Okay, call me old-fashioned, but I still like pubic hair. Internet porn sites now present several choices - completely shaved; vertical landing strips that look like exclamation points; heart-shaped; the Charlie Chaplin (with just a little patch above the clitoris); and a tiny triangle that serves as an arrow pointing to the clit. Yet, for a full bush, I have to search the Web for sites that are considered as specialty, kinky or fetish.
Retired porn stars have commented on this phenomenon. Gina Rome, who retired after six years, shaved every day. “It was part of getting ready for work..” When she switched from acting to film editing, she stopped shaving and let her pubic hair grow out. “Shaving was work. I don't have to do it anymore, so I don't.”
And Kelly Nichols says, “I was a Penthouse model in the early 1980s, and I posed with a full bush. No one in adult entertainment shaved back then. Now everybody does.”
Although Martha Stewart may be back on TV with her post-prison series, you can be sure that she'll never give any suggestions on what to do about those big red razor bumps that result from shaving a vagina, so here's a helpful hint I’d like to pass along: they can be largely eliminated with, of all things, Visine eye drops.
The porn industry has played an important part in shaping pubic styles. Jordan Stein writes in an article titled “Has Porn Gone Mainstream?”
“Consider the near icon status the female porn star has achieved. She is so mainstream that even good girls are imitating her various styles of undress, disappearing hair and all. Porn chic? You bet.”
However, Julia Baird writes in "Celebrity Porn": “The idea that the fashion industry can strip then exhibit women in the name of 'porn chic' is a bit silly, frankly. But ‘flesh is the new fabric’ could be the new catchcry. Americans call their bush George W. It's fashionable—the curious fact is that it is fueled by the porn aesthetic that celebrities love to love.”
Among Hollywood actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirstie Alley have both admitted favoring Brazilian wax jobs, where most of their pubic hair is removed, leaving a small tuft that remains hidden under a thong bikini. Sara Jessica Parker’s character Carrie Bradshaw had her pubic hair removed during the third season of “Sex and the City.” Presumably, it is now in the Smithsonian museum along with Archie Bunker’s chair and the Fonz’s jacket.
In a hysterical episode of HBO’s dark comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, star and former Seinfeld producer Larry David performed oral sex on his wife, and in the process he swallowed one of her pubic hairs. The next day, he was still choking on it like a cat trying to get rid of a hairball.
Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, writes: “There's also an erotic, sexual component to hairlessness because your skin is more sensitive when it’s more exposed. Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair, and I think men like it.”
My own resistance to the plethora of bald pussies stems from my pre-adolescent days when pubic hair was such a big taboo that I became obsessed with it. In those pre-bikini days, I would go to Coney Island and stroll around the sand, sneaking glances at ladies in the hope of finding a few stray curlicues of forbidden pubic hair peeking out from their various sun-baked crotches. And if I was able to discover any, why, it felt like a really productive afternoon.
Betty Dodson, sex educator and producer of Viva La Vulva, says, “I think we have changing ideas about what’s public and what’s private. And now that nudity is more public - nude beaches, routine nudity in film and the enormous amount of exhibitionism and porn on the Web - I’m not surprised to see a trend toward pubic shaving. I think it’s probably here to stay.”
As for men, Arnold Schwarzenegger was only joking when he announced that he was going to get a bikini wax, but actually, Beverly Hills skin care and waxing expert Nance Mitchell has about 50 regular male customers that come for pubic waxing who “are not gay, and they are not porn stars. Some go totally bare, some just do the shaft and up around the pelvic area.” She adds, “It depends on what their wives and girlfriends want. Men go along because removing the hair makes the whole package look bigger.” Indeed, size does matter—even if it’s illusory.
Paul Krassner’s latest book, One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist, features many of his AVN Online columns.
