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It’s likely that you have, at some point, removed some — perhaps even all — of your pubic hair. A nationally representative 2016 study out of the University of California, San Francisco found that nearly 84 percent of the 3,316 women surveyed had groomed their pubic hair, and 62 percent had removed it all at least once. Shaving with a nonelectric razor was the most popular method of grooming, followed by trimming with scissors and shaving with an electric razor.
Of course, grooming doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and individuals have long made their follicular decisions according to trends. Even the current natural-is-beautiful, pro-body-hair movement is a cultural product (and one that tends to focus on the hair of cis white women, at that). Women and femmes are far from a monolith, however. Beauty standards interact with gender identity, race, sexuality, relationships, and, yes, simple convenience to influence how we approach our pubes.
As the summer season of greater exposure approaches, Allure is exploring five women’s diverse relationships with their pubic hair — and featuring original photographs of them and their hair, or lack thereof. The women’s overriding sentiment: I do what works for me; to each their own. And while ultimately we may not be able to separate our bush-care choices from beauty ideals, we can stop attaching moral judgments to pubic hair. Ahead, NSFW portraits and uncensored thoughts on the hair down there.
Cameron, 24
I don’t remember the exact age [I started shaving], but like middle school, I think, just seeing other girls do and it just being like, Oh, well, OK, I guess I’m gonna do it, too.
I’m a hairy person, but I’ve gone most of my life shaving most of my body hair just because there was this idea that I need to that I dealt with for a long time. And so I kind of just woke up one day and...it started off with my legs, and I was like, Why am I doing this? I don’t want really want to, so let me just see how long I can go with not shaving my legs and seeing if it bothers anybody, and no one ever said anything. So then I was [like], OK, so then, if I can apply this to my body hair on my legs, what about my bush? I’ve experimented over the years: I’ve shaved it off completely, I’ve trimmed, but this is the first time that I’m just letting it be completely. I feel really good about it. It makes me feel sexy, it makes me feel affirmed; I don’t know, I think it’s cute, I like it.
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In the last few years, [with] this whole body positivity and body hair appreciation movement, I’m noticing who is not included. Especially being a black person, a person of color, it’s very obvious to me when people from my community are not present in things. So people being able to reclaim their body hair, that’s cool, but when it’s only light-skinned white girls who have, like, three, blonde hairs on their entire body, that sends a very strong message.
To me, it just felt really important to do this [shoot] because I really wish I could have had some visibility as far as a hairy, dark-skinned person. Even within the movement, I feel like it’s more looked down upon that we show our hair because the hair is different, too. It’s not straight, it’s not blonde, you can’t really hide it, it’s there. The journey of my hair on my head, too, going from getting perms my entire life and then cutting it off to a half-inch when I was 17 and now letting it be wild and curly — this is how it grows out of my head — that’s also helped me feel better about body hair in general, because I’m like, This is how I want to look. And that’s really powerful, too.
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I’m a queer person who has dated men, [and] I’ve really only had one partner that’s ever really commented on [my pubic hair].... It was one of the first times we were hanging out, and I didn’t tell [him] beforehand [that I let it grow] because I don’t really think it’s a big deal. They were kind of like, “Oh! You’re hairy!” and I’m like, “Yeah, I am!"... They were kind of surprised, I guess, because they were expecting me to not have any hair..., I’ve noticed just in general [with] the women and gender-nonconforming people I’ve dated, hair hasn’t really been an issue.
[As for how I see my partners,] it’s not really my place to police how other people maintain body hair and body image. Do your thing. I don’t necessarily think everyone should go natural or everyone should shave, I’m like, Whatever fits your body. I have friends who do have bush maintenance, and they do wax, and they do shave and that works for them, and I’m like, Yo, more power to you. So as far as grooming, I do still get my eyebrows waxed and shave my armpits. But other than that, everything is kept natural.
