An article was published on Thought Catalog that I don’t intend to rail against, but just to expound on. An exemplary rebuttal having already been written, I intend to school Bernie on his chosen topic and, at the expense of sounding as naïve and tactless as him, raise an issue I find infinitely more disruptive than the presence of pubes.

I was cursed with early puberty. In 5th grade, I grew a total of 14 inches, acquiring the nickname the BFG as well as the hunched shoulders of Quasimodo. Hardly aware of my own hair color, I sauntered about the halls of middle school with fully inflamed mosquito bites for nipples. That, plus a penchant for white and pastel-colored petit bateaus, didn’t exactly make for a pretty sight. In fact, it actually prompted my best friend Emily — God bless her — to take me aside and urge me to wear a bra. Even though she was a full foot shorter than I, she apparently had the wherewithal to know when to say enough. And enough was apparently enough. I was the first to get my period out of all of my friends, which all of the boys promptly discovered. Why they were even interested in being privy to this information is still beyond me. Yet despite these hurdles, I have to say the worst stage of puberty was, without a doubt, the sprouting of those pesky pubes.

At the all-girls sleep away camp I attended for 8 consecutive summers, I was an easy target amongst my friends. Perhaps it was my awkward, behemoth height and gangly limbs, or my crippling fear of the balance beam. It could’ve also very well been my dancing dysmorphia, wherein I fancied myself quite the hip-hop dancer despite having the rhythm of Elaine Benes. But whatever the cause, I often found myself the victim of shower mop raids, in which friends attacked me with the bathroom mop as I showered. Good times for all. In fact, it may have been during one such mop-down when my friends discovered my bush. One second they’re all asking me for a peep of my hoo-ha, and the next thing I know I’m being summoned by my friends and their older sisters to a picnic table-style meeting on the state of my pubes. I was confounded. Their reaction was not unlike an FBI agent’s reaction upon discovering an informant.

I returned home, and still, luck was not on my side. My friend Jessica invited me over for a play date, but if I thought this was going to be another one of our 4-hour Tetris competition marathons, then I had another thing coming. Much like the incident at camp, it all seemed to happen so fast. One minute I’m getting walked-in on mid-tinkle, and the next minute everyone at school has been informed of my “big dark and hairy,” as Jessica referred to it (insert awkward emoji here).

So, you see, Bernie dearest, it has not been without struggle that I sit here today, confident, and with a fully-grown bush — one might even say, pubes for days. Sure, there were the high school and college years of, first shaving, and then, after finding out the hard way what razor burn feels like on a vagina, the upgrade to Nair. I’ll skip that one for all of our sakes and move onto the time I decided, maybe — just maybe — a light trim would do the trick. And if you call a trick a bad cut then, yes, it did a fine trick indeed. And then, ahh, the many years of waxing. My friend Elexa, if you are so inclined, will happily share with you a vivid and descriptive account of the time she accompanied me on a wax, hearing cries of murder emanating from my room.

Bernie, I’m gonna be honest with you: Pubes? Not high on my list of turn-ons. I’ll even go so far as to say I don’t love a stare-down with a bushel of pubes on the beach while I’m trying to get my tan on. But Bernie, sweet sweet Bernie, your call for shaved vaginas overshadows a much larger, more expansive…epidemic, if you will. That of your balls. They smell. And yes, my usage of “your” might seem presumptuous, but I am pretty certain that your balls, in particular, reek. It’s a mixture of asparagus, excrement, and a pinch of homeless man, all blended into a steaming bowl of borscht. Really, it is nothing I have ever smelled before. I assume your call for Mr. Bigglesworth-looking vaginas is to enhance your time down there. But, really, Bernie, that should not be your concern. For, if you fail to wash your balls — Bigglesworth or no Bigglesworth — your girl is going to take one whiff of you and pass out. And, unless your call for shaved vaginas is not limited to women with a heartbeat, then I urge you to find a loofah and start scrubbing. You’re gonna be a while.