What Happened to Pubic Hair? Where are all the Pubes?
So I follow and enjoy perving in the /R/Vintagesmut Reddit and thought when did it change when did the norm come for no hair over your genitals. Now I am not one of those guys who have demonised hair as we will find out from the research I really don’t mine either when I am feeling like it I shave everything and when I don’t, I don’t for me my personal preference for me is I like it shaved (makes my cock look bigger 🙂 and I like it!)
So to the subject at hand when did the world shave everything off and what caused it? In short, it’s not just porn that is to blame. it was there it went it came back and went again. Some people insist on keeping theirs, arguing that it allows them to stay in touch with their bodies, they reject the porn-warped gaze, and generally do not have to worry about maintenance. While others are getting a monthly wax, with this becoming nearly as common as having a haircut.
The history of the pubic bush is a long one, it’s spanned centuries, like, way before the adult entertainment industry began demonstrating what is and is not ok. While the full bush may be natural, people have been shaving their pubes as far back as ancient Greece and Egypt. Hieroglyphics found in temples depict women with small triangles of pubic hair, and the metal razors they used to trim it (that would have been scary! No manscapers around then). During ancient times the practice was more functional than to look sexy, the less hair on their bodies meant the less chance of picking up lice, or heatstroke in the intensely strong sun and in ancient Greece women removed their hair because they believed a bush looked uncivilised, and if you have walked through the work of ancient Greek sculptors they almost universally showed their goddess subjects as hairless.
Europeans were getting in on the action in the 1500s when some even donned merkins (Above), which are very funny false hairpieces designed for the pubic area. Darwin observing the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere noted that pubic hair was uncommon in many cultures, suggesting that many people found the presence of hair as unclean for both religious and hygienic reasons. In his characteristic way, he argued that loss of body hair was a direct result of evolution. Women grew their head hair long and shaved the rest off in order to appeal to men, the “sexual selectors.” In his work.
As I mentioned above you don’t see pubes in statues and the same is true in the majority of western art history there is a surprising lack of hair anywhere to be found when it comes to nudes. Look at the works of Bosch, Titian and Michelangelo who all painted hairless genitals. It has been said that even Édouard Manet, when he painted the famous prostitute, Olympia, in 1863, couldn’t bring himself to show pubes so just removed them and covered up with her hand (as below).
Moving into to more present-day as a sex symbol and film icon, Monroe was a true pioneer she kept her pubes in a natural except in colour (she was known for dying them). However this was a private thing, her pubes were to be admired in private so when she posed for the iconic photos that showed her skirt blown up by a New York City grate, she wore two pairs of underwear to make sure onlookers couldn’t catch a glimpse of her pubic hair.
Smashing even closer to the present day with the invention of the bikini in 1946 saw how women treated their new body parts the bikini lines! And the commercial hair removal business was born Women were offered product after service with the making of depilatories, electrolysis and more to deal with their unprecedentedly hairy problem. Pubic hair was first seen in the media as part of the Hugh Hefner Pubic Wars, centring around a fight and rivalry between the Playboy and Penthouse. After the Penthouse debuted in the US, already showing pubic hair, the former had to follow suit, with the sexual liberation of the 60s and 70s serving as a catalyst.
So ok pubes are in porn? didn’t I say right at the beginning it was porns fault? Keep reading it was then that two events led to the Pubes disappearance. The 1st in 72, with the Equal Rights Amendment, meaning that men and women must be treated equally by law then in 74, Barely Legal was published, a magazine that focused on full-frontal nudes of 18-year-old girls. These two events created a prickly dichotomy. Hair became a strong sign of feminism; those who were hairiest were considered the most radical and therefore erratic, angry, and counterculture feminists. The idea of the young, hairless girl swooped in to assume the sexualized status feminists rejected in favour of equal rights. In order to distance themselves from what they deemed radicals and, as always, to appeal to men’s tastes many women began to shave. So the beginning of the end for a hairy pussy’s.
At the start of the 80s, the music was loud, (i was born) the fashion was louder, the hair was teased, and adult film stars were normal people and they weren’t afraid to fuck on camera with a whole lot of hair. This newfound fucklust saw the rise of the BDSM movement, and the videotape made it easy for people to watch porn from the comfort of their own homes. The above BDSM porn caused a huge rift among feminists, in particular, some argue that, because the women in BDSM porn were often depicted as “weak” and “vulnerable” and because pubic hair had become a symbol of female empowerment thus the women in these movies were waxed or shaven whereas others say that hairlessness is simply better, for clamps and wax play as well as for the smooth sensation, I will leave it to you were they shaved and waxed to look frail and weak for the “big strong man” or for ease of play for all parties?
The 90’s saw the porn industry boom, the rise of the internet made finding two, three or more people fucking really easy. Young adults no longer had to look through their parent’s copies of Playboy lying around. Sex became extremely accessible, and as a result, pubic hair trends depicted in porn began having an influence on mainstream society. Women began to mirror what they saw in porn, and men began to encourage their girlfriends to follow suit: and thus the bush began to slowly but surely fade away. Trimming turned to landing strips which turned to women deciding to go fully bald down there.
There is a theory among sex experts that the disappearance of pubes in porn marks an interest in heightened sexuality. When we log on to get our rocks off, we want to see as much interaction between genitals as possible. When we see hair knocking into each other rather than dicks entering vaginas, we’re taken out of the moment.
The internet’s ability to deliver thousands of smut scenes directly into the homes of consumers. Even taking a quick glance at PornHub’s public statistics lets you know that there is a market for essentially any type of porn out there though teens still end up at the top of the most searched film category lists. Following back through the years you will see the landing strip dying out onto a period where women were completely shaven. In the early 2000s, the only people who were growing full-bushes were for fetish films the full bush was considered a fetish category, for a niche market of men who were comfortable with seeing hair on camera.
Looking to the future, the public perception of porn is finally catching up to what is happening in human sexuality; in other words, the rise of diverse kinds of mainstream porn and of feminist porn (Check out this post of the lily the self-made porn star) Women are finally able to emulate what they see, but the thing is there is so much out there that they are able to emulate whatever they want, Finally there is no generalization of what people should or shouldn’t do with their pubic hair. It’s sort of an anything-goes market now.
What’s your preference? Did your shaving habit come from porn?
