To ask what cultures you're from and you're attitudes re: body hair?

[BettyCrockerLover]

Hey everyone :)

I know this is a personal question, but I was wondering about beauty/body hair issues and if these attitudes are different within different cultures around the world and if so, how

I am from North Africa but I was raised in a lot of places and I think the only places a woman should have hair are on her head and her eyelashes and eyebrows, anything else seems a bit...unhygienic to me.

What about you all?

[alreadytaken]

YABVU. What people decide to do about hair is their business but to suggest it is "unhygenic" is to try and make other people feel badly about their choices. It also suggests that you are very insecure about your own choice.

Pubic shaving actually originated in ancient Egypt and Greece when prostitutes had to shave as a clear sign of their profession. You'll probably find more doctors telling you it's bad for you than that it's "hygenic".

But if hair removal seems hygenic to you do it logically and shave your head too.

[Breezy1985]

I'm white British.

I shave legs, pits, toes and everything down there, prefer it that way. Wax my eyebrows.

[Dilidali]

I am hairy. Big time. Waxing at a salon is expensive and I never ever mastered waxing, gave up. So the legs and armpits are shaved daily in summer, every other day in winter.
I have my eyebrows threaded and I trim to the skin. I should, really, do something about this bit of moustache, it is not very obvious yet though.
Maybe cultural, maybe because I am very dark with thick black hair, but I really really hate being hairy.
I never quite got the liberating hairy thing, maybe because on me it would truelly be a sight, it is that bad.

[Beastofburden]

Completely fascinating. I was very moved by the poster who talked about being bullied at school.

I wish the OP had asked for age as well as ethnic background because I think we would find people falling into groups based on their age. I am 51, and when I was a teen it was genuinely only the perverted or the professional sex worker who would shave their pubes. And men- I dont think it occured to us that men actually could. Bear in mind we had very few Muslim neighbours so there were no religious factors in this.

[TheProsAndConsOfHitchhiking]

White british, I do not like body hair at all, Shave my legs, underarms, and everything is shaved down below, Every day I may add, eyebrows get waxed.

[Methe]

White British. I shave my lower legs and arm pits and wax my top lip. I used to spend a lot of time getting my brows threaded but gradually over the last year I've let them grow back to the point of being natural and just tweeze the monobrow. I also used to shave my bits untill I realised it was an utter waste of time and that i am an adult female human being and I wanted my body to look like it and if anyone didn't like that they could piss off.

Back in the last century I had a liaison with an American who'd removed all his body hair. It was gross.

[KittyVonCatsworth]

37, white, British.

Shave legs, armpits, bikini line, random nipple hair, pluck eyebrows. Mostly comfort, some aesthetic. Legs, because tights are scratchy with hairs, arms, because smell sweaty, bikini, because I wear a lot of swimwear and, to me, it looks unsightly. One hair on pimple, cos its just plain weird. Eyebrows, because my eyes look nicer. I have on occasion, shaved all my pubes, but I don't like it when it grows back in and DP hates it because its not womanly. It does heighten sensitivity for me though.

Interestingly, DP shaves his pubes, which is great for me giving oral sex. He also shaves his chest, he's a swimmer, and shaves completely if he's competing. That's a bit weird considering he's a dark haired Irishman!

[theodorakisses]

mapal thanks for proving my point. Frankly, a guy who raves about a hairy fanny on a one night stand sounds absolutely gross to me, yuck. Nice of you to basically suggest that about 50 % of the posters oh's on this thread want to have sex with children. You really ought to think before you post sometimes.

[burberryqueen]

white british, occaisionally shave my legs.
the fanny hair is there for hygienic reasons.......would have thought it would be more unhygienic to remove it....

[Mapal]

50%? Looks more like a minority to me. A wierd perverted minority who obviously ALL want to have sex with children which is exactly what I said.

I did think before I posted and said exactly what I wanted to say. You have given me a good chuckle.

[mymagaret]

We are people so rude to each other about this. I think the people bitching about those that do shave are just as insecure as they say the poster is. Surely its a personal choice and what you feel comfortable with. I agree that it is totally generation thing, a lot of older women and men are less keen on personal grooming, but i know all my friends and work colleagues of a similar age see grooming down below just part and parcel of shower routine and couldn't imagine it any other way.

