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

what about hair styles, make-up, "nice" clothes - Should we just wear plain clothes, no make-up (actually I don't wear any - because......well I just don't ) and hair styling costs money. But who do women do it for? If it's to look/feel good who do they want to look/feel good for - the men, other women (quite possibly judging by many of the S&B threads on here ) or themselves?

LOL spidermama.

sardinejam, kind of the point for me was not 'hmm, douches or shaving?' just that it's interesting which particular needs get created in different societies, and by which forces? and who does the work necessary to make sure those 'needs' are 'met'? in both cases here it would be women, making sure that the need never to smell of sweat or body fluids is dealt with.

karen armstrong writes in her memoir of her time as a nun how one of the major things she had to learn to submit to was not being able to have clean underwear every day - she was given clean underwear I think possibly once a month? years later all the young nuns were given a chance to say what they would like to change (possibly at Vatican II) and their universal request was to be able to change their underwear weekly or daily. The older nun listening was amazed and said that only the most fastidious would have changed their underwear so often when she was younger (though I do wonder how she knew that - maybe she'd been a laundrywoman). Standards of hygiene change but, like piprabbit says, why do they change at those specific times, and who has to do the cleaning?

piprabbit - I think that may be one of the reasons. The one man I know who shaves says exactly that - he does it to make his penis look larger. And that is influence from porn as well.

OK, I couldn't resist taking a peek. So it seems to be;
Woman who shaves her legs is opressed because historically it was done for men.
Woman who does not shave her legs is feminist.
Woman who would like to shave her legs but does not because she wants to be seen as feminist is opressed.
Same goes for fanjos.

Never realised it was so political. Clearly we should all grow wild and free as all grooming was originally intended to make us attractive to the opposite sex. God forbid we do any of these things to make ourselves feel nice, it would be a slap in the face for feminism.

puddinghead, I was a porn user by the time I was 11 in 1983, due to having older male cousins and also to bits of Fiesta magazine flying about in the countryside. Also a favourite Saturday activity was to go and look at Mayfair in WH Smith, aged about 13. It happens.

expatinscotland Wed 05-Jan-11 13:53:55
'Sweat argument is weird too, seems hair is the body's way of collecting sweat.'

Ever lived in a place where it's often over 40 degrees and 80+% humidity?

Yes I have. It doesn't matter why the sweat is produced, it is still sweat. Hair does not cause sweat it helps sweat steer away from the body. You only have to have Nina and the Neuron level understanding for this.

have to say though - I'm with expat on the men's hair. I've never like it much. Just a preference I have. And I'm pretty sure I could never have read/seen anything about bodily hair anywhere in my life and I'd still have the same reaction when running my fingers over a hairy back (and even worse a chest)......I'm not too bothered about the hairy balls thing though. I just don't like it. Just like I don't have a sexual preference for men with long hair (on their head) - it just does nothing for me at all.

The strangest I ever met was a man with almost smooth legs......he reckoned it was natural (and to be fair the hair on his arms was extremely fine) - but that was weird. Men are supposed to have hairy legs.

Oh and no no no to a beard/goatee/stubble >

Baroquin - as several people have said we don't live in isolation. Obviously everybody is going to be influenced by the society they live in. So wearing makeup, high heels, clothes even is going to be influenced by what our society thinks is appropriate. The point is that although you may think that those choices are free, they are probably not and are shaped by what you watch on telly, read in magazine, what your parents think etc. And taking that one step further, society is mainly run by men so their opinion is the one that is foremost in that influence.

The one criticism I have of dittany on this thread is that I suspect that she - to my mind - neglects to degree to which we act as well as react. We are not passive. Well, some of us aren't.

I utterly agree that the fashion (for that it what it is) for bare pudenda has come from the porn industry. Although saying that, back in the 70s pornstar muffs were luxuriant. If that's what teenagers were exposed to today, the under-25s wouldn't be waxing themselves to within an inch of their lives today.

I'd suggest that the fashion could change. But there's a wider phenomenon, which involves the beutification of every single aspect of a person's appearance, that I suspect will prevent that. And it's not just women - boys go to the gym these days not to keep fit, but to get a six-pack. And they wax their chests, which I find pretty yuck.

Riven, you quoted me earlier when I said that I shave my legs because I like the feel of it and shave under my arms because it is less smelly. You put underneath, 'Why don't men do it then?'
Were you asking or implying that I am lying?
I think the reason men don't realise how nice freshly shaven legs are is because they have never thought to try. Also they have the opposite pressure applied in that it is not the cultural norm for them to shave their legs. Honestly, I really do like the feel of shaved legs, even if nobody gets to see them except DH if he is bloody lucky and it is a blue moon etc

Well Riven - that is a good question!

Riven: I don't think it is, not in the way we would like to think it is.
Also - the idea of being able to make this free decision is relatively new, and also culturally determined.

Thing is how did porn come to decide that shaved was the way to go? wasn't most of the older porn (20th century) hairy?

On the men's body hair thing, I can't say I find back hair attractive (does anyone?) but at the same time I wouldn't expect my partner to wax it to make sure I'm not exposed to it, I accept it's part of him and thus expect the same tolerance of my hairy bits.

But if I do something because I want to, it is not iffy. In the same way that if someone goes against the coltural norm because they want to, they are not rebelling. I like to think that adults can make choices based on experience. My experience is that my legs feel nice when shaved so I do. My DH does not have this experience to draw on, nor does he wish to. Without getting all 'Friday Night Thread' about it, bumsex might be lovely. In fact, ad I tried it, it might be the only sex I ever want. Not going to though, so will never be able to tell if I like it.

Also said badly, but referring to people who do things because they want to, not because they are expected to.

Riven - I firmly believe we depilate our legs and underarms to look feminine, rightly or wrongly. Men don't because they don't want to look feminine. Although that doesn't explain all the waxed chests I guess. I used to put that down to them wanting to look less threatening - boy band types were generally smooth of chest.

Apparently it doesn't make a jot of difference to (male) cyclists. It's a vanity thing.

i think porn probably just became more extreme
less hair= more revealing

years ago men would go doolally over the sight of a woman's ankle

times have changed

sorry xpost with riven!