I am so shocked about that thread stating most women have no pubic hair

[roseability]

I don't know quite why it has disturbed me so much. Like most women I have plucked/shaved and groomed for many years of my life. However the thought of putting myself through that really upsets me for some reason. Not that I plan to. It is just that I have never, ever considered that pubic hair is undesirable. I can't help but relate it to women in porn with little or no pubic hair and it makes me sad to think girls and young women (I have a daughter) will no doubt feel insecure about their vagina and how it looks in this way.

I am by no means a good feminist. As I mentioned I do shave my legs and I wear make up. I have read Beauty and Misogyny by Sheila Jeffreys and I question why I even do this. However it makes me almost weep to think of my daughter being influenced in such a way.

I was just really upset by that thread and I m not sure why

I have never shaved my armpits and have found that a tough enough stance as it is (I suppose they are more 'on show' than your pubes) but I now realise that line has been way crossed and I am now completely unacceptable in my hairy state :) Does anyone remember the shot of Julia Roberts on the red carpet with unshaved armpits and the absolute horror it invoked, like she had, I don't know, taken a dump right there......

IN the past year, I've found a whisker on my neck. Got no idea how to deal with it, I've tried a number of ways, but the shocker is, that I completely forget about it and only notice it when it's about an inch long.... often when I'm en route to a night out or to see an old friend I want to impress...

Sakura. I did invent it though as far as my world goes! it was totaly new to me. first time i trimmed was because the hairs on my outer labia were so long they were getting caught in my underwear and tugging so i just trimmed-it went from there.

I have never had any hair removed at a beauty salon, a friend was having her legs done at home by a friend when i tried the leg waxing.
Ive actually never had anything done at one now i think about it.

The messages must not be getting through to me

amberleaf I think the thing is that you choose to do it, fine. But saying things like if you don't do it you will smell of festering piss could contribute to influence another woman to do it... Who wants to smell of festering piss? If you say to teenage girls (not you, but society and the media in general) that pubes are dirty and smell and it is unhygienic not to remove them, then they're going to remove them, aren't they. In which case it is not a genuinely free choice for many of the young women and girls who are doing this.

But im not saying if you dont do it you will smell of festring piss, as ive said im hairy at the mo and i dont smell of festering piss now!

im just saying its easier to keep fresh if there is less hair-im still clean and fresh even with hair because i have good hygiene as im sure others do hairy or not.

I personally wouldnt advises a young girl to be in her natural state or to remove hair, its up to the individual and im sure they can figure it out for themselves without feeling influence by porn [what this is originally about]

I wish people would stop saying 'shaven haven'.
Utterly vile.

exactly, prolesworth. it's like saying 'oh i'm not influenced by advertising', it's just silly. we all are, that's why it's there.

am finding 'fresh' more revolting, spidey, tbh. what does it mean? bald?

Yes i wouldnt disagree that there is a wider influence, but i would say that maybe for a lot of women its becoming more popular because they try it and actually prefer it for some of the practical and personal choice reasons ive outlined?

or are we as women incapable of liking anything without being influenced by by male society?

Yes 'fresh' is gag-worthy too. I hate adverts which talk about 'feminine fresheness'. You'd never hear advertisers talking about 'masculine freshness' now would you?

What amberleaf says

It's all so unpleasant.

I've been thinking about this and here's what I think some more...

I don't think the 'men who want it are imagining children' etc argument washes too strongly. I also REALLY don't buy the overt patriarchy argument: I think it is more a 'devolved' patriarchy as Proles says, via ideological means.

I think there's probably an association with fear of sexuality going on, which of course would apply some people's paedophilic tendencies where they have them, but not all. Instead, I think the connections between hairlessness and porn are wrapped up in the culture of very young men. It is teenage boys, surely, who are most likely to pick up the messages about porn and celebrity women and then wrap that all up with their own emergent sexuality? I don't think they desire women-as-child, but they probably do find it just 'easier' to have hairless women, because of the whole hairy fear/vagina dentata thing... In other words it's their immature sexuality that is driving this?

And then, on top of that, there's a sort of normalisation of hairlessness for the whole female body. We old gimmers are starting thinking about this as pubic hair as part of the natural 'undercover' part of women's bodies, and those of us who are all of old, feminist and have partners who like stuff au naturel are 'labelling' pubic hair as private (ie sexual) and therefore - like many intimate body parts - as something allowed to be on show to partners.

Whereas young men and women (and some others!) are mostly starting with a 'desexualised' idea of pubic hair (even though we all know it is still sexual), in that they're framing it as general body hair.

Now THIS (bear with me ) is perhaps the bit that is influenced by the pornification of culture: the general extension of the naked body - and by default, it's need to be perfect, for which read hairless. So it seems just the same as depilating legs/arms etc.

What us ancient femmos are experiencing then is the cultural extension of a boundary between private and public, further into more intimate areas.

As well as everything else. Or summat.

"it's need"?!

its need

Wilf don't die. If anyone reads all that and focuses on the apostrophe I think that might be classed as avoidance.

Lots to think about - why does your reading still scare the crap out of me though? Am I just seriously old, stuck in "in my daaaaaaay", focusing on negative trends rather than positive?

I deffo don't think of it as positive, although I suppose there is a 'marginal' liberation in an uncovered body (even if it does have to be teflon-coated). It's depressing enough that most of us on here still depilate elsewhere. And I think the problem is the smokescreen of ideology means that women 'desexualising' their pubic hair means that their whole body becomes the sexual object as public property.

So it feels just like cleanliness and 'freshness' and under the immediate surface it is about creating the culturally pure canvas of skin. But behind all of that, the same dynamic - of women's bodies object of the male gaze - is still going on. But I'm just thinking out loud, I dunno.

And once you remove the covering of course you've got another part of your body to obsess over - can there have been a woman alive 20 years ago who was even aware of the shape of her labia, never mind think about having bits lopped off?

I remember when looking at your undercarriage with a hand mirror was an empowering thing that you were encouraged to do to claim "ownership" and love of your own body (or somesuch nonsense), because most women had no idea of how they looked down there - it was ugly/dirty/forbidden.

Now women have all sorts of non-medical/partner people scrutinising their labia while they rip out the hair - and then there was labioplasty

Ok, so it's niche - but so were boob jobs not so long ago.

i think it's depressing because it puts the future self-image of our daughters in the wandering hands of teenage of teenage boys... twas ever thus.

i personally find this depressing because for all the people who blithely say 'oho but i feel so fresh with a baldy vulv' there are an equal number (me, definitely) for whom it would be absolute torture, who would get stubble rash, itching, chafing etc etc etc and who therefore don't do it. my kids will likely inherit this tendency and will either have to suffer or be made to feel less than 'fresh', ie dirty.

I read an interesting book by a dancer once. She started in the 50s in traditional ballet but became part of the new wave of dancers who were trying to reject the insistent gender divide - they started to try to look androgynous, make androgynous movements, etc. She said it only occurred to them once the experiment was halfway through that once they had become androgynous they had also become invisible - and the men became the "star performers".

I struggle with this a lot because I'm right at that crossover point in my career and in the rest of my RL - I'm no longer viewed - gazed at - and judged as a sexual being. Which is great - I've always had large breasts and endured the inappropriate attention they ensured - but I'm now invisible.