In being surprised that apparently 98% of UK women under 25 have no pubic hair at all?

[Longstocking2]

Is that true?

A friend who is a practice nurse says she presumes it's just a fashion. None of her women under 25 who come for smear tests have any pubic hair.. all shaved, shorn, waxed to nada.

Obviously that's fine but it seems a little universal to me. Aren't there any rebels out there?
Is it just for the boys they do it?

Does the image not come from porn originally?

{shock]

would love to be enlightened!
Clearly I'm over 25

Dittany: to call yourself a feminist and yet have such a low opinion of women really bothers me. Do you really believe women are just mindless puppets with no agency of their own doing everything that men ask of them? That's how you are coming across. You seem to have a lower opinion of women that most misogynists.

The number of people who've said they do it 'for hygiene reasons' - eh? don't you wash?

A bit of a trim when it gets beyond your knickers - fine - but that it's 'the norm in the under 25's' worries me. Is it pushed in all their teen magazines or something or do girls all talk about it nowadays?

than

Not everything on our bodies is there for a good enough/necessary reason. There is, for example, no need to have as many moles as I had near my eyes, and I had some of them frozen off. The same way my hair could grow very long if I let it, but I choose to shave it off because I don't feel that I need it to be long.

And analysing a supposed cultural phenomenon and labelling it sexist when it may or may not be depending on each personal experience is imposing one's view on others who may not believe as you do and instructing them how to feel, despite the fact that they are grown women with minds of their own.

Blokes and the porn industry are not telling me to shave my hair (head, pubic, underarm, legs) off, and even if they are or were, the choice is mine and mine alone. I would consider your way, dittany, of putting your point across as what should be the norm as extreme as what you are suggesting blokes and the porn industry are doing. Therefore, I believe "blokes", "the porn industry" and you can and should be criticized in that respect.

I shave my legs and shave my pits (and my tash - I am over 40) because society expects it and I cave to the pressure - I have very very dark hair - like Homer Simspon it comes back within 10 seconds of shaving!

but in the winter, unless I am swimming - I am a rebel and hairy!

I don't display my muff in public - regardless of the season - muffs are sexual things - which suggests the shaving of them and the 'men like it' thing is also sexual - not cultural - and again - that I find creepy.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/pornography-big-business-influence-culture

Bit of a long article but interesting what it says about pubic hair towards the end.

I trim my hair, and shave around the edges so I have a bit of a dorito chip rather than a landing strip. I have waxed it all off before and it hurts. It also hurts in the regrowth too. I do not do that any more!

When I am all freshly trimmed up I feel sexier. It is the porno element I think.

I shave it because pubic hair is minging

i do kerry, gone are the days where my fanjo was oozing afro style pubes.

now i'm an old codger, i just give the grey a crew cut.

besides...its bloody dangerous shaving your own bits

LOL Catis
love this thread....
love the passion
love the intelligence
love the sisterhood
All Hail mumsnet, I'm eternally the wiser for it!

'If it's only hair, why bother shaving it off. Everything on our bodies is there for a reason - the lack of respect we show to our bodies is very sad.'

Because I don't like it, dittany. It's mine, it's my body and I first started doing it because I had so much of it it felt uncomfortable and sweat got trapped in it.

Later, as I became a woman, I had a well-muscled, fit body that I loved. I didn't like all that dark hair on my fair skin which were distracting from showing off my body. I wanted to look down at myself or in a mirror and see taut muscles and young, tanned skin first, not a bunch of dark body hair.

So I took it off.

Don't see how that's sad.

Nurseblade Wed 05-Jan-11 13:29:16
"Dittany: to call yourself a feminist and yet have such a low opinion of women really bothers me. Do you really believe women are just mindless puppets with no agency of their own doing everything that men ask of them? That's how you are coming across. You seem to have a lower opinion of women that most misogynists."

Is that a joke? The insipid and institutional prejudice against women by men, either directly and intentionally or not is being compared to a feminist that can strip away the glossy camouflage of patriarchy?

FFS ladies, grow a backbone and realise what you're actually saying. You are comparing men that hate women with a woman who believes in equality,

I like my pubic area hairfree. Both my male and female partners have, in the main, liked it as well. I don't see why it's any creepier than saying that I like my head mainly hairfree (which most of my partners have also liked). Plus, any area of the body can be sexual - you just have to find the best way of viewing/treating them as such

Well, I believe that equality is treating and respecting people as individuals and, as such, accepting and not denigrating their personal choices which harm no one.

dittany, i have a right to an pinion on my dh's pubes

ffs, why are issues like these always turned into female subjugation - its pissing me off.

if you have vastly wild pubic hair - it can be a turn off as well as a turn on.

if it turns you off - then this absolutely should be mentined to your partner.

its like saying - does my fanny look good in this?

as you would a dress

i ask dh to trim - i think its disrespectful actually to expect me to wade through a fucking forest of pubes - sort your groin area out before you expect my hand to go there ffs. nothing more offputting than plucking pubes whilst you wank

Dittany: I don't support him in that which is why I won't grow my bush back. I didn't say my experience trumps others, just that the world is not as black and white as you see it.

Your brand of feminism seems to be about women doing what you want rather than them doing what they want. How does that make women any more free? There is little difference in men telling women what to do than there is in women telling other women what to do. For me, freedom and sexual liberation means women making their own choices, not being dictated to by you.

sigh

Shaving my head isn't a neutral thing to do. It costs money, takes effort and serves no practical purpose. Same as depilating my other body hair. I don't see how a personal choice one makes can be considered as sexist, unless one is under extreme duress. A suggestion from a partner which one is happy to conform with is not inherently a negative thing, unless the person conforming does not like it.

Please point me out to the part of the porn industry that is telling me to shave my head hair off. Granted, there's lots of porn with bald women, the same way there is lots of porn with hairfree women. Doesn't mean that that factors into my decision.

I find "hair on" is more slimming

"The pressure that is applied to girls now is that they must meet the boys' expectations, shave themselves, kiss other girls, have anal sex, enjoy rough sex. And if you don't conform - well that's where cyber bullying can be so effective."

Yep. That's what I find so weird. A woman's body was a woman's body back in the day - hairy, made-up, groomed or not! I watched some program with that Porter woman a few years back - there were teenage lads on it who were saying basically that unless a girl was shaved she could forget it. When did that happen? An adolescent boy turning down sex ?

I think there are many culturally determined behaviours that feel like they are of our own volition.

We don't grow up in a vacuum.

My mother used to say smoking in the street made a woman look like a prostitute. However much I hated that message I still slightly judge a woman with a fag on in the street. We can't help being influenced. We need to acknowledge that surely?