“I prefer to have a ‘tuft’ of pubic hair on my mons pubis, and keep my labia majora as hairless as possible. I like how this looks, and it decreases my frequency of yeast infections. My partner also likes this style because it is easier for him to perform oral sex on me.”—Alana, 22, Indiana
“Bald, smooth, shaved top to bottom. It is what I have always liked.”—
Zoe, 36, Canada
“Have shaved completely in the past because of partner’s preference.
Currently shave vulva and keep mons hair short.”—Abby, 28, Texas
“I trim, but not shave. I don’t think this is influenced by anyone’s preference besides my own.”—Rachel, 25, Colorado
“I prefer to have a nicely manicured triangle at the top and hair-free labia. It’s due to my preferences. I love to touch the bare labia.”—
Gina, 36, Washington
“I’ve often trimmed it but also leave it ungroomed often. One lover shaved my pubic hair. I really liked how it felt, but it was inconvenient to maintain. Also, if I shaved my pubic hair now, I’d be self-conscious in the locker room. Most of my lovers haven’t expressed a preference.”—Casey, 43, Indiana
“Busy, with the ‘hedges’—hair that extends past my panty line, removed.”—Jill, 36, New York
“My pubic hair is waxed into a ‘California’ strip. My labia majora and mons pubis both have hair on them (that I keep trimmed), but the bikini line, plus a bit extra is waxed off. My partner doesn’t care one way or another how I have my pubic hair. I just like feeling clean and able to wear a bathing suit without being embarrassed by hair sticking out everywhere.”—Mary, 31, Texas
“Trimmed (sometimes VERY short and other times just a bit). I have no pain tolerance and am irrationally afraid of taking a razor to that area (no clue why but I am)! However, going wild and free is a little itchy so I give it a haircut. I remember making a pact with a friend in high school to never do anything to our vulvas for a partner . . . only for us based on what we want! While this, in hindsight, is a little extreme, when I was rocking full bush and my of you and I’m kind of loving it (until I didn’t anymore)!”—Hilary, 22, Massachusetts
“I leave my pubic hair completely alone. Sometimes for fun I will trim—
and one time I tried shaving it all—but generally I just leave it. I do however have very little hair and when it’s completely grown out it still doesn’t show outside my bikini bottoms. As for my friends . . . definitely everyone grooms, if not waxing or laser. My friends and I talk about it sometimes but I am in no way interested in grooming my pubic hair constantly. My partner prefers when I’m completely grown
out.”—Jessica, 28, Canada “Prefer it all shaved/waxed. I’m not fond of body hair on me or on anyone else.”—Kali, 22, India
“I prefer it slightly waxed so it doesn’t show in a bathing suit. I disagree with Brazilians. I wish grown women didn’t want to look like 10 year old girls.”—Jane, 48, New York
“I don’t care much how it looks. I enjoy cutting hair so it’s fun to mess with. I also tried trimming it to get my girlfriend to want to go down on me more. Didn’t work, however.”—Anne, 26, Idaho
“When I was with my first partner I hadn’t had sex before so I didn’t know of his expectations. I left my genital hair natural and he was very surprised when he first saw it, he said something along the lines of ‘it’s hairier than mine’ (which wasn’t even true) and I think he expected that I’d naturally have very little hair there or none at all.
For this reason I shaved it off while I was with him. When I broke up with him I decided that it was a stupid expectation and that I actually preferred to have some hair there as shaving is uncomfortable, so now I just trim and shave around it but leave most of the hair where it naturally should be!”—Liz, 22, UK
“Completely shaved, obviously affected by society, but I personally like the feel of it bare and shave even when I am not planning on having anyone see it. My partner definitely likes it shaved, but if he didn’t I wouldn’t grow it because hair feels scratchy and uncomfortable to me down there.”—Cynthia, 18, Connecticut
“There is no peer pressure for a woman of my age to be waxed or shaven but since I was in my twenties I have trimmed my pubic hair and had electrolysis on the bikini line or waxing. These days I only trim as I wear skimpy clothing less. I do pluck the odd hair from the groin area.”—Brenda, 55, Australia
In part, this didn’t hold up because Debby often teaches human sexuality classes to college students at Indiana University, and they had more diverse stories to tell. When the topic of pubic hair removal would come up in class or in students’ papers, she learned that these young women described a wide range of things they did with their pubic hair. Some kept it natural. Others trimmed. And still others shaved, waxed, or used more permanent methods (such as laser hair reduction). We had also talked about pubic hairstyles with friends and found that they did different things with their hair, too. And being in a locker room, one can see a range of styles.
We found that there was very little scientific data on the subject and decided to conduct our own study of women’s pubic-hair removal patterns as part of a larger study we were conducting related to women’s sexuality. We published the results of our study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2010 and are happy to share them with you here as well.
In total, we asked 2,451 women ages eighteen to sixty-eight, to tell us whether, how, and how often they had removed their pubic hair over the previous month.12 We asked about shaving, waxing, laser hair reduction, and electrolysis. We also asked how much hair they removed (some or all of it).
Then we categorized women into groups based on what their pubic hair had been like over the previous month—did they remove all of it so often that they were likely bare most or all of the time? If so, we called them “typically hair-free.” If they removed all of their hair only a few times, we described them as engaging in “some total removal.” Women who removed some, but never all, of their pubic hair were grouped as “some removal, not total.” Everyone else fell into the category of not having used any of the removal methods we asked about.
Now, this wasn’t a perfect study. We didn’t, for example, ask about depilatory creams, which some women may use on their genitals. But it was the largest study ever conducted on women’s pubic-hair removal patterns and covered a lot of different age groups, so we’re quite proud of it, even if it wasn’t perfect.