Was she really doing it for herself or for the pleasure of others? Why should women feel compelled to go bare? Why did we feel so compelled to DO something about such a natural part of us? And why did the issue feel so charged? This debate, and practice, are far from new. And it turns out the decision to wear it or bare it has always been complicated, tied up in cultural belief, social norms, and personal hygiene.
Joining us is a woman who has spent a lot of time thinking about and researching this issue. She sifted through written records from the s to the early s, surveying nearly societies around the world. The goal? To figure out how our pubic hair removal practices differ from era to era and culture to culture, and why we perform them at all. Cross-Cultural Research , Vol. The Oxford Companion to the Body. Oxford University Press; 1 edition. Plucked: A History of Hair Removal.
Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History. Victoria Sherrow, Greenwood, Feb. Why do we even have hair down there? We used to be quite hairy creatures, but over time we dropped a lot of our furry coveringβthough strangely, not our connubial fringe. One is that our below-stairs hedges are an indication of sexual maturity: a sign that we are, in essence, of age to mate and reproduce. Another theory is that it traps pheromones: chemicals that trigger sexual attraction.
Our pubic hair hangs onto these scented beauties, beckoning sexual partners to come on down to lady town. Our hair is also supposed to ease friction during bouts of horizontal tennis and help protect us from unwanted pathogens. We now know that having no hair whatsoever actually exposes us to sexually transmitted diseases because of the likelihood of cuts and abrasions from trimming, but it does keep us from getting pubic lice. So how did ladies of the past feel about their lady jungles?
If ancient art is anything to go by, not a lot of women in some of the better-known civilizations were walking around with a mighty netherforest. And while that might have just been a stylistic choice on the part of the artist, we have plenty of evidence that ancient civilizations took hair off whenever possible.
