Hair around the genitals is, obviously, associated with sex. Natural, full pubic hair on women has indeed been considered sexy at times, and not just in the 1970s. Its celebration reverberates through history in art, literature, and graffiti. In Pompeii, a Roman scratched onto a wall his crude opinion that a “hairy cunt” was preferable to a bald one because it “retains the warmth and stimulates the organ.” The Tiv people of Nigeria find pubic hair alluring—the more the better; they’ve written nuptial poems about it. Similarly, the Kwoma people of New Guinea consider the “thickest and most luxuriant” pubic hair a signifier of female beauty. Shakespeare’s Venus tempted Adonis with her “sweet bottom-grass and high, delightful plain” and the sexed-up eighteenth-century character Fanny Hill describes a peer prostitute’s pubes as “the dark umbrage of the downy sprig-moss that over-arch’d it, bestow’d on the luxury of the landscape, a touching warmth, a tender finishing.”
Historically speaking, a woman’s pubic hair has often been considered sexy, simply because of its clear association with sex. What’s more, a woman with a luxuriantly thatched cottage could well have a hot fire burning inside. Since testosterone and estrogen mediate pubic hair’s growth, a well-endowed woman may also be well-endowed with sex hormones, and a healthy libido to go with it.
In a cultural ethos of open sexuality, pubic hair seems to be the one thing that must remain private.
The prize for being the most pubic-hair-obsessed has to go to the aristocracy of eighteenth-century England and Scotland, who collected locks of pubic hair to celebrate their sexual exploits. Mistresses presented lovers with these remembrances in a locket, and men collected them, or tucked them in their hats. King Charles II upped the ante with an innovative means to both collect and display his mistresses’ love locks: he had them made into a wig, to which he added fresh sprigs as time and conquests accumulated. A new take on the beaver hat.
I experienced the power of the pubes to arouse as a graduate student back in Oxford, naively surveying biologists for their ideas about why we have pubic hair. A professor and I sat on twin wingback chairs in his library, talking about the subject. I was holding a packet of biscuits in one hand and a juice box in the other when he leapt across the span between us, put his head in my lap, and blurted, “All this talk about pubic hair. I can’t help thinking about yours.” His head hovered above the subject. Apple juice squirted and dribbled down my wrist. A Peek Frean hit the floor with a faint thud. He recognized the look on my face as rejection and moved away. I hightailed it out of there, deeply shaken.
This disturbing incident highlighted the power of our biology; even scientists can fail to maintain academic composure. Therein, emotions complicated my scientific interests too. I could no longer imagine myself giving a scientific talk about pubic hair to a dignified audience of well-trained biologists. Nor could I imagine delivering it without an overwhelming desire to hide behind a very big podium. I ceased talking about pubic hair in public and stuffed the research papers I’d collected in a manila folder labelled Personal. They remained there for decades until I felt ready to face what it means to be an animal. In my naive mind, I attributed the professor’s behavior to the power of my anatomy—like the irresistible red bum of a monkey. Pubic hair can be a difficult topic, both for individuals and societies. To this day, my friends and I don’t talk about it openly. Perhaps you don’t either.
Unease with pubic hair has led to some notable cultural counterpoints. At times, instead of being portrayed as a beautiful garden, pubic hair has been considered a disgusting reminder of our animal nature. In the years leading up to the French Revolution, a thick bush became associated with the downright wanton. Marie Antoinette suffered a vicious propaganda campaign that included wide distribution of pornographic pamphlets depicting her in vulgar acts, some of which featured pubic hair. Hair between the legs contrasted with the ideals of beauty and good taste of the time.
