Full disclosure: I have shaved my vulva every day since late puberty.
I’m a product of my culture, of course, coming of age in a day when airbrushed, tidy vaginas were always visible and porn widely accessible.
I understood in theory that women used to go unshaven, but it was only when I found a stack of 70s girlie mags at a yard sale that I saw it for myself!
Although we assume that most men have a preference for women who shave, I’ve come to question this. I am often asked to let it grow! Many guys describe a shaved pussy as childish, or express the excitement of the pussy being a secret inside the nest, instead of just out there.
I thought about leaving my bush to grow, and that got me doing some digging around. Looking at a lot of pussy online, I found out a lot about pubes!
Here’s the down low on the to-grow or not-to-grow question.
All about Bush
Pubic hair styles are socially and culturally dictated.
We assume that what we do with our pubic hair is “normal.” But for the most part, we follow the dictates of our era or our culture.
Some women choose their own path. There were a few baldies during the bush years, and some renegade naturals during the clean-cut noughties. But most of us choose our “preference” based on everyone else around us.
Read: Manscaping for Women
“Natural” varies, and isn’t always predictable by how much body hair a woman has.
Nature might mean a few tender tufts of peach fuzz, or it might mean an actual bush. It can be soft below and big and fuzzy on her mons, or it can be wild and untamed all over, including around her anus. It can grow down her legs and up her tummy, or stay on her vulva.
You might expect a woman with a thick head of hair or a lot of body hair to have a full bush, but that isn’t always the case.
Cultures today and historically vary in treatment of a woman’s bush.
We may mistakenly assume the hairless approach is a modern, western conceit. Not so. Some cultures have religious prescriptions to remove pubic hair. Islam asks both men and women to remove pubic and armpit hair. Some indigenous cultures plucked their body hairs, surprising the Europeans with how smooth they were. Ancient Egyptians meticulously removed all body hair, so that they would not have any lice when serving the Gods. Ancient India found the trail of hair from navel to mons highly erotic.
There are many variations, and they change through time and place.
Take our Poll: What’s Your Pussy Preference?
There’s hair there for a reason.
Why do we grow hair around our genitals at puberty, and why is it still there after we have lost the rest of our fur to evolution?
Our pubes are messengers, holding pheromones and scents that signal fertility, virility, and arousal at a physiological level we don’t register consciously.
Even more important, pubic hair prevents bacteria, viruses, and dirt from entering our vulnerable spaces. It acts as a whisk, too, carrying sweat and all those unwelcome microorganisms away from our insides.
See Kink Lovers’ article: Why I Go Full Bush Every Time
Pubic hair is not unhygienic.
Many of us have this idea and that’s a cultural product. But the science says pubic hair is MORE hygienic.
Pubes absorb sweat and urine, and actually help protect from STIs, yeast infections, fecal bacteria and other stuff we don’t want inside of us.
Do you have a preference with your lovers? How do you take care of your bush?
Tell us what you think