Shaving

What is shaving in BDSM?

Shaving in BDSM is removing pubic or body hair as an agreed act, with someone else holding the razor. Depending on the agreement it takes on three different meanings: a ritual of surrender, a form of care, or a humiliation. What it becomes is set by the frame around it, not by the razor.

How common it is

More common than almost anything on this list.

Jennifer Rehor put more than a hundred behaviors to 1,580 women from the kink community. Under “grooming”, which groups shaving together with manicure and brushing hair, 52.85 percent said they did it to someone else, 70.32 percent underwent it, and 80.63 percent took part in some form. That puts it eleventh in a table of more than a hundred rows: just above candle wax play (78.61) and well above physical humiliation (77.53), and just below flogging (81.90).

That is useful if you are wondering whether this is strange. It is about the least strange thing there is; what makes it special is not the act but who performs it.

The three frames

The same fifteen minutes can mean three different things.

As surrender. You sit still while someone else runs a razor along your skin. There is nothing you can do but stay still, and that is exactly the point. This is why people ask for it without anything else needing to happen.

As care. Slow, warm water, attention, and someone taking their time. This sits close to what happens with aftercare and has little to do with power.

As humiliation. Being stripped bare is an old image and it still works. Here it stands next to objectification and dollification: the body is made smoother, more uniform, less its own.

What sets shaving apart from marking is that it adds nothing but takes something away. A bruise fades; bare stays bare until it grows back, and you see that every morning in the shower.

Where the word comes from

From sheep, and only later from people.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands gives the oldest Dutch attestation around 1100, in “thaz corter thero scorenon scapho”: the flock of shorn sheep. Not until 1236 does it appear for people, in a monastic rule about how they must all shave the hair of their head.

Since 1555 the same verb has also meant to pass right along something, as in “they come flying past the earth” from 1653. That is no coincidence but the same root sker-, which also sits in the Dutch schaar (scissors) and scheur (tear). Cutting and grazing right past are the same word in Dutch, and with this act that is exactly the skill.

What it does to your skin

A shave is a collection of small wounds, and that has consequences for what you do afterward.

Thuisarts.nl describes the most common outcome: inflammation of the hair follicles, small pimples that usually clear on their own within one to two weeks. As the cause it names shaving, waxing, or oil and grease on the skin. The advice is just as plain: put nothing on it, wash daily with soap, and do not shave or wax again before the pimples are gone.

How much a razor damages has been measured in an operating room. Niranjan Thapa and colleagues compared the razor with the clipper as preparation for surgery in 320 inguinal hernia patients. Wound infection occurred in 14.4 percent of the razor group against 5.0 percent with the clipper, and of the participants who got cuts, 65 percent developed an infection. Skin damage was clearly more common in the razor group.

That study is about surgery, not about BDSM, and I do not want to gloss over that difference. What it does show: freshly shaved skin is damaged, even when you see nothing. Anyone who then goes on to drip candle wax on that same spot, or strike or prick it, is starting on skin that is already open. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours in between is not superstition, then.

Misconceptions about shaving

“Shaving right before a date is tidy.” Tidy, yes; wise, no. Shaving just before the appointment means fresh micro-wounds on exactly the spot where something happens next.

“Against the grain gives the smoothest result.” And the most ingrown hairs. Bare and without pimples are two different goals.

“It’s purely humiliation.” No. In most of the agreements I take part in, it is the opposite: someone sitting still while another takes their time.

“If nothing bleeds, nothing happened.” Invisible skin damage is exactly what Thapa and colleagues’ study measures.

What I see myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. On my own profile it says, short and plain, “shaved”, and that is not just a preference: it is the kind of thing you want to know about each other beforehand.

This is one of the few acts that women afterward call more intimate than the sex. I think it comes down to the silence. There is little to say while someone runs a razor along your skin, so you say nothing, and that half hour without words does something a conversation does not. If you want to go through that ritual sometime, it belongs with a BDSM date, where we go over beforehand what may come off and what may not.

And the practical part, which I have to say more often than I would like: do not do it on the morning of the appointment. Do it the day before. Then it is smooth, and your skin has closed again.

What you can do yourself

• Shave a day to two days ahead, not right beforehand, certainly not if something is going to happen to that skin afterward.
• Use a sharp blade and shave with the grain; blunt and against the grain is the combination that ingrown hairs come from.
• Agree what gets removed and what does not, and whether it may be visible to others.
• Leave the skin alone if pimples appear. Put nothing on it, wash daily, and shave again only once they are gone.
• Say so if you find having to sit still nerve-wracking. With this ritual that is the heart of it, not a side note.
• See a doctor for a painful lump with pus that does not clear on its own.

More reading on shaving

On this site, the preparation covers what I go over with you before an appointment, and marking describes the opposite motion: leaving something behind instead of taking it away.

Beyond this site, the page from Thuisarts.nl on inflammation of the hair follicles is read in thirty seconds and the one thing you really need to know about this.

Sources

• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. Jennifer Eve Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015. Provides from the behavior table the row “Grooming (shaving, manicure, pedicure, brush hair, etc.)” for a sample of 1,580 women: 52.85% did it to someone else, 70.32% underwent it, 77.28% one or both, 32.97% watched it, and 80.63% took part in some form.
• Postoperative surgical site infection after preoperative use of razor versus clipper for hair removal in inguinal hernia surgery: A quasi-randomized clinical trial. Niranjan Thapa, Sunil Basukala, Shiva K. Regmi, Oshan Shrestha, Sandip Paudel, Kabita Chaudhary, Bipin Metha, Manoj K. C., Suman Thapa & Sachhyatkar Bista, Health Science Reports 7(1), e1830, 2024 (DOI 10.1002/hsr2.1830, authors and source checked against Crossref). Provides, in 320 inguinal hernia patients, a wound infection rate of 14.4 in the razor group against 5.0 in the clipper group (p = 0.01), more skin damage in the razor group, and the finding that 65 percent of participants who got cuts developed a wound infection. The study concerns surgical preparation, not BDSM; it is cited here for what a razor does to the skin barrier.
• Ontsteking van haarzakjes. Thuisarts.nl (Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap, Federatie Medisch Specialisten en Patiëntenfederatie Nederland). Provides that inflammation of the hair follicles brings small pimples on the skin, that this usually comes from shaving, waxing, or oil and grease on the skin, that the pimples generally clear on their own within one to two weeks, and the advice to put nothing on the skin, wash daily with soap, and not shave or wax again until the pimples are gone.
• Scheren 1. Etymologiebank (Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal), with the entry from M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2003–2009. Provides the Old Dutch attestation skeran around 1100 in “thaz corter thero scorenon scapho” (“the flock of shorn sheep”), the Middle Dutch source of 1236 about how they must all shave the hair of their head, the figurative meaning “to sweep flat right along a surface” from 1555, and the shared root sker- with, among others, schaar and scheur.

Related terms

• Marking. The opposite motion: leaving something visible behind instead of taking it away.
• Objectification. The frame in which smoothing is a means to make someone seem less of a person.
• Dollification. Where that smoothing is taken to its extreme.
• Humiliation. The third frame, with the research into what humiliation does.
• Abrasion. The other way to damage the top layer of skin, but as a goal.
• Aftercare. What the caring frame sits closest to.
• Candle wax. One of the things you had better not do on freshly shaved skin.
• Service-oriented submission. The role in which someone performs the shaving for another.
• Protocol. The form that gives such a fixed half hour its weight.