Bidisha article on pubic hair removal

[JessinAvalon]

Good Bidisha article on pubic hair removal:

m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/11/womens-pubic-hair-removal-porn?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article

'A man who likes a woman without pubic hair despises adult women so much that he wants us to resemble children. He should stay at home instead in front of a computer, masturbating alone to the hair-free images he reveres.'
heh heh heh
love it.

Feeling the need to share something initmate with a group of men in a titilating manner is not comparable to simply doing that same initmate thing.

I get a brazillian. I have never felt the need to share that with a man who hasn't already seen for himself.

At the risk of sounding my (advanced) age - the personal IS political. Our choices are (often? usually?) not 'free' at all but are influenced by all sorts of cultural and social pressures.
IMO

My last 4 sexual partners all were shaved, I think it is becoming more popular for single men.

I started taking mine off as a late teenager (20+ years ago), first time was for a holiday and didn't want pubes hanging out the sides and over the top of my bikini. No man involved

I go through phases of letting it grow to about an inch and nowadays I tend to trim it to a 'no1' with clippers. Partners have never commented on bald/half/full ever

Whilst I think porn may have some influence, I think it is more a fashion thing why more women are removing their pubic hair - no different to perms going in and out of fashion

herbex - speak for yourself. My clitoris is well hidden if there are pubes in the way, as I found to my disgruntlement (conincidentally - just before I shaved them all off)

Not every vulva looks the same.

My boyfriend is actually slightly titilated when I don't shave for a week or so

but I prefer it off, so off it goes!

fashion for pubes = porn-influenced by definition, surely though?
because otherwise, where do we SEE the things to be influenced by them.
the PERM analogy is a little specious.... you don't get to look at other women's minges on the bus etc

But what about hair on testicles coldtits?

If anyone thinks pubic shaving is just for women, look up "manscaping" on Google.

manscaping
About 131,000 results (0.10 seconds)

One of the first results begins:

A Beginner's Guide to Manscaping : COED Magazine
Mar 31, 2010 ... Gone are the days where unsightly face and body hair was attractive to women ( circa the caveman era). Nowadays, women expect their guys to ...

Note that it was "unsightly" hair even if it was "attractive to women". The world is truly in a sad state.

You're right it is.

A lot of young men now get their chests waxed because they believe that women don't like chest hair.

There seems to be an opinion that shaved pubes is something that is demanded by men. I think that if you asked, most men would tell you that they don't really care. As with many things that are considered to denote female submission, the pressure actually comes from other women.

The trend is catching on with men (particularly gay men)and I think will become more common in the near future.

I think you make a reasonable point King but I disagree that the pressure comes from other women, ISTM that it comes from the beauty and fashion mags.

Btw, I don't know if this has already been noted, but there was also an article in Vogue about public hair removal.

The writer concluded that for her, and her husband, it was all a little weird and didn't do anything for them (though she did, after some maternal horror, uphold her 15-year-old's right to have it all off). Given this is Vogue, which increasingly writes pieces that are clearly just puff for the beauty/cosmetic surgery industries, I thought it was noteworthy that they'd run a piece like this.

And Anna Wintour is......?

thank you for mentioning the hair on testicles HerBex. Colditz, your difficult to get to the clitoris argument doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying the Bic preceded satisfying cunnilingus? Oral sex is as old as God's dog... if a man can't find the clitoris because of some hair then he's not trying very hard, bordering on incompetent I would say.

I think what colditz is saying is that in can be more enjoyable to perform oral sex without getting a mouthful of coarse hair, nothing to do with an inability to find the clitoris.

I wont make generalisations because the response is always "my vulva/pubes/clitoris aren't like/don't do that" but I don't imagine I am alone in that view. Horses for courses and all that but I don't much like the idea of kissing a man with a full facial beard.

My DH trims the hair on his testicles: He started doing this as he found he got sweaty and uncomfortable and as a result we both discovered we enjoyed BJ's more. I have no idea how many men do this routinely it is not the sort of thing I ask my male friends

There are three reasons why I and most of the woman I have discussed this issue with remove hair:

1. It feels more hygenic especially round the time of my period.

1. It increases friction (or something) during sex and so sex is better.

1. It means I can sit cross legged in my bikini without being paranoid that I have unsightly hair hanging out.

Oh and anyone who thinks that a hair free adult vulva visually bears any relation to that of a prepubescent child obviously hasn't actually seen either.

