Society/television/friends/parents/siblings/boyfriends all teach you what you think. At 10 no one 'prefers to be smooth' unless they have been given that message by someone (could be from your mum shaving and always having smooth legs, from someone commenting on it, from tv, from friends saying they shave their legs etc).
I love armpit hair but hate chest hair on men because I grew up in the 80's/early 90's when hairy chests were considered dated and '70's' but other hair was considered masculine and acceptable - shaved armpits/legs on men would have been considered 'gay' at a time when it was widely used by kids as a slur. At that time none of the girls in my year group removed their pubes - and I know this as we were made to have communal showers in PE through secondary school.
Now no one seems to want to have any hair at all and the idea that this is 'all their own idea' is just very naive IMO.
This from the guardian on the subject:
“Across history we find examples of [hair removal] in most different cultures, but whether it was widespread is more difficult to answer,” he said. “The evidence base suggests historically it was relatively infrequent and associated with religious values and status rather than beautification, but a big shift occurred in colonisation, when Europe brought along the idea that to be hairy was barbaric, and hairlessness was a sign of development and improvement.”
He added that body hair removal went mainstream in the late 19th century in the UK. “In the early 20th century, as clothing became more liberal and showed legs more often, we saw the marketing of razors telling women if they were hairy they would not be perceived as feminine. Adverts warned women they wouldn’t find a husband.”
“Cultural pressure” to look feminine reached its apex in the 1950s, when youthfulness became co-opted as a feminine trait, he said. “There’s a deep sense of misogyny here – telling women to become hairless is not youthful, it’s prepubescent.”
Although leg and underarm hair removal was popular throughout the 20th century, in Lesnik-Oberstein’s book on body hair, The Last Taboo, she points to the character Samantha Jones talking about Brazilian waxes on Sex and the City as the moment that pubic hair removal went mainstream.
The current fad for extreme hair removal reflected a growing societal interest in cosmetic surgery, “tweakments” and body modification, combined with the “pornification of wider culture”, she said. As with other long-lasting or permanent body changes, young women “may find they regret this”, she added.
She said it was almost impossible to discern where body hair removal trends were heading: “Body hair is so intimately bound up with ideas of sexuality, and sexuality is not subject to reason.”
Now, Shiyan Zering, a beauty analyst at Mintel, said that pubic hair removal was “on the rise”, with nearly half of adults opting to trim, and it features in more advertising campaigns.
“Pubic hair removal is becoming less taboo and is increasingly being viewed as an act of self-care. The gap in hair removal trends between men and women is closing, especially in the younger demographic,” she said, noting that 49% of 16- to 24-year-old men remove underarm hair and 62% pubic hair.
Catherine Simpson, who wrote a book, One Body, exploring her relationship with her body after receiving a cancer diagnosis, said that despite learning not to worry about her shape or grey hairs, she could not let go of her “lifelong battle” with body hair, even though she found its removal painful and expensive.
“I’m a confident woman but I haven’t got the confidence to walk around with hairy legs. Even I don’t understand that, because I’ve thought so much about this subject, how ludicrous these standards are. I can’t outgrow this conditioning – it is so strong. Hairy legs are seen as very the antithesis of femininity.”