Beach-ready 'down there'

[mumoseven]

Did I really just see an advert for some razor, where a woman was coyly telling a story about getting naked at a BBQ and was worried about being BEACH READY DOWN THERE?
WTF?

Oh I love men's armpit hair. So downy.

Voted 24 times & no shift in percentage - 74%.

I voted several times yesterday but have only just seen the awful advert. Just bloody awful in every way!

FWIW I went to a party as a teenager when everyone ended up jumping in the pool. I stripped off my dress, borrowed a t-shirt from the owner of the house and jumped right on in. It never occurred to me to check if my nethers were suitably tidy or to take my non-waterproof watch off or actually be able to swim after quite a lot of alcohol

Anyone else think it strange that the recent fashion for men is to have beards came about as a backlash to the fashion for women to remove their pubic hair. It's like nature rebelling.

Yes, this is strange.
Someone mentioned shaving her pubic hair made oral sex feel better ... well, I would have thought that whether the man has a beard or not is the more critical question there.

Perhaps there's a minimum amount of hair Mother Nature wants to be involved in oral sex.

"Anyone else think it strange that the recent fashion for men is to have beards came about as a backlash to the fashion for women to remove their pubic hair. It's like nature rebelling."

I've often thought that a lot of it comes down to fashion being about exagerrating our secondary sexual characteristics - so, men are, on average, hairier than women - fashion then says "make yourself really obviously manly/womanly by growing a beard/removing every last bit of body hair." And I wonder if this fluctuates according to the level of gender segregation at a given time/place... so (see threads on pinkification of toys/ segregation of lego into boys/girls lego etc) we're living in a period where gender differences are being emphasised.

Of course it's not the whole story - there are, for instance, highly gender segregated societies where both men and women remove all body hair. The explanations are probably made up of lots of different and sometimes competing factors.

Sorry to be a buzz kill but does the vote rigging not show that most women do like the clean shaven look if that was winning before people started doing multiple votes?

I'm not sure women do like it, more that they have been conditioned to like it and dislike their natural body. In my teens and twenties, it just didn't exist as a thing and men never commented on it ( we're just lucky to be there...)

Also porn in that time showed hairy or just trimmed pubic hair, so no I think it's totally societal pressure.

That's if you don't think WS was already fixing the vote by having their employees click multiple times. ..and even if they haven't been, people who just happened to be on the WS website are hardly likely to be a random sample (and frankly if you're so dumb -WS I'm looking at you - that you don't code up your survey in such a way that it places cookies or checks IP addresses to prevent multiple votes, then you deserve everything you get).

Who would ever go on a website such as WS's if it weren't for social medjia anyway?
And why are we all so happy to stupidly click on a stupid poll??

The internet has a lot to answer for IMO

Sorry to be a buzz kill but does the vote rigging not show that most women do like the clean shaven look if that was winning before people started doing multiple votes?

No, it doesn't.
Firstly, only people interested in that product - i.e. fanjo shavers - are even going to be on that site, thus bush preferrers will be under-represented/ absent in the first place.
Secondly, those who would be interested in the product (and thus visiting that page) are either 'Hollywoods' (baldies) or trims. However the trims have been further divided into 4 further spurious categories, thus fragmenting the vote of those women who just like to trim, and skewing the result in favour of the baldy shaver.

It's down to 73%...

Hmm.....just voted about 20 times but it's not moving from 73%....I wonder how many times I would need to vote to shift it upwards again.

Lol apparently the 'Bring back the Bush' campaign began on Loose Women today with badges and stuff!

I think Kate Moss is pro pubic hair. Whatever they're doing in the fashion world will generally filter down.

Just voted, 78%!

Arse! It's now down to 72% I've voted regularly today too.

Ah, I had moved on from this thread/ issue, but it suddenly popped back into my head that WS used the word "unsightly" to refer to women's body hair, and my blood returned to the boil.
Have voted again!

I don't get this whole "women have been conditioned to like the no-hair look"
Can't we give a bit of credit to a woman's intelligence and just take it as face value that she might like something??

When I was a teenager/early 20s in the late 80s/early 90s you would have been mortified to have had no pubic hair. It wasn't usual and you certainly wouldn't have wanted to get a smear done or wandered about a changing room rocking the billiard ball look.

And now it's the other way round. Sure, in both scenarios there are people who don't give a shit and go their own way, but fashion is a thing. We know it's a thing.

Why is it so hard to believe that we are conditioned by fashion when we remove (or not) our body hair in the same way we're conditioned by fashion to buy bootleg/skinny jeans?

Hihellohi

Do you really think that, when a girl first shaves her armpits and legs (and cuts herself to ribbons) that its just her choice, and NOT to avoid the embarrassment of people noticing and commenting? Not because they know that girls are just supposed to do that? Few will be brave enough to just leave it- nothing do do with choice.
A male friend at uni (late 80's) asked a group of us females/ feminists why we all shaved our armpits. The general response can be summarised as: "Er, women do"

Sure we have a choice, but you have your eyes closed if you think its generally acceptable and unnoticed to have visible body hair as a woman.

paranoid
Ok I take that on board, we are all influenced by what is around us but why is it such a by deal when it's about pubic hair?
The majority of women alter their appearance in one way or the other (hair/nails/exercise to mention a few) so why is this such any difference

And also I'm getting a real air of superiority from many here that prefer the hairy look as if they are better because they haven't been conditioned by society and the media.

Hihello the difference is the obligation and pressure that women have to remove hair. They dont have that with hair and nails where any and everything goes.
Nobody has any business getting all superior (if they have) because, you're right, it is, or should be all about choice. Pressuring women into NOT removing hair (just because they're women) is as bad as pressuring them into removing it.
Why is pubic hair different? Not entirely sure, but i think that for one thing maybe its so private and intimate that it should be no one else's business; for another its one more level of conditioning/ control/ pressure on women that previously wasn't there, our armpits and legs already having been commandeered.
For an even other, the removal process can be blooming uncomfortable/ itchy/ embarrassing/ painful... this for something unnecessary.
And for yet another it is maddening and misogynist to suggest (as shaving companies etc. have been for 100 years now) that the normal adult female body is unsightly, untidy, unattractive, dirty, and yet this message is strengthening and expanding.

It is a brave woman who goes against the grain. Remember Julia Roberts's hairy armpits being literally front page news?

I don't "prefer" the hairy look any more than I prefer the "short look" of being quite small, it's just how I'm made. If I could press a button and have been born with minimal, preferably blonde, hair all over, I would. That would be nice. But the reality of me deciding to "prefer the hairless look" is a commitment to a lifetime of shaving/plucking/waxing and the resultant soreness. I'm not willing to do that, for a very tiny gain. The effort of a bit of trimming is one I am prepared to make, but frankly my life is too busy to have maintenance of pubes anywhere on my list.

I don't prefer the hairy or shaven looks, either. What I prefer is to not have to feel self-conscious about how my vulva looks, not pressured to conform to current pubes fashion, and not ridiculed or shamed if I choose not to conform. When I was young depilation was confined to legs and underarms - if some people liked to take it further that was up to them, but it was their private business. I really resent the creeping colonisation of women's bodies so that there will soon be no inch left that our daughters don't have to feel self-conscious about.

I don't prefer the hairy or shaven looks, either. What I prefer is to not have to feel self-conscious about how my vulva looks, not pressured to conform to current pubes fashion, and not ridiculed or shamed if I choose not to conform. When I was young depilation was confined to legs and underarms - if some people liked to take it further that was up to them, but it was their private business. I really resent the creeping colonisation of women's bodies so that there will soon be no inch left that our daughters don't have to feel self-conscious about.