Graphic Narrative
A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene
From biting toenails to weeding ingrown hairs, true stories of personal grooming, illustrated by Tallulah Pomeroy
A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene
Something I really love about my shower routine is getting really nice and dry, laying my towel on the floor, sitting on it with my legs bent, crouching over to have a good search for any ingrown hairs around my lady bits, and fishing them out with a needle. It also means I can find any spots that need squeezing, which are more rare but more exciting. I found an enormous spot once on my inner thigh right near the crease where leg turns into vagina. It was so perfect: big, hard, massive white head. I squeezed it and heard an actual pop, and some of it went on my face because I was leaned in so close. It was frustrating not being able to share such a moment with anyone who really understood.
I maintain my flexibility with the specific intention of being able to keep on biting my own toenails into old age.
When I was a teenager and sitting at the family computer in the kitchen, I had a thought: “What would happen if I just shit my pants right here? Like, how would it feel?” And as I sat, probably on instant messenger, I just let it all out. Turns out it feels exactly how one would imagine.
About the Illustrator
Tallulah Pomeroy is an English illustrator and writer. She graduated from Falmouth School of Art in 2014. Hallelujah I’m a Bum, a book of Callie Garnett’s poems and Tallulah’s illustrations, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2015. Her poetry has been published in Daniel Owens’s magazine Poems by Sunday, and Coldfront magazine. She now lives in Somerset and is the in-house illustrator at Catapult magazine.