Lydia, 27
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I am a non-monogamous person and have several partners and have for several years, and I think that maybe makes me feel more of my own agency about any kind of upkeep or how I want my pubic hair to be or how I want my body hair to be. None of my partners have ever expressed any preferences to me, which maybe is because I select for people who have that point of view in the world. But the fact that there are multiple people...makes me feel extra like I’m not seeking feedback about this. It’s just for me. There is a possibility that if people have preferences, they might differ, and I don’t care. I’m the constant in all of those circumstances.
I think I started to remove body hair in junior high; I don't remember any specific prompting event as much as just a vague sense that that's what people do with adult bodies. I experimented for a short period in my early 20s with not removing underarm or leg hair, which is a look I like on other femme-presenting people, but [I] actually just prefer the feeling of shaved legs and underarms for myself, so went back to shaving.
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Sometimes I trim [my pubic hair]; sometimes I shave. I don’t wax.... I feel like I go through phases about it. I like my hair to be short because I think the sensation is better. I like there to be less hair in the way during sex. That is my own sensory preference. But I’m not interested in having no hair, I don’t think, and waxing just feels like an appointment to make and a thing to do, and I’m just not going to do it. [I’ve waxed before] just once to see [what it was like], and I liked having the skin-on-skin sensation, but it’s not a thing I’m going to do.
I am performing professionally [as a dancer] in a small amount of clothing some of the time, and even then I don’t really think about if some [hair] is showing — it’s fine. The artistic community I have is super progressive about all body things, so no one really is thinking about it or looking for it. But being at a pool feels like there’s more external pressure — or a beach. [I clean up the edges before the pool or beach] but mostly just so I don’t have to think about it or worry about it or wonder about it, not because I feel any actual pressure... It’s weird that [hairless] is what’s neutral: In order to not think about it, I have to do an action. But it seems like the path of least resistance in public, so it’s fine.
I genuinely have no preference for the body hair of my partners; whatever grooming people like to do for themselves, I’m into. It does bum me out when it's clear that someone feels pressured into a particular body hair situation or is disconnected from their own aesthetic or sensation preferences. Individuality in self-presentation is sexy.
Andi, 30
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I’m a woman who is attracted to other women, [and] I find myself attracted to people with all kinds of body hair — whether that’s completely shaved, or styled, or just completely natural, all these things can be really, really sexy to me. On myself, though, I prefer not have any hair. It’s not so much a thing about femininity to me, it’s more just that I love the way that my skin feels when it’s completely smooth and bare.... So before I go out to a play party, or before I’m planning a big date, I’ll always be sure to remove all of my hair just so I feel nice and sexy about it. I’m heading to a party tonight; it’s a party that’s a BDSM and sex party just for women and trans people.
[As a trans woman] I discovered my gender about seven years ago now. Before then, I hadn’t spent any time considering my gender. My adolescence, I was always very socially awkward. I assumed that I was just socially awkward — I didn’t realize that I was trying to connect to people through a paradigm of a gender that made no sense to me, the mannerisms of that gender, trying to ape what I saw guys doing. [As I was discovering my gender,] I had a really wonderful friend who...had me go to Target, pick up my first pair of panties, pick up a razor. And I proceeded to shave my whole body and get the worst razor burn of my life. So that was a transformative experience, you could say.
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For the next few months, I explored everything: I had one of those epilator devices that would just pull the hairs out; I tried wax; I tried all different things. Eventually what I settled on as the thing that was best for my skin was Veet.... So that’s basically what I do now. Before I go to a party or a date, I’ll take a shower and Veet myself during it and I basically do my whole body. I do my chest because I still get a little bit of hair there. I do my stomach; I do my pubic area; I do my legs, my ass, my arms, armpits.
I only really feel a need to do that before engaging in some intimate times or something where I want to feel really sexy. The rest of the time I just sort of let things grow as they will. So it’s maybe once a week or so.
I just went to a beach or a pool for the first time in quite a while as a public thing.... I think I might’ve [tucked]. For those of you at home who don’t know, tucking is basically when you manipulate the various bits down there so that they end up inside of you and between your legs in such a way that [they] do not bulge out.
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I don’t feel a need to aesthetically reconfigure what’s going on there through surgery in order to confirm my femininity, I already relate to my parts that same way [a cis woman does].... I don’t feel a need to surgically modify anything because I feel very comfortable with how it is.
