I woke up late yesterday and saw an ad for a shaving product to straighten the outline of m’lady’s pubic patch, including a demonstration on a live model. Basic cable, about 11AM; not a place or time where the audience can be assumed to be all adults. Or at least notionally adult, like me.
Now, I’m only a bit of a prude, and prefer women with pubic hair, but I expected bare nipples first. Show me I’m wrong. With pictures, of course.
Pubic hair still exists? 
I’m not sure if this is related… but I think that it might be. On basic cable over the last 3-4 months, some channels have been showing un-edited blaxploitation movies. My objection is that the N-word is used about once every two minutes in these movies and it is no longer bleeped out. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that Yaphet Kotto was a phenomenal actor and I understand that he starred in quite a number of these movies. It’s just that “N-word”…“N-word”…“N-word”…“N-word” broadcasting loud and clear is offensive, especially when you are making your morning coffee before work.
No, there are not young children in my house, but there could be. Just because I was watching a Western last night does not mean that I want to wake up to Racist Hatred in the morning.
Exactly what has changed that makes them think that they can get away with this B.S. ?
You laugh but that may influence it – since the iconography around porn has been of extreme depilation for the last 2 decades (there has been some tentative comeback lately), it may have led the more naturalistic representation to be seen as no longer prurient.
Though we’d have to see the actual ad to know just how much was portrayed, as if all you saw was a border of hairline it would be different to if you see the full monty.
It may be even that someone complained that the bleeping was violating the full cultural representation of how one brother talked to another in the streets of the time – hey, it would not surprise me if someone did!
(hmmm… do they still edit out “goddamn”? That’s another of the terms that was never one of the “Seven Words” but that was always taken out of over-the-air).
Yeah, nah, not related at all.
Getting back to the OP, I remember the Trim the Bushes Schick Hydro Silk commercial. That was aired back in 2017, but used bushes as the visual prop. Uh, I mean bushes with leaves. You are talking about a commercial showing the other type of bush?
I visited my gynecologist a couple of weeks ago and asked her, “Is it true that most women under the age of, say 35-ish, shave or wax just about all their pubic hair.” She said yes, and she should know. Then I said, “So you have men that age or younger who have never seen a woman with a full growth of pubic hair?” And again, she said yes.
In fact, she said that she heard of a movie that was being made about the Sexy 70s (the decade, not the age group – that’s another thread) and they couldn’t find any young actresses who had 1970s-style pubic hair, so the girls had to wear genital toupees.
I’m guessing a modern guy who has been weaned (as it were) on bare female pubes would completely freak out if he saw A Complete Untrimmed Natural. “You want me to put my whatever into THAT?” OTOH it bothers me that adult women are remaking their genitalia to look like those of 10-year old girls. (I’m not talking about a little tasteful trimming, but removing every hair.)
Basic cable is not regulated by the FCC for content. Networks will show what they think the audience and sponsors will tolerate. South Park on Comedy Central, for example, will air in the afternoon with nothing censored except for the word “fuck.” And they have aired episodes with the N word fully intact, most notably in the one in which Randy Marsh utters the word on Wheel of Fortune.
That’s an interesting thought. Here in Germany, it has been OK to depict pubic hair in mainstream media (magazines, newspapers, movies, TV shows, but not necessarily commercials, they only went as far as showing female breasts) since the early seventies, but the limit for a long time has been showing female genitalia, which were always well hidden by natural pubic hair. So it has become LESS probable to show crotches on mainstream media since shaved became the norm. But then, there are shows like Naked Attraction, where genitalia are shown in close-up on mainstream TV.
Sorry, my bad, I just saw that my link above to the Naked Attraction website doesn’t meet the standards for a NSFW link, but it’s too late for editing. I’ll report it myself.
I am reminded of the 1994 release of the Black Crowes album “Amorica”. The album cover featured a tight close-up of the crotch area of a woman wearing an exceedingly tiny bikini bottom. Pubic hair peeking over the top edge of the garment was clearly visible, and I believe this was the main driver of the agitation. The album was subsequently released with revised cover art. The original is easily found through a google image search.
So, 27 years ago this kind of thing was unacceptable to mass market retailers. Which doesn’t exactly answer the OP’s question…
I’ve had this album since it came out. The cover was unchanged in Germany, just like the Strokes’ “Is This It” in 2001.
I hear that they have to put a trigger warning before The Life of Brian.
Yeah, those were hairy times… 
OK, but what about the men? I suppose we have to ask an andrologist…
Given what they have broadcast, this bothers me a lot.
Wasn’t the picture they used originally from a Hostler magazine cover?
Ads have become grosser and grosser over the years. We seem to be a country obsessed with wiping our butts, pissing ourselves, shaving our crotches and armpits, etc. That ad with a model shaving her pubes is just another step over the line of bad taste.
Aye, but liking a woman’s pubic hair is hardly in bad taste. For now. Until recently.
Friends - October 7, 1999
Those horse owner publications are a constant surprise.