I still remember, 16 years on, how you calculate the missing side of a right-angled triangle: a² + b^{2 =} c².

That information is useless to me.

What would I like to know instead? Well, how to groom my pubes into a neatly-trimmed triangle (my style of choice) would be a start. Although not a right-angled one, it’s true.

I am pro-hair, on both men and women. I’m pro-hair on myself. But I’m not pro the way it looks most of the time, and I certainly don’t feel positive about either my ability to style it the way I want, or to ask someone else to do just that.

Which, to be honest, worries me.

I am, on the surface, all body confidence and positivity. Naked in the changing rooms. Topless on the beach. Fucking with the lights on. But what I project? It’s sure as hell not being reflected back at me.

I believe, wholeheartedly, in two things. Firstly, that body positivity is important, even when it’s a struggle, and that it’s more important for me to come to terms with my body the way it is than to cave to society’s demands that I change it. I will, for example, only try to lose weight when I’m in a good and happy place, because I’m trying to like myself more, not less.

Secondly, that there is no shame in asking  questions when you don’t know or can’t do something. And I do a shit job of landscaping down there. I’d like to be smooth underneath. I’d like zero hair in the creases between my thighs and my pelvis. I already go to the beautician to have facial hair waxed, which, truth be told, should bother me a whole lot more for the lack of femininity it implies. But I don’t. I don’t go because I worry that beauticians never see clients with pubes as unkempt and wonkily-shaped as mine. I worry that they’ll judge. I worry that I won’t know what to ask for.

Because I don’t want a Hollywood, a Brazilian, a landing strip, or a postage stamp.

I just want a triangle.

So why the fuck can’t I say so?