Comments

1
Public lice - so much more humiliating than private lice.
2
Anyway, I'm not impressed with the notion that shaved pubes = infantilization. Most adults simply are too developed physically to ever be mistaken for underage, no matter how hairless they make they make themselves.
3
Wait how is this a blow to bi visibility. Seems totes bipositive.
4
wow.

what an asshole to suggest we start arresting waxers.

oh wait....

cummings didn't do that.

that was danny's straw man.

does danny ever take on real people?
5
The one problem with shaving your pubes -- there might be a link with shaving and a greater chance of catching STI's:

“Some clinicians are finding that freshly shaved pubic areas and genitals are also more vulnerable to herpes infections due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to virus carried by mouth or genitals. It follows that there may be vulnerability to spread of other [sexually transmitted infections] as well.”

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/08/15/p…

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl…

http://www.thestdproject.com/stds-shavin…

6
Is my prepubescent humor showing if I laughed hilariously at the linked article's mention that pubic lice can take up residence in one's eyebrows?
7
What if I only clipper cut down there to keep the pubes short but don't shave it clean? Does that make my bi-hairy? Or ambiguously hairy?
8
I just like to be able to actually see the vulva.
9
Do men really shave their chests? I mean, I know models and vain body builders must, but do everyday men really do that? I can't imagine.
10
@9 Have you not seen the Gillette "Manscaping" commercials and their new product line?! Clearly all men MUST be doing this now.
11
People have been removing pubic hair for centuries for a variety of reasons, particularly in the Islamic world. Can we please dispense with the notion that this was invented twenty years ago by American sexual aesthetes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pubic_hair#…

(p.s. The only woman I've ever slept with who didn't have pubic hair was also the only non-American.)
12
Alan Cummings is a very interesting guy. I like his take on being bi. And oh, how I long for the hairy men days. Women look better shaved, to me at least. But men just should have hairy bodies. It just looks sexier.
13
Pubic barbers were available in ancient Egypt.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BJUCGm1TbcU/UP…
14
@9 At this point it's safe to assume that every man has shaved or trimmed something other their face. Certainly every man in hollywood is getting waxed on a regular basis.
15
Humans are mammals, mammals are hairy, deal with it.
16
According to d.p. @11's Wikipedia link:
...According to ethnologist F. Fawcett, writing in 1901, he had observed the removal of body hair, including pubic hair about the vulva, as a custom of women from the Hindu Nair caste...
Heh.
17
@15 "deal with it."

One could make a strong case that removing unwanted hair _IS_ dealing with it.
18
Love me some Cumming. He is probably the highest profile, unambiguously Bi man out there.

In regard to body hair, I think a bit of trimming serves most people well. I don't have copious body hair, but it tends to be long...so a bit of mowing the lawn is in order. I even like a bit of body hair on women as long as the garden isn't just left to run wild.

As for pubic hair: do what you want with yours, but to me totally bald is weird. It isn't a "prepubescent" thing, but like removing one's eyebrows, it just leaves something missing.

/TMI
19
I don't mind a little trim, but removing all of it makes people look like poorly formed Ken and Barbie dolls in my opinion.

We have hair. It is natural. Styling and maintaining is just a matter of good grooming. Removing it all, it just seems odd to me.
20
In my experience bare labia (preferably lasered) are much better for oral sex, for both participants. I can deal with hair on the undercarriage, but it's definitely not as pleasant.
21
Why does hair grow around the pubic area? In my experience, hair is protection for those tender parts. It adds... I dunno, something slippery to keep skin from cuts, rashes, and all the fun stuff that happens, skin-on-skin, with rigorous screwing. For me, it even made my clothes hurt. I think it's a shame that these days this extra level of maintenance is required, or at least make people (mostly women) feel pressured to wax it all away. I blame porn.

I don't have a problem with Cumming's language, in fact he may have a point. The hairless state is un-natural in adults, but not in pre-pubescents; a shaved twat does look like a little girl's (shaved weiners are a different matter, at least in the erect state). Not sure if the danger he refers to is pedophilia, or just the fact that we're becoming unaccepting of hair on our bodies.
22
Eh, I have been shaving ever since hair started growing down there. It traps in smells I don't like, it itches, and I feel cleaner without it. I never did it for any man (considering the fact that I am a lesbian) and I enjoy sex a lot more without having all of that hair down here. I don't look down on anyone that doesn't, but hair down there just isn't for me.
23
@21: It is a signalling of preparedness for reproduction. That's why it shows up in puberty.
24
@21,

It captures and amplifies the smell of pheromones, the same with armpit hair. What's funny about people removing it is that, on a basic animalistic/mammalian level, they're making themselves *less* attractive to prospective sexual partners. But I guess humans don't care about pheromones as much as aesthetics.
25
@3: Blow for bi visibility.