More recently, the complicated history of the sexual mores of Japan demonstrates how angst over pubic hair can get twisted in remarkable ways. Shinto traditions celebrate genitalia and their pleasures in full, furry glory. However, a 1907 Japanese law made the distribution, sale, or display of obscene writing, pictures, and objects illegal. When freedom of speech became a citizen’s right in 1947, the obscenity law stuck, but morphed into anything goes—except hair. For much of the twentieth century, the state prohibited the depiction of genital hair in imagery, creating a bizarre paradox. As described by anthropologist Anne Allison, pubic hair’s “representation in visual media…defines obscenity and constitutes an ‘offense’ against the ‘sexual mores’ of the people.” This “in a country where pictures of naked women appear in news magazines, naked breasts in public advertisements, scenes of rape and nudity on television, and sado-masochistic scenarios in comic books are as openly read as they are sold.”
In a North American equivalent, the 2016 animated film Sausage Party escaped a NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association by complying with their request to remove pubic hair from the scrotal sack of the pita bread. Meanwhile, an orgy scene of grocery items having anal and oral sex was considered just fine.
In a cultural ethos of open sexuality, pubic hair seems to be the one thing that must remain private. It might be okay to have it, but there’s a social requirement to never show it. Revealing the bare skin of the groin area in public is acceptable; but it’s definitely not okay to have a “fur-lined” bathing suit. Pubic hair is the ultimate private part, in keeping with its role in sexuality.
Bald genitals, then, were pure genitals, shameless genitals, original genitals: what genitals looked like before the snake in the Garden of Eden, before lust and unpleasant smells, before sin.
To manage pubic hair’s sexuality, numerous traditions throughout history have gone a step further than requiring it to be hidden and demanded that it be uprooted entirely. In the name of spiritual purity, pubic hair removal in some contexts marks an attempt to scrub away our sexual nature. When Egyptian priests and Levite priest initiates removed their body hair, the short and curlies went too. The Sahih al-Bukhari, a post-Koran volume of prophetic traditions, states that the fitra (roughly, the pure state) includes pubic hair removal for both Muslim men and women. Hair removal has a long history among Islamic peoples, with recipes for hair depilation creams dating back to at least the ninth century. Today, some Muslims remove their hair with a paste of sugar, water, and lemon juice, which smells wonderful.
I once thought the female nude in Western art has been largely portrayed with a bald vulva, but perusing a couple of art history textbooks set me straight. Sometimes fuzz is plainly visible, but more often female genitals are rendered in shadow or not shown at all, in keeping with sexuality taboos. Some images do show genuine interest in depicting a bald vulva, however. For example, an early sixteenth-century engraving by the German artist Barthel Beham features a mature woman in a bathhouse with her legs spread for the viewer. Hair plucking implements are visible in a container on the wall.
Art historian Johannes Endres puzzled over the meaning of genital depiction during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which echoed ancient Greek marble nudes. In both eras, penises in art were surrounded by a bed of fur while vulvas appeared as bald as balloons. Endres posited that the Greek artists, and the Europeans who copied them, were not representing actual or ideal grooming practices but rather an aesthetic philosophy. He quotes Denis Diderot, a key Enlightenment figure, who proclaimed the naked vulva to be aesthetically pleasing, more beautiful because of its contours. Males, says Diderot, still retained their “natural clothing” because “depilated, these natural parts of the man will look like a small intestine, an unpleasantly formed worm.”
Endres connects pubic hair, and its removal, with the Fall, the original sin. In the Enlightened mind, hair paralleled clothes, and shame evoked the covering of genitals. Bald genitals, then, were pure genitals, shameless genitals, original genitals: what genitals looked like before the snake in the Garden of Eden, before lust and unpleasant smells, before sin.
Indigenous Canadian writer Drew Hayden Taylor makes a counter-connection between natural pubic hair and the Garden of Eden. Wisely, and perhaps with the tip of his tongue in his cheek, Taylor suggests that natural sex and natural sex hair remain prevalent among Indigenous Peoples because they never left the Garden.
These widely flung attitudes surrounding pubic hair’s significance, particularly female pubic hair, make me wonder what might be lurking in the human psyche to drive hordes of women through the ages to pluck, wax, and singe themselves.
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From Anxious and Hairy: The Evolution and Culture of Human Hair by Judy Wearing. Copyright © 2026. Available from House of Anansi Press.
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