Hahahhahaha!

Seriously, I don’t like the look of a full bush. Unless we’re talking about this:

Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde

Let’s not forget that nowadays men are encouraged to depilate, too. Is that anti-man? Is there also a (haha with apologies to Faludi) BUCKLASH against masculinity going on? Do we all secretly want hairless cockerel boys?

Or maybe this trend is more indicative of America’s general obsession with cleanliness – which also has something to do with that sacred American cow, Progress. (Tangent: Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows” and how it can explain Japanese men and women not shaving nearly as much as Americans do – DISCUSS.) Or maybe shaving is not meant to infantilize the secondary sex characteristics because “society hates women!” but to showcase them – I mean, like elle said, hello porn!

I don’ think anyone has to justify their shaving habits. I mean, not unless you justify your fatphobia (among other bete noires) first.

I don’t watch porn so I can’t even say anything about it. And if a landing strip allows you to avoid the clueless lovers who refuse to learn the score, then amen to that.

Thoughtfulness aside my basic contention is:
Many people blindly follow societal pressure, just like some people blindly rebel against society, and none of these people are very educated if they act blindly toward anything.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume education until proven ignorant, maybe I’m just naive but what hope does society have either way if we don’t give people a little credit?

In which case, on the assumption that most intelligent people make an educated decision about a topic irrespective of it’s popularity in the eyes of society – who cares what someone else thinks or does to their own body if it doesn’t hurt anybody else?

In my mind, calling the removal of pubic hair “anti-woman” is just as uneducated as a woman removing their pubic because they think it’s “anti-clean”.

I am neither for nor against pubic hair, but I am “anti-ignorance”.

I never used to, but from watching porn (for my own benefit, I’ll admit that too!) I found that I gravitated towards watching videos with shaven ladies. I like that you can see everything and, because its PORN and there’s no actual physicality or emotional connection, just empty visual stimulation – seeing more is what pulls you in, turns you on, etc. It IS amazingly unsubtle, it is kind of over the top and gratuitous, and it’s possibly not necessary in real life – it’s a video technique, almost, like wearing stage makeup that you’d never wear in real life, or how actresses have to be twenty lbs thinner than real life because you need to play up things for the camera. So, probably, it’s over the top in real life. It’s unnecessary. But I do it anyway.

Is this different because I do it because I personally find it visually appealing, rather than trying to appeal to what I think men want, or what Cosmo tells me to do? Would I even have thought of it, or thought it looked good before porn? Who knows.