“Sasha Grey Sparks Bush Backlash”! That was the headline for the always-astute Tracy Clark-Flory’s Broadsheet post on porn star Sasha Grey getting totally naked on the latest episode of HBO’s “Entourage.” Of course, in this day and age, the nudity itself wasn’t shocking. (After all, at this point, who hasn’t seen Grey nude?) It was her pubic hair that became the hirsuite cause célèbre.
If you haven’t been watching the show as of late or, well, ever (um, I have), this is “Entourage”‘s second-to-last season, after which it will be turned into a feature film, a la “Sex and the City,” and then, who knows, die, or live on in reruns forever. Over at The Daily Beast, the show’s creator, Doug Ellin, explains today, of the current season, “Ever since the beginning, I had the hope that if we got far enough along that I’d get to take them to a darker place.”
So, what does that mean? In the last few episodes, it means superstar Vince Chase is doing way too many tequila shots, has decided to call a porn star (Grey) his girlfriend, and is popping plenty o’ pills. It also means there are a lot of jokes about anal sex, pubic hair, and porn. Apparently, these are Ellin’s creative “dark places,” and one is left to conclude that he takes the concept literally. Whether the show is pushing at its boundaries to remain relevant after so many seasons or to kick-start its sinking ratings isn’t altogether clear.
Either way, last weekend’s episode was entitled “Hair,” and that meant pubic. While Vince was off boozing and bumbling, Turtle encountered a woman’s totally de-haired vagina in, gasp, the bright light of day. This witnessing left him traumatized; ergo, the men were left to discuss vaginas, hair on vaginas, and all things in the world hair-on-vaginas related. Meanwhile, the show’s “shocker” came near the end as a totally naked Grey wandered into a swimming pool where Vince lay on the edge, passed out. And get this: she had not waxed her pubic hair into oblivion!
If you blinked, you missed it. Unless you were on Twitter, that is. According to Clark-Flory, the sight of Grey’s un-waxed, un-shaved, American-pie pubic hair style sent viewers into fits. “Yea she had a sicko BUSH,” one fairly vomited. “Entourage was wild. So was Sasha Grey’s bush. #EW,” tweeted another. “[D]id anyone else think that was disgusting. ITS 2010!” yet another howled. Who knew so much pubic hair could cause such an uproar?
If “Entourage”‘s “Hair” episode is to be taken seriously as some sort of peek into the male mind’s view on female body hair, there are seemingly a mere two ways of looking at a woman’s pubic hair. Not enough reveals more than any man would ever want to know about any woman’s vagina. Too much renders her private parts far too frighteningly mysterious: who know what lies behind those unparted curtains? No one seemed to consider that Grey’s pube-style of choice was … natural.
Imagine that … A vagina in its natural state in 2010! Who’d’ve thunk it? “Entourage” succeeded in shocking by being old-fashioned. National Geographic is the new XXX.
Original by: Susannah Breslin