At least part of the historical removal of pubic hair is to avoid/get rid of pubic lice.
Let us not forget about the murkin which exists for this reason.
it's also a cultural thing, meaning in one area or one group it can be popular to shave and at the same time there lives a group in parallel growing bushes.
however, it's certainly better to at least keep it trimmed very short, so it doesn't clog your shower or sticks to soap bars and also dries quickly.
You would have to shave or trim your hair as well to get rid of clogging and slow drying.
Also access to shaving products and accessories is getting easier. Hand held electric razors are getting smaller and can do a lot of the work before a blade makes a smooth finish.
That said, as a male i hate shaving my privates smooth. I find the hair acts as a natural lubricant, without hair everything either gets sticky or feels slimy down there.
The hair helps to keep things dry, instead of letting the sweat build up in the area. Almost the opposite of a lubricant, but I would agree with the idea. I almost never do a smooth shave, but I will trim it.
Wet bulb heh
It really doesn't. I have both hyperhydrosis (sweating a lot for no reason) and sweat activated psoriasis, so I have to keep my public area as dry as possible because psoriasis on your scrotum is fucking awful.
Being clean shaven means that more of my skin can come into contact with my underwear to remove the sweat, while being hairy means the moisture is trapped between my hair and my underwear.
As an aside, thongs are a great solution to swamp-ass.
Seconded. In most cases people tend to become what they see most often
I only remember some study with beards in men, how it is cyclical in the sense that when everyone has a beard, a beardless man stands out and thus signals to potential partners their "difference". Same when most people are clean-shaven. And thus the sexual need to "stand out" gets served by being bearded when everyone is shaved, and being shaved when everyone is bearded, resulting in a cycle.
I suspect it's similar with pubic hair.
In other words: Fashion.
Gen-X guy with possibly too much interest in the subject.
Shaving it bald for women started to become normal about 15 years ago. Trimming it was more common then, and going back to end of the 1980s, shaving was a rare and weird fetish in the western world.
As for why, I'd say it's because porn normalized it - and porn did it because as mainstream content became more explicit, shaved pubes were both easier to keep clean for the actresses, and (more importantly) showed more.
I find it funny that now that it's become mainstream, hair is becoming a growing fetish.
As an aside, since pubic hair is a sign of sexual maturity, some of the generations that grew up with hair down there have a subconscious connection between bald and sexually immature, i.e. children.
From my Xennial experience, some time in the 00s. Maybe because the wide spread (heh) availability of internet porn, but I don't really know. 90s were bushy. 00s was a transitional era and 10s and onwards are bald eagles everywhere.
(Personally I don't enjoy shaving my parts, I don't enjoy having shaved parts and I prefer lady parts with some trimmed carpeting rather than both desert dunes or wild djungles.)
But kissing a bearded man is not a big deal. I think it's a question of preferences.
You usually don't stick your tongue in a guy's beard when you kiss him.
With some types of beard there's no other way.
Kissing a bearded man rarely results in hair in your teeth
Used to love shaved when I was younger, I’m 35 now and I quite like bush now. Dunno why? It’s different and not common now I guess.
I'm late Gen X. When we were younger, women shaving at least the lips and bikini line, plus trimming down the rest, was normal. I don't think a lot of women my age went fully hairless most of the time, but having a brazilian now and again was pretty normal. Men either didn't do any grooming or trimmed things down a bit, but didn't generally go fully hairless. As we got older more hair crept back in. I guess to me, hairlessness is associated with kids (by which i mean like 18 year olds to mid-twenties - people way too young for me to fuck at this point), and I think hair is sexy. I don't think I'd do a brazilian at this point - I prefer at least some hair. I do still prefer the lips and bikini line to be bare, but that entails annoying upkeep and itchy stubble, so I usually only do it every other week and let it grow in a bit.
I guess what we find attractive changes as we age.
It's kind of a fashion trend, and internet porn made such a fashion trend possible by making it visible to more people. At least if you look at it that way, stark differences in behavior and opinion between generations seem completely normal.
its different for different countris. japan for instance seems to still do it natural style.
As a man, I started shaving down there after a woman forcefully assaulted me. I also prefer at least a trim on my partner. It feels unclean to have a full bush, but I recognize that is a traumatic response.
This also happened in the mid 00s when it was becoming a thing. I also note that the body odor is considerably less that having hairy pubes. (Same with armpits.)
No one's going to mention the fact you're dating someone two generations older than you? That gives me the ick.
OP was not asking for our opinion on that.
traditionally a generation was a span of 20 years but it seems shorter spans are being used now im not sure of the age difference. That being said Xers in the us would be pretty used to shaved so im wondering if the person is not from the us.
it looks better
and I personally don't like body hair anywhere
Right around the year 2000, pretty much as soon as the internet was developed and early internet porn influenced lots of people.
I disagree with your answer, but I think you pointed to the right one.
It's porn. People's constant consumption of porn has completely changed what people perceive to be normal, and preferences has changed with it.
It's a huge change of culture driven by some pretty extreme shit, but we don't talk about it because it's still too much of a taboo to have a public discourse about. Very few men are willing to go into that level of critical self-evaluation of their sexual behaviour, and even less so to do it in public. Women are rarely given a platform to speak out. So what you end up with is women discussing in private about how their one night stand slapped them on the ass so they couldn't walk straight for three days and seemingly thought that was a completely normal thing to do, or going in forcefully cold without foreplay expecting it to be magically enjoyable for both parties.
Our expectations for shaving is just another point where the influence of porn shines through, albeit less violently so.
Okay if it’s due to porn than why has this trend been cyclical and dates back to ancient Egypt at least? There’s evidence of people shaving their pubes in the Roman times as well. It’s maybe come back in style because people saw it in porn but that’s just a trigger not really an explanation given the historic context
There isn't just one reason. The biggest one currently can be directly tied back to porn. It's also not just the simple existence of porn, but with our excessive consumption of it.
The fact that nearly all porn is the same in this regard is also a factor. There's also a generational factor, in that younger people experienced almost-exclusively shaved partners and porn in their formative years.
Of course people have shaved since they figured out how to do it, and there have been trends throughout history. But good luck finding another moment in history where a large portion of society thought there was something wrong with an unshaved private part, regardless of gender.
Again we’re just over generalizing for no reason. A large part of what? America? I don’t think the trends here are the same exact thing as mainland china or Africa my dude. You can’t find that moment in history at all because you’re just projecting an America/western Europe centric view of the world onto the entire world’s population.
Lice?
Removal is so common now that "hairy" is a category on porn sites just like feet or squirting. I suspect I am older than OPs boyfriend and I have never been with a partner who wasn't close cropped to bare. So attributing it to GenX thing is incorrect. I suspect it's the boyfriend's preference.
I do have a copy of "The Joy of Sex" from the 1970s and it has more hair in it than a furry convention.
thanks for using Leebra!
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People have always been trying to remove pubic hair ever since we started growing it.
Even in ancient Egypt, people were shaving and waxing their pubic hair off.
I guess the popularity comes and goes in cycles.
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