Is pubic hair a feminist issue?

I first read about shaving it all off in an Anais Nin novel when I was 17.

The Brazilian - that's Sex and the City - my waxer remembers the specific date it was broadcast as that's when they all started getting requests and they had to be trained in it.

I personally don't see a difference, feminism-wise in waxing to have a neat triangle or shaving your armpits versus a Hollywood.

If I saw a photo of two women, one with Brazilian, one with Bush, I prefer former.
Personal preference.
Like I prefer full breasted women to flat chested .

I mean look at armpits. Most women remove the hair on their pits and don't think twice about it. More and more men are doing so as well, you just don't see ads for eg pants with men with sprouty armpit hair. Why not? What's wrong with it?

And when women have shown pit hair in the past there has been a certain amount of horror at least in the US remember Julia Roberts?

Are people still hairier on the continent?

Thinking on that, I wonder if there is a link towards the states here. Stacks of porn is out of there, they have as a nation very high standards of grooming generally and (not all of them!) a sometimes peculiar (to my eyes) approach to things to do with sex and stuff. Like vaginal douche things (do they still have that). Why?

So is a lot of this to do with preferences coming from across the pond?

OR is it that the media are in cahoots with the politicians and they want to keep us all so busy spending vast amounts of time trying to rid ourselves of hair that we don't have time for a revolution?

Just a couple of thoughts

I make anti-feminist choices all the time. It would be quite tiring to function in normal society and not do so. Plus I like some things which are not feminist e.g. I enjoy wearing very high heels at work (not to and from though I wear flats and change I'm not a masochist!).

Anyway. What people do individually is not done in a vacuum, few choices we make are truly "free".

The fact that fashions for different cosmetic appearances of various parts of the body changes over the years shows that this is down to fashion, which is driven from various directions. I don't think that people tending to do something more can be said to be "driven by men" or by women - something gets out into the cultural landscape and either it proliferates or not and the reasons for that are fairly complicated I would imagine. Marketers spend squillions trying to work it out I think.

Anyway. Yes pubes are a feminist issue, no that doesn't mean that whatever an individual does with theirs is "wrong" or something.

Agree that men are coming in for higher standards of personal grooming as well, that's not necessarily a great thing IMO. I noticed this a few years back when I was single and seeing a few men who were a bit younger than me, they all trimmed back and neatened which definitely wasn't the case when I was younger.

DH and I both have untamed pubes and this presents us with no problems whatsoever in terms of hygiene, comfort or shagging

But what first made you think of it?

I like the way I look with little hair.
I don't like a full bushy pubic area.
Full stop.

I agree that it's a feminist issue. Not because removing body hair is in itself anti feminist but because the pressure to remove it is disproportionately placed on one gender and has been through various cultures and history.

I personally prefer to remove most of mine but I don't make that decision in a vacuum. I will also defend anyone's right to do that and it makes me uncomfortable that women asking about hair removal methods in S and B have their threads diverted into this discussion. The right to your body and to make decisions about it is paramount. Yes of course those decisions are subject to social and cultural pressure. Well done to those who defy it but it doesn't make the reasons behind those decisions less real or valid.

Sure, but you wouldn't be at horse meat if you grew up in France 50 years ago (or roast starling if you grew up in England 500 years ago)!

Same as op's friend on Facebook wouldn't have dreamed of saying pubic hair was gross 50 years ago but now finds it so - because it's not really in her universe of acceptable any more.

"Have legs lasered and have regular Brazilians because I like it. Not because a man wants me to."

I don't think anyone is saying that you do it because a specific man asked you to. But have you thougth about what was behind your decision to have a Brazilian in the first place? How did you hear about it? When did you first see another woman with no pubic hair?

I don't shave or wax down there - apart from the odd shaving a bit if swimming. Don't want to spend time doing it.

I haven't shaved my legs since October and it has been quite liberating although I probably will shave them in the next month.

Women should be able to do what they want.

I am 55 and divorced.
Have legs lasered and have regular Brazilians because I like it. Not because a man wants me to.

Why do you hate the phrase "radfem", turn?

"Surely feminism is about letting women have the freedom of choice as to what to do with their body?"

Feminism is about analysing society and where that society places a differential pressure on each sex to do something, pointing that out.

In some areas, feminism is about increasing choices (for example, the right to vote, the outlawing of marital rape, the right to work after marriage etc) but it is not so simple as to say "any choice by a woman is a feminist choice"

This doesn't mean I'm trying to tell you not to wax, Egg. But there are no portrayals of women in underwear or swim suits or whatever on TV or in magazines that show any pubic (or other) hair.

Take horse meat; it's tasty, nutritious etc but it's very uncommon in our country to eat it. We are all making a free choice to eat beef, pork etc (religion/diet allowing) but are we making a free choice not to eat horse meat? What would a free choice even look like in the context of Uk history and current practice re horse meat? If you'd grown up in France 50 years ago, would your choice to eat or not to eat horse have had the same "quality" as choosing that today in the UK?

It's a far from perfect analogy but hopefully it shows how choices cannot be separated entirely from surroundings.

You can be a feminist and still make anti feminist choices. It's awareness that's important.

X-posted with lots!

I don't agree that it is a profoundly anti-feminist choice though.

I am a feminist, and one that has had all the scales removed from my eyes. I know that removing my pubic hair, my pit hair, my leg hair is done because I live in a patriarchal society that seeks to infantilise me because I am a woman. I am completely aware that my love for stupid beauty products and make-up and hair straighteners and nail polish diminshes me in some way for some feminists. I am fully aware that societal conditioning has shaped me in lots of ways that could be deemed as anti-feminist. That doesn't mean that I am anti-feminist, it simply means that I have lived a life which has conditioned me to be a certain way and that conditioning is very difficult to break free from.

Luckily, I know that I fight for equality, and it is a fight at the moment. I don't have to show my credentials at the door by not shaving or waxing or not wearing make-up, I don't have to pretend that the society we live in has no effect on the way I live my life, I don't have to turn myself into some caricature of a "radfem" (hate that phrase) in order to fit in with feminism. I can just be who I am and still fight the good fight.

I don't remove any body hair, TheWhiteRoad. I assure you you don't need to be brave about it. I was hairy when I met my dh, and I assure you I never had any problem finding partners. And as for swimming? I couldn't care less what complete strangers who happen to be swimming nearby think.

Its a feminist issue for sure.
I like what my body looks like and like men who like what my body looks like.

It is kinda odd that, if pubic hair on women is so "gross", swimming costumes for women are so brief (vs shorts for men, say)