How to Shave Down There: Pubic Hair Shaving Tips From Pros

Maybe you’ve never even thought about removing your pubic hair. I don’t know your life! But in the event that you — like me at age 13, during the delightful stage known by endocrinologists as puberty — are plagued with the question of how to shave your vagina (or, to be anatomically correct, your vulva, since the vagina is all internal), there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, don’t do what I did, not knowing which direction to shave pubic hair, dragging your razor across the skin in a back-and-forth direction as many times as you need until it’s all smooth, like my decidedly cooler ninth-grade friend told me to. This, I can attest, leads only to unsightly ingrown hairs and tiny red bumps that will make you feel like a plucked chicken. Instead, you’ll want to treat this delicate area, well, delicately, because shaving pubic hair isn’t the same as shaving anywhere else on your body.

“The hair in the pubic area is different from leg hair,” Caitlin Orszulak, a senior scientist for P&G, tells POPSUGAR. “On average, pubic hair is about twice as thick as leg hair, tends to be curly, and can grow in multiple directions. On top of that, the hair in the pubic area tends to be much denser, meaning there’s more hair per square cm versus on a leg.” She adds that your skin down yonder is also thinner, meaning it’s more permeable to moisture loss. “Finally, the deeper layer of skin in the pubic area has more nerve endings and higher blood flow than the legs, making this area particularly sensitive.”

This is all to say, there are a quite few things to know on how to shave pubic hair safely, and that is precisely why we tapped a handful of grooming experts to help. Keep scrolling for some pro tips below. Trust me, if you’re gonna shave your pubes at all: your bikini line depends on it.