[theodorakisses]

I guess there is thinking and thinking, chuckle away love, my care is not a jot. Still think a one night stand raving about a fanny is gross, a weird perverted member of a yucky minority. Oh, I am chuckling now, thanks for the laugh.

[Darkesteyes]

Im 40 and at high school i was bullied VERY badly for having hairy legs Have an Italian mother who would not let me shave yet wouldnt come up to the school to sort those bitches out.
ive been getting my legs and underarms waxed since i was 18. I tried shaving and epilating 9 years ago. Couldnt get on with either.
An ex of mine used to shave his chest cos the woman he liked before me preferred it that way. Told him i didnt mind.
He let it grow back and i loved it. I find it manly and sexy. He had hair on his back and shoulders too. I liked that too.
You see we had this thing called "sexual chemistry" and a deep attraction for each other.
I have a full bush. Ive never touched it. If i disrobed in front of a man now and he passed a nasty comment or expressed surprise my clothes would go straight back on again. And he would be out the door or i would. I dont want mechanical sex based on an ideal. I want raw passionate "i have to have you now" kind of sex. And i couldnt have that with a man who would judge me for simply being an adult female.

[newestbridearound]

I'm White British, and I shave my legs and underarms, trim my bikini line and pluck my eyebrows. I can't say it bothers me in the slightest what other women choose to do though; their bodies, their choices. I think people should just do what is most comfortable for them.

[theodorakisses]

Most men don't care how their partner chooses to be, it's called love and respect. Obviously a partner who told you how to manage your body is weird. It would be weirder, surely, for aka to ban a woman from grooming herself however the hell she wanted? It should go without saying that passing a nasty commet about ones partners body is not normal or something that happens in healthy relationships.

[Absy]

Surely body hair isn't the only indicator of whether or not you've gone through puberty and that you're not a child? Surely boobs, hips, wrinkles, grey head hair etc. would give you a sense that someone had gone through puberty and was older than 11?

If not, this is the eternal elixir of youth that everyone's being looking for since forever!

[cantspel]

I am not going to tell a bunch of strangers on the web about my or lack of my pubic hair as quite frankly it is no ones business but mine.

But i would ask anyone who thinks being hairless or liking sex better without the hair as equalling liking sex with 12 year olds what around races who are naturally less hairy? Do they all have the bodies of 12 year olds and living in a perpetual state of childhood?

[Absy]

I can pretty much guarantee that if you removed all hair from my nose down (including those charming chin hairs and nipple hairs - as I said to my friend, if my head hair was as luxurious and fast growing as my chin hair, I would be SUPER HAPPY), nobody would mistake me for a 12 year old. Though other people may be different, I don't know your lives.

[GoodTouchBadTouch]

Ive had pretty much everywhere lasered. Its great as I don't have to remember to shave.

I think hair on women is ugly, but Id laugh if my husband got a wax!

[Darkesteyes]

Good Touch @EverydaySexism

[SueDoku]

theo I think that you've got the wrong end of the stick - as far as I can see, no-one has suggested that people's OHs want to have sex with children - only that they themselves would not feel happy with a partner who liked hairless females.

I'm in my 60s, and would agree that this is an age thing - pubes were seen as very 'grown up' when I was young, and the idea of removing them (men or women) would have made us roar with laughter.

You only have to look at the derision heaped on Ruskin for his horror at finding that his young bride had public hair to see that, historically, women (as opposed to children) had body hair. Pornography - and the easier access to it provided by the Internet - has introduced just the opposite view in younger people.

This is sad, as it is yet another way that women are being forced into boxes by the male ideal of femininity - and as this changes over time, women are always running to catch up...

[Darkesteyes]

YY Sue People may have shaved historically because of lice but they also used to don a merkin afterwards (pubic hair wig)

[GoodTouchBadTouch]

Darkesteyes yes its double standards I know. Must just be what we are used to. If a man waxed Id think he must be some sort of pansy or a sportsman. If a woman was all furry Id probably think she was a bit mad.. you just don't see it these days do you?

[Darkesteyes]

the only reason you dont see it is because its a social construct.

[BergholtStuttleyJohnson]

white british. I shave my legs up to my knee but I only grow hair around my ankles! My thighs have some blonde hairs but not many so I don't bother and don't show them off anyway.
I also shave my armpits.
Dh only shaves his face and nothing else.