Jeez how sterile sex must have become if, in the throes of passion, men are concerned about getting a mouthful of coarse hair.
Smacks of incompetency to me. You'd have to try really hard to get a mouthful of hair in your mouth; something like that doesn't just happen by accident

I can't stand the "hygenic" and "fresh" line either. It implies that pubes are unhygenic. It's only a short step from this "unhygenic" line of thought to "dirty" and then on to "dirty like women"

I certainly don't have sterile sex (learnt that on the sex on your period thread ) and I have no idea what men in general think of pubes in their mouth, or for that matter woman.

I do know that I prefer not. And excuse me whilst I am graphic but if I am sucking testicles then I am going to get a mouthful of hair. Same for men - if they have their tongue in your vagina then surely they end up with a mouthful - that is anatomy rather than incompetency (unless other people do this completely differently )

Look people clearly fall into one of two camps. Personally I have no issue with people who choose not to depilate and frankly my mind boggles that people are so hung up on my decision to do so.

I don't accept the argument that saying it is a hygenic leads to the idea of something being dirty like woman since both genders have pubic hair, and as evidenced on this thread both genders have been known to remove hair for hygene reasons.

nothing tp do with not being able to find it, everything to do with not wanting my partner to be spitting out pubic hair every 45 seconds while he's down there. It's my choice. Surely that is what the point of feminism alway was?? Or am I Doing Feminism Wrong Again???

I like mine sans hair...makes sex better I read a thread about it on here a few months back and decided to shave my (trimmed) bush off as an experiment...and now much prefer it smooth. And I don't watch porn either so I can't lay the blame there -I do make my own tho when i'm in the mood

I just like the feel of it all off (I do have a bit of a body hair thing tho- legs/arms/underarms shaved and am always tweezing...and i'm blonde so not even that hairy!

thats my 10p 's worth anyway...

DH also periodically trims/shaves his too as he thinks it looks better. So I guess that puts the men dont shave 'down there' argument into question....

I don't believe men shave/ wax their pubes in anything like the same number as women now do.

In spite of the fact that blow jobs often involve hairy testicles.

jinxediam wrote - "I read a thread about it on here a few months back and decided to shave my (trimmed) bush off as an experiment...and now much prefer it smooth. And I don't watch porn either so I can't lay the blame there"

Even if you don't use porn, many other people do. What about the possibility that shaving was being discussed on that thread only because shaving has become widespread among women, due to increasing use of porn throughout society?

Coldtits, no for me feminism is not about choice. It's about looking things through the lens of patriarchy. That's not to say it doesn't include or exclude choice, but that isn't, for me, the underpinning of feminism.

--------

Hence why this subject is interesting. Not to hear individuals' tales of what they do and don't do and why they do and don't do it, but to contextualise it within culture and say, but why. Not the why the individual gives, but the larger cultural trends that make those decisions be the ones that make sense at the point in time.

IMO every decision we make has reasons that we attribute to it on a personal level. But those decisions are contextualised within a wider culture. So I might choose to wear a bit of makeup if I'm feeling crap and need to stand up and speak in front of a bunch of people. My personal reason would be something like cos it makes me look better, healthier, more awake, gives me more confidence. But the reason that I believe make up does these things is not because they just do, it's because wider culture has constructed that they do.

That's why the link between porn and hair removal has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the individual has seen porn. It's to do with the way in which it changes cultural norms. The idea of cleanliness and freshness is also not descended from the heavens, it is what culture frames as being clean and fresh. These things are malleable and change over time.

Another example before I stop this far too long post, I like to go walking in the countryside. I like it because I like the feel of being in nature, seeing the plants, landscape, animals etc. It makes me feel more grounded and so on. Pretty predictable stuff. Had I lived pre-romantics I would have seen the countryside as wild, dangerous and somewhere to fear. At points in history I would have seen it as dirty and backward. The reason I see if the way I do not is because culture has evolved in a way to associate the attributes I do with it. We all operate within a culture. (If anyone's interested in this example, Raymond Williams, The Country and the City)