As for body hair, people can do what they want with theirs. Seeing as how it's on their bodies. And charges of nascent pedophilia shouldn't be thrown around so lightly.
26
Yay for everyone else who pointed out that people have been removing pubic hair for millennia, not mere decades! I came to the comments primarily to do that.

But now that I'm here, I'm basically the same as Mindymoo. When I started growing armpit hair in middle school, I asked my mom if I could buy a razor, and I started shaving. Then I noticed that other people shaved their legs, and I just kept going. I like the soft, smooth feeling, and every time I've stopped shaving long enough for it to grow out at all, it itches and drives me absolutely crazy. Maybe it would be different if I allowed it to grow out all the way, but I can't stand it long enough to allow that to happen. Also, I prefer looking smooth and hairless on my body. I'm blonde on my arms and legs, but I'm not in my crotch.
27
While it may not be the only reason or the dominate one, many people remove most of their body hair in an attempt to appear more like a teenager (15-19).

More than a few twinks and queens in "daddy/boy" relationships undergo rather extreme measures (laser hair removal all over their body and major/multiple plastic surgeries even in their late teens and twenties) to appear more like teenage boys.

And, the number of women who do the same to remain their sugar daddies' "little girl" or "trophy wife/girlfriend" is alarmingly high.

Many of these "boys and girls" are largely or completely dependent on their "daddies" for much or all of their housing, clothing, food and shelter.

Perhaps, Cumming is just more aware of these "boys" and "girls" who are so fearfully desperate not to lose their youth or "daddies."

Dan is apparently pretending to be unaware.

Is it dangerous? Often, yes, for both the emotional and physical health of these "boys and girls" who are paranoid of losing their identity and its benefits.

It's a troubling reality that's hard to miss, Dan.
28
@15--Whales?

Perhaps this isn't a trend toward pedophilia--in our decadence we're sliding toward cetacephilia, which is far more dangerous to society. Someone alert the Christians!
29
Mr Rhone is correct.

No real quibbles, but I was expecting something a trace more revolutionary; this seems nearly as vieux jeux as Major Despard in Cards on the Table citing curare when Mrs Oliver asks him about untraceable poisons (of course, curare was still a perfectly functional poison, just perhaps not quite so glamourous as something never seen before). Still, it won't do anything but good, and there will always be some people who have not been exposed to such ideas yet.

This does seem to be the closest anyone's come lately to mentioning the "pendulum" bi people who seem to have been excised from the prevailing narrative without anyone either defending or deriding them - rather a neat bit of work, and a step up from the LG battles between the assimilationists and the Pride parade itflaunters. I remember Mr Curzon summing up one sort of the pendulum type when he made the narrator of one of his novels a bisexual man whose customary explanation of his sexuality was as a dispreference (in the novel, for instance, he sought an MM relationship, explaining to friends that his dispreference had swung to the female side); a bit severe for most, but the modified version of people who would say they could go only so long with only unisexual contact before they got very crabby about it (there used to be a good many more of them visible and posting - not here necessarily, but there seemed to be quite a wave around 2007-8 in other venues - than there are right now) seems to fit on that spectrum.
30
The notion that people are "infantilizing" themselves by shaving, or that a preference for shaved bodies suggests pedophilia, is asinine. I'm female, and I like women. Women are naturally less hairy than men, in the aggregate, so to me, body hair is a masculine cue. Consequently, the lack thereof is a feminine cue, and therefore I don't want hair on my own body or my partner's body. Your mileage may vary, but this is not hard to understand.

I don't necessarily prefer totally-clean-shaven nether regions, but ideally they should at least be closely cropped. And I love having smooth legs and underarms! Who cares if body hair is "natural"? Shit is natural too; that doesn't make it alluring.
31
As far as non-sexual, non-aesthetic benefits of shaving go, my lady swears up and down that being shaved makes the mess of menstruation a lot easier to deal with. I'll take her word for it.
32
I find myself wondering whether those folks who focus on the aesthetic and feminist aspects of pubic area hair removal are having oral sex. Pubic hair in the throat can be an unwelcome interruption during an otherwise exciting encounter. Seems like a no-brainer. Not that there aren't people who do it for other reasons, but I'm here to say there are very practical reasons for trimming.

Shaving is a bother and leads to ingrown hairs and itchiness. Trimming with proper clippers is safe. As a bonus, the area feels much more sensitive after a trim (in a good way).
33
Cumming: it's like wanting to infantilize yourself and wanting to make something sexy that is not adult, it's more prepubescent,

Perhaps some people like having their partner clean-shaven because they feel it makes their partner more prepubescent and that turns them on (and perhaps some people like to shave because they feel more more prepubescent and they like that feeling.) But I'm not sure that's why most people like having their partner clean-shaven. I, for example, love it when a woman is clean-shaven because of the way she feels, not because of the way she looks. I love going down on a woman and don't like having hair in the way. It's probably the same way women feel when they prefer kissing guys without beards.

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