The Pubic Hair Preferences of the American Woman (2024)

Apr. 11, 2014,at8:02 AM

Cameron Diaz waxes lyrical about pubic hair in “The Body Book.” Dedicating 367 words to the topic, she writes, “The idea that vagin*s are preferable in a hairless state isa pretty recent phenomenon, and all fads change.” It appears that lastprediction had some effect; commentators promptlyheralded “the year of the bush” and clothing storesadded merkins to their mannequins. The New York Times profiled the demise of the Brazilian bikini wax.

But what does the data say is happening in female pubic hair preferences?

Last year, two doctors at theDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecologyat theUniversity of Texas published research based on the survey responsesof1,677 women 16 to 40 years old.They found thatjust 8.6 percent of women had never groomed their pubic hair, and that “women tended to continue grooming once starting the behavior.” Only 20 percent of women said they hadgroomed in the past but did not currently do so. So, as of 2011 (the year the data was collected), there wasn’t a trend toward the natural look.

The majority of women who had ever groomed their pubic hairsaid theyused a razor and shaving cream (77 percent). That was followed by trimming with scissors (23 percent) and hair-removal cream (19 percent). (The figures add up to more than 100 percent because there is overlap.)

Waxingwas relatively rare; only 16 percent of women said they used this technique. And given that mostmethods are relatively inexpensive, it’snotsurprising that just 28 of the 1,677 women said they went to a salon for grooming. About 95 percent of women said they took care of their pubic hairthemselves.

A couple of niche habits also emerge from thedata. A little more than 2 percent of women listed “pubic hair dye” as their method of grooming; 1.4 percent have friends take care of their pubic hair; and 1.5 percent of women havetheir boyfriend or husband groom it for them. We couldn’t find any other categories, so it seems that the question wording assumesthat all women in the surveywere heterosexual.

But we do have more data. A paper published in 2010, based on a survey of 2,451 women, hasa more detailed breakdown; it suggests that choices differ slightly according tosexual orientation.Lesbians were more likely than heterosexual women to have not removed any pubic hair in the past month — 26 percent compared to 20 percent. And 14 percent of bisexual woman had not removed any. The results were almost identical between single women and married women.

The doctors reached a slightly different conclusion about American female pubic hair:

Although women’s total pubic hair removal hasbeen described as a “new norm,” п¬Ѓndings from thisstudy suggest that pubic hair styles are diverse andthat it is more common than not for women tohave at least some pubic hair on their genitals. Inaddition, it was found that total pubic hair removalwas associated with younger age, being partnered(rather than single or married), having lookedclosely at one’s own genitals in the previousmonth, cunniling*s in the past month, more positive sexual functioning scores, and a more positivegenital self-image.

Finally, whether or not Diaz is right that total hair removal is a “pretty recent phenomenon” depends on how you define “recent.” In 2008, a paper in theJournal of Communication Inquiryargued that “concern with excessive hair increased tremendouslybetween 1915 and 1945, when magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar andMcCall’s extensively disseminated the ideal of hairless white feminine beauty.”

Here’s one last study that may be of interest.In 2012, doctors from the Department of Urology at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at admissions to U.S. emergency departments. The data, collected from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, showed 11,704 pubic hair grooming injuriesbetween 2002 and 2010. Of those, 56.7percentwere women, the mean age was 30.8 yearsand shaving razors were implicated in 83percentof the injuries.