Kachine, 26
I shaved my legs [starting in middle school] because of an As Told By Ginger episode where she buzzed her ankles, and I was like, I really want to shave my legs, too. Is that stupid?
[Starting] in college, I shaved everything, all the time — completely, everything, and I did it every week, and I just felt like that’s something I should be doing. In college, I just felt like a lot of my friends were either waxing it all off or shaving it all off. I even have a few friends who do laser hair removal — but they do it because of ingrown hairs, so they can’t wax all the time but they have painful hairs down there, and I don’t experience that. I’ve never gotten [an ingrown hair].
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But then I realized that I didn’t really care and it’s almost more private and special if you have hair there. I still shave my armpits, but I trim and I don’t really shave that much down there anymore. [It’s out of] laziness. And I feel like it’s healthier to have more hair there. And it felt sort of safer to have it, too, like you have this natural protection — it’s sort of ridiculous but it’s true.
Now I just trim or I’ll shave the top part maybe and not the bottom part, so right now it’s at least half-and-half, it’s a little lighter on the top, which is whatever. Nobody really seems to care or have a preference. I’ve never had a partner [care]... I think more people actually like hair there than not… For me, I don’t mind either [on a partner].
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I think not shaving made me feel a lot more confident in myself, because when you do shave all the time...you feel like you’re putting on a show for something. Now that I just have hair everywhere, I’m not as worried about my image as much. I feel more comfortable with myself, I think.
Ash, 29
[One time at school], this one boy unsolicitedly told me shaved his balls and asked me if I shaved my pubes. I was 16, so not super young, but he was maybe too old to be asking these sexual questions, he should have known better. I just lied and said “Yes” because I sensed that was the answer I was supposed to give. And then that night I went home and shaved them off. But the experience of shaving them was really terrible. It was painful, I got razor burn, it was stubbly — even from the moment I stepped out of the shower, it didn’t feel good, so I just let them grow back in, and that was an awkward process.
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Three years later [after I came out], my community of gay stuff existed purely online. There was this [satirical] blog [that] did a categorized thing of pubic hair, so [the writer] had each style of pubic hair and what it was called... I wasn’t doing anything with [my pubic hair] at this time and she called [ungroomed hair] “the unwashed bear” or something, and I was like, Oh, I thought I was clean but this whole time, I didn’t realize this thing’s disgusting, and if I start sleeping with other women, they’re going to think I’m disgusting.
I didn’t really know how to fix it — shave it off, it felt gross, leave it on, it feels gross. I didn’t know you could just trim it or shape it... It really affected the next several sexual relationships that I had, because I was so obsessed with how gross I must be. I would trim it if it got too long, but then I was like, Is it patchy, is it weird?… Counterintuitively this stress came from somebody within my own community.
Over time, as I slept with more people, I realized nobody really cares. Even if they trim their pubic hair, they don’t care about yours, necessarily. I usually just trim when it’s getting a little long. It’s not even really aesthetic, it mostly just feels more comfortable… I try not to do too much to it because I don’t want to waste my time. I don’t shave my legs either, or armpits. I spend enough time and money on my hair [on my head]. If I sleep with somebody, I’m going to sleep with them as they come… I feel like if you’re comfortable putting your face and hands on somebody and not being squeamish about it, you can get all the sensitivity without having shaved labia.
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[My trichotillomania] is kind of an issue because my pubic hair is the longest hair on my body… I do pull out my pubic hair, and because I don’t trim it [often], it’s there all the time; the hair is thicker, so it’s easier to grab. And when I’m pulling out hair on my head, I’m trying to find ones that are thick and kinky, which is basically pubic hair. So I do pull out my pubic hair, and that’s probably the only thing I’m still self-conscious about. I don’t think it’s that visible, but there’s still one spot that’s constantly free of hair. If you pull out a hair enough times, it just won’t grow back.
More on body hair:
Why I Used to Remove All of My Body Hair
Why Having Body Hair Makes This Woman Feel Beautiful
Why This Teen's Body Hair Photos Are Going Viral
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100 years of hair removal:
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