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

I completely agree with Libero. Dittany, you do come across as though people either have to agree with you or else we are pornified dolls of the patriarchy. The world is not as black and white as you see it.

Was your 20.11 post directed at me Dittany?

If so, you're off-handed disregard for my comments and thoughts came across as breathtakingly arrogant. I was genuinely interested in your point of view on my question.

Ah well.

I can't believe that statistic is true?!

For the record I am 25 and my sister is 22. We are both broadly as nature intended, just tidied so we fit in our pants!

I am horrified at the idea of being waxed

Dittany: that doesn't prove there is a correlation between porn and pubes. There are ministers in the USA who tell people that the increase in natural disasters is due to the increase in gay people. Because two things happen it doesn't prove that they are linked.

I suspect most under 25 year olds have seen 2 girls one cup, do you expect there will now be a rise in people puking and shitting on each other? After all, by your thinking we are all just sponges incapable of thinking for ourselves.

SO what about me? I'm pretty anti-feminist...and I have no influence from the porn/lads' mags industry etc.

What would be my reason for removing my hair other than I wanted to?

Women and men around the world are influenced by things and lots of people are influenced but don't know it or have particular genes and they think they are exercising choice when they aren't, whether that's to wear dungarees adn flat shoes or high heels or whatever. The interesting bit about debates is to give people the chance to see that things can be viewed from a different perspective.

Women and men now and in the jungles 10,000 yaers ago have always done all kinds of things to their bodies in the interests of looks, sexiness and hygiene from the mad and bad (foot binding, FMG adn the like) to the innocuous better clothes to enhance attractiveness or whatever. It's instinctive within us and ensures the species has survived. You need some muslim or Middle Eastern women on here as that's a culture of waxing, not sure if it's for men and women or just women.

Xenia, that would be me. I'm Moroccan, and men remove their hair too, it's considered dirty. A bit like dogs and pork in that respect.

I don't see why people are so het up about the porn link. I don't believe anyone watches a porn film once and rushes upstairs to the Ladyshave. But something has changed in the last 10 - 15 years.

My view is that porn has become mainstream, and influences fashion, which in turn influences us.

Many women see baldness advocated in a magazine, or mentioned on a tv show or whatever. They try it and maybe they prefer it.
There's no shame in being influenced by fashion, fgs, half the women in the country didn't independently arrive at a totally new concept. But the fashion is influenced by porn.

I guess if you realised you were being dictated to the question is why wouldn't you resist?

Because I don't care if women do / do not remove their hair. It is you that has the strong opinion on this. My opinion on this thread is about you.

Not really following what the first things have to do with the second. The sexist pressure on women to be hairfree doesn't become any less sexist just because you read Fat is a Feminist Issue.

Unless I am misunderstanding you, I feel you are saying one can't be a feminist unless one resists all patriachal hegemony. I can be a feminist and remove body hair, no?

Do you mean why does what you personally did offend feminism? I don't think it did.

I feel it 'offended' you. And you seem to be putting yourself forward as the one true feminist here.

"Does one have to accept all tennets of an ideology to be part of it"

No

"or can one not disent on occassion?"

Dissent is a funny word. That makes it sound like feminism is all-powerful, when in fact disagreeing with feminism is very often propping up the status quo. Of course you can disagree. I'm not seeing anybody stopping you can you. It doesn't mean people will agree with you or argue with your arguments though. Aren't we allowed to do that?

Of course - it's called debate. I've already said I agree with you on many points.

Hmmm.

I merely trim a bit, and last year I slept with a 24 yr old. He didn't seem horrified by my hairy bits.He just seemed quite pleased to be getting it awn with an experienced older laydee. (I'm 33).

Having said that, I did think to myself that he probably had watched too much porn. It was all a bit...how can I put this? All main course and no starter..

Arrgghh previewed this and was going to neaten it up / put itallics in etc and it bloody posted it instead

Apologis for confusing post. It's in reply to Dittany's reply to me.

Nah Dittany .... I'm dying to keep the greys away... to keep looking young

Nope, wrong I'm afraid Dittany. I aaid many times up thread that I accepted the feminist criticism of hair removeal.

I just don't care about it on this subject. Hence my 'pick and chose' comment earlier.

"You're mixing up reality with experience."

My reality is my experience, and my experience is my reality. How could it not be? Neither must conform with that of others as we are all different, with different experiences and different realities.

"The porn industry exists, it's real. A lot of young women are shaving or waxing off their pubic hair is a real phenomenon, as is the belief amongst many young men that women should remove their pubic hair. The porn industry is clearly having a real effect, even though that experience is not shared with everybody."

I never disagreed with this. What I have been saying to you is precisely what was in your final sentence - that experience of being pressured into doing so by the porn industry or men is not shared [by] everybody when they make the choice about depilating pubic hair.

What I disagreed with was your dictating to me or to another individual the reasons for their choices even after I/they had explained and told you otherwise. Disagreeing with a feminism that supports such behaviour is not propping up the status quo - it is saying that women have been lumped together as an identical mass for centuries and no one man, woman, child or person has the right to disregard an individual's personal experience/reality all because it differs from their own. As you are no longer doing this and have accepted that not everyone is influenced by the one and same thing, then I take no further issue with your expressed opinions.

I think it's utterly unprofessional for any nurse to be discussing the nature of her patients pubic area whatsoever.
Bald or Afro it is absolutely not her place to break the confidentiality of the women she treats, anonymously or not.

i have to keep tidy as im dark and it aint a good look with a cossy on.I will be shaving my section area when i go in in 3 wks as last time they seemed to think it was ok to shave me dry with no foam and over my prevous scar-far worse than the pain of the section tbh

How on earth is she breaking anyone's confidentiality? She's not naming individuals but just observing a trend.

I quite understand that everyone likes to believe that are making their own decisions entirely uninfluenced by larger cultural/commercial forces. Who doesn't? But I am genuinely interested to know from all those who think it has nothing whatsoever to do with porn what their alternative explanations might be for this general change in behaviour.

ZephirineDrouhin, I don't think anyone has said that the general trend is nothing to do with porn. They've simply said that it may be, but it is not the case with them as individuals, so they perhaps do not want to be so quick to state with certainty that it must then be influence from porn that causes most other women to do this.

It could be porn, it could be their partners suggesting it to them, it could be their partners asking them to do it, it could be they had it done for a C-section and decided to keep it that way, it could be that having hair there initially irritated a scar and even though the scar has healed they have kept it the same, it could be they like the way it feels generally and during sex, it could be that they tried it as an experiment and eventually grew to like it, it could be that their own particular religion or culture dictates that it should be so ...

That's what I've liked about this thread. No one person has the exact same reason as another for choosing to depilate or not depilate, though their reasons may well sometimes be similar/interrelated.