing it just a little less frequently, and also taking off less hair in total, treating fewer areas.”