Body hair, shaving and expectations
Anybody may have a preference. Nobody is owed a surprise requirement on the night. Almost all the trouble on this subject sits in the gap between those two sentences, and it is the one item on the list that most people never raise at all.
Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.
In short
- A preference stated a week ahead is a negotiable item. The same preference produced on the night is a correction nobody is in a position to argue with.
- Anybody may ask and anybody may decline, without a reason. A request that carries a penalty for refusal has stopped being a preference.
- Ask what a requirement costs the person meeting it. Done once it is a favour. Required every week it becomes a standing obligation that can be failed.
- Freshly shaved or waxed skin is more prone to marking and grazing, so leave a gap rather than doing both on the same day.
Everything here is between consenting adults over 18. This page is about shaving, waxing and body hair: an expectation, and how to discuss it.
The item nobody puts on the list
People will negotiate implements in tedious detail, agree a safe word system, settle marks and aftercare and how everyone is getting home, and then turn up to a first session quietly anxious about something neither of them has mentioned. I have had that reported to me afterwards more often than anything else that got left off a list. It was the thing she thought about all week, and neither of us had said a word about it.
The silence is the actual problem, rather than anybody's preference. Both sides have a decent reason to keep quiet. Say it as a top and you sound like a man issuing instructions about somebody's body. Ask as a bottom and you sound like you are inviting an instruction you will then be stuck with. So neither one speaks, and both spend the week guessing.
In advance it is a negotiation, on the night it is a verdict
Timing does all the work here. A preference sent in a message on Tuesday is an item like any other: it can be questioned, refused, costed, or agreed with conditions attached. Nobody is undressed, nobody is committed, and there is a whole evening in which to think about it.
The same words on the night, when somebody has travelled across London and has nothing left to bargain with, do something else entirely. That is a person being told they are wrong at the worst available moment, about something that cannot be put right in ten minutes. Nobody says no in that position. They agree, feel foolish, and remember it.
So the rule I use is simple. Anything I would want has to be said before the day, or it does not get said.
How to raise it
Put it in the negotiation with everything else, in the same flat tone you use for implements, and give it no solemn preamble. A special voice is what makes it sound like a demand.
If you are the one with the preference: I have a preference about how you turn up, it is a preference and not a condition, and I would rather tell you now than have you guess all week. If the answer is no we do exactly what we already agreed.
If you are the one wondering, ask straight out. Do you have any expectations about shaving or body hair? Anybody sensible answers that in a line. A partner who will not, or who says it does not matter and then makes a remark on the night, has answered anyway.
Written is better than spoken for this one. A message spares both people a face to watch.
Being asked is not being told
Declining is available, it needs no justification, and it should cost nothing, including any change in the mood of the evening.
What follows a no is more informative than the request was. A nod and a note is the right response. Sulking, bargaining, a joke about it, or raising it again an hour later are the same behaviour in different clothes, and they generalise. Somebody who cannot take a no about this will not take one about stopping either. See red flags.
What you are actually asking for
A requirement involving money, effort, time or discomfort is a bigger ask than the person making it usually realises, because they are not the one paying it. There is the time it takes, sometimes an appointment to find room for, and skin that has to be lived in for the rest of the week.
Repeated regularly it also changes category. Done once for an evening it is a favour. Required every week it is a standing obligation with a deadline on it, checked by somebody else, and something that can now be failed. Say so out loud when a one-off arrangement turns into a continuing one.
In a long-running arrangement I once put a shaving item on a written standards list, in among shoes, timekeeping, tidiness and being ready by seven, and treated it as one line among twelve.
Months later she told me it was the only item she ever thought about, and that it cost her an appointment and most of an hour every week. She had never said so because it sat next to things that were trivial. A list flattens items that are not the same size. I now ask what each one costs.
Skin, and the timing of it
One practical point that has nothing to do with preference. Anything that irritates skin makes it more prone to marking and to grazing under an implement, and freshly shaved or waxed skin is more reactive than it will be two days later. Leave a gap where you can, and tell whoever is holding the implement, because it changes what is sensible to use. More at marks and bruising.
The thing underneath
Very little of the distress about this is about body hair. It is about being looked at closely by somebody who might have an opinion, which is the largest obstacle most people bring to this activity and the reason the subject feels unbearable to raise.
Asking seems to invite the exact assessment you were dreading. My only answer is that the guessing is worse than the answer nearly every time. That subject has a page of its own at being seen when you hate how you look, and the rule set out there holds here too: bodies are not remarked on.
Where I stand
I have a preference. I have never made it a condition, never written it into an ongoing arrangement as a standard, and nobody has ever been turned away over it. I say it once during the negotiation, in the same voice as everything else, and then I leave it alone. If the answer is no, the subject is closed.
What I cannot tell you is how common any of this is. There is no survey I would trust on it and I will not invent one. My sample is small and it is made up of people willing to have a frank conversation with me, which is not a representative group. Take the above as one man reporting what he has seen.
Common questions
Am I expected to shave or wax before a spanking session?
There is no default and no standard, whatever anybody implies. Some people have a preference and say so, plenty have none at all, and an expectation only exists if somebody has stated it out loud in advance. Anybody may ask and anybody may decline without giving a reason. A requirement produced on the night rather than during the negotiation is a problem in itself, whatever it happens to be asking for.
How do I raise shaving or body hair with a partner without it sounding like criticism?
Raise it during the negotiation, days before, alongside implements and limits rather than as a special subject with its own atmosphere. Say that it is a preference and not a condition, and say what happens if the answer is no, which should be nothing at all. Sending it in a message rather than saying it in person is entirely legitimate and usually easier for both people.
Can I say no to a request about shaving or body hair?
Yes, and no reason is required. Cost, time, skin that reacts badly, or simply not wanting to are all sufficient, and a preference that carries a penalty for refusal has stopped being a preference. How the other person handles that no tells you a great deal. Somebody who sulks, jokes about it or keeps returning to it later has shown you how they will treat every other limit you set.