URL: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_012.html
The trend might have orginated during the crusades from the Muslims. Islam requires adult male and females to trim or shave thier pubical hair every month, apart from the normal routine of washing yourself 5 times a day with running water, washing your private parts after using the toilet and bathing after sex.
Was a religious practice in ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia for both men and women–in Egypt, they went so far as to ritually pluck ALL hair. Was also known in ancient Greece to preserve a youthful appearance
Current trend is probably more related to this – as well as being far more enjoyable for oral sex.
Let’s not forget the practical health-related reason(s). It’s easier to shave on a regular basis than rid oneself of a well established colony of “crabs” or other body lice.
dont forget trimming your pubes makes your dick look bigger
(i get pretty technical in some of my other posts, so i’ll let this one stay simple)
addendum: that’s especially true if you’ve got hair encroaching on your shaft.
please enjoy the mental image
I found this thesis on the subject:
“Hair or Bare?: The History of American Women and Hair Removal, 1914-1934” by Kirsten Hansen
I would appreciate some references for their information from other forums users. Especially the one about Greece and Egyptians… And also this:
Really?
Hair of the Zombie!
“requires”? What I was taught was that you were supposed to stay clean and that trimming regularly was one of the ways you stayed clean.
Incidentally, do Sikhs trim pubes and underarms? I mean a LIFETIME of growth?
I don’t know but I appreciate it.
It’s not like it keeps growing more than an inch or so. Even the hair on your head will only get so long.
Growing…for 75 years? Thats what, 75 inches?
The Master speaks on body hair.
Even though shaving, trimming, and plucking body hair have a long history, most of the people who have lived on this planet haven’t done very much about it. Lots of them haven’t even washed it more often than once in a blue moon. Plenty of people alive today have never trimmed a single pubic hair.
Most of the hair on your body (as opposed to the top of your head, and on your face if you’re a guy) gets a couple inches long at most. Pubic and armpit hairs grow a bit longer but they to stop with time. Then they fall out and the new hairs start from scratch. Nobody who doesn’t have some very very freaky genetics is going to walk around tripping over untrimmed pubic hair. It just doesn’t get all that long.
I had never thought that someone could be so accustomed to trimming that he wouldn’t know that pubes/underarm hair don’t grow long. It seems to me like an obvious fact of life, similar to, say, knowing that your eyebrows won’t end up being several inches long if you don’t trim them. I’m amazed.
Even worse that this:
was posted hours after this:
Seriously? I mean, I guess I could have written “past” instead of “more”, but one google search should clear this up…
If that’s a requirement, it’s a pretty loose one. My GF did a OB/GYN rotation at a clinic with a heavy devout Muslim clientele-- hijab-wearing immigrants here in the States.
She said that over dozens of Muslim women, they were uniformally the least likely to practice any form of southern trimming or even much hygeine there at all.
Anecdotal, of course. But she doesn’t have a bigoted bone in her body, I take her at her word.
I suspect that some more particular word needs to be substituted for “Islam”.
How much hygiene is really necessary down there? I don’t shave it, but I do wash the area with warm water. The same as with every other body part. Are they just not washing at all there?