I vividly remember feeling embarrassed at the state of my pubic hair; I had been asked to a partner’s house late notice and hadn’t shaved my pubes in a few days, naturally resulting in a tiny layer of stubble. I also remember, perhaps even more vividly, the shock I felt when my embarrassed comment about the absolute state of my body was met with a nonchalant “I don’t care”. Was I absurd for caring so much, or did I only care because I thought he would care and, subsequently, label me as disgusting, someone to be ghosted the following day and only brought up in conversations at the pub promoted by the question “worst shag ever”? Is this feeling of shame the result of the culture I live in, have I internalised the patriarchal mindset that my vulva must be pruned to within an inch of its life for the pleasure of men? Have women always been under such strict expectations regarding their body hair, and is there any way out? What am I supposed to be doing? The questions are unending, and I sought to answer them.
The ‘in’ style for women’s pubic hair has fluctuated in sync with changing fashion trends, showing that there has never been a style agreed upon for more than a short period of time. What is clear, though, is that women’s hair removal has always been done in order to symbolise something else – it is not down to the individual woman to decide her preference but it is down to the culture she lives within to decide the weight that her public hair carries. The Roman Empire, for example, saw body hair as a sign of class, so those from the upper classes removed all their body hair for no reason other than to prove that they had the resources to do so. Whilst this is pretty straight forward, the cultural significance of women’s pubic hair becomes convoluted and confused once it is understood that, in the early 20th century, the existence of body hair on a woman was characterised as unhygienic and unfeminine simply by a group of men who wanted to be able to sell more razors. Though it is difficult to pinpoint the exact timeline of when the practice of removing all body hair became normalised, what we do know is this: in 1915, the first women’s razor was released by Gillette with ads focussing on the removal of armpit hair. The same year, a Harpers Bazaar issue was published featuring an image of a woman in a short-sleeved dress with no armpit hair – the first image of its kind. In the 1940’s, women began shaving their legs due to a wartime nylon shortage that meant they were going barelegged more often, and by the time that the bikini was launched in 1946 (after women had been hearing for a few years that their armpit hair was unhygienic in an attempt by Wilkinson Sword to sell more razors) they were faced with a promotional image of a woman wearing a bikini for the first time with a pubic area so smooth it could rival Barbie’s. Go figure.
The 60’s and 70’s saw a full bush as being tied to ideas about sexual liberation; the natural bush being symbolic of the sexy, independent woman of the era. Whilst this is evidently a more feminist stance – we have moved from women feeling shamed into removing their body hair by pseudoscientific claims that it is unhygienic to women owning their pubes in a defiant act of feminism – pubes are still being given a mighty amount of cultural significance. The movement towards accepting, even flaunting, women’s pubic hair should be celebrated as something that relieves women of the pressure to spend time and money pruning their body in order to be acceptable, but outside of the western world, the opposite is true. In Korea, pubic hair is seen as a sign of sexual health and fertility, which is great! Women don’t feel a cultural pressure to put themselves through pain to adhere to weird beauty standards! Instead, the norm is to pay a staggering amount for a pubic hair transplant to ensure a ‘fuller’ look down there. Can women ever get a break?
This brings me to my next point, that the cultural representation of pubic hair (whether that be to remove it or enhance it) has fallen onto the shoulders of women, not men. Whilst only 4% of women under 35 do no pubic hair management at all, the flipside is true for men with a staggering 35% of those surveyed allowing their bushes to grow free. Furthermore, what women are doing to their pubes almost exactly lines up with what men are expecting them to do. According to a survey conducted by Cosmopolitan, 30% of men list the Hollywood (all bare) as their preferred pube style, and 47% of women are going ahead and getting that done. Pube style of their sexual partners isn’t solely a preference amongst men, it has become something to request, with the survey showing that 40% of men have actually asked their partners to change the style of their pubic hair, compared to just 23% of women making the same request. Why has pube maintenance become something that only women are concerned about? Is it the multitude of hairless vulvas we see in porn, or the still common belief that pubes are unhygienic despite the opposite being true (pubes actually protect us against contracting STI’s)?
Knowing the extent of the cultural pressure around pube removal, it is difficult to simply vouch for women to do whatever they want – it will never be that simple due to the internalisation of the expectations of the society around them. What we can do, especially in the western world where pube removal is not only normal, but has become expected of women, is to show women that this is not their only option, and that there is nothing wrong with a bit of bush. Brands such as Billie, the razor company that is against the pink tax and sells razors designed for women for the price of men’s razors, have taken it under their wing to be the first razor company to show actual body hair in their advert and on their website. More often than not, razor ads show women shaving hair-free legs, evidently terrified of what might happen if they were to show a real woman with hair on the TV. Billie, however, knows that in order to sell their products, they have to show them in use. Even then, their summer ad features girls in bikinis at the beach with bushes galore, showing that they know some women might not want to shave and telling us that that’s okay! They aren’t persecuted by the owners of the brand for not wanting to shave, they are free to live their lives however they want. The world that Billie promotes, where bushes are celebrated just as much as dolphin-smooth legs, underarms and vulvas, is what I hope the future has in store for us; a move towards a world where women’s hair is simply there, devoid of cultural significance or meaning.
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