I was having a dream, not exactly a sex dream, as you’ll see, but certainly an erotic one. I was locked in a passionate embrace with a beautiful man when suddenly the scene shifted and we found ourselves on the main road close to my house.

“Let’s go back to yours,” he suggested in a suggestively suggestive manner.
My dream self had been thinking much along the same lines, but then stopped and recoiled in horror. Sex was out of the question – I needed to wax!
I spent the rest of the dream trying to get a little alone time in the bathroom, but this proved impossible and by the time my alarm went off I still hadn’t managed to trim my lady bush or get laid, which is a pretty shameful waste of an erotic dream if you ask me.
Down-there-hair had obviously been much on my mind. I had been dispensing sex advice on Victor Barry’s RedFM show and pubic hair featured in two of the questions; and perhaps more pertinently like the dream Anne, the real one needed some personal grooming too. I had been planning to do it the night before, but it was cold, I was lazy and I was sleeping alone so I figured I’d leave it until the next day, or possibly the day after that.
The next morning, while waxing to prevent a second haunting by pubic hair, I was thinking about my dream. Would I really turn down an opportunity for sex if I were a little less than perfectly groomed? The very idea seemed ridiculous, but I realised I might, particularly with someone new. Was that vanity or something more sinister at work? Did I really dislike my own natural body that much?
A few years ago, the online magazine Salon.com ran an article saying that the bush was back. With the recession taking hold women could no longer afford the maintenance of regular waxing and were reverting to the fuller bush of earlier times.
Turns out magazine columnists are fallible after all. Well, American ones anyway... Just a few months ago, adult star and actress Sasha Grey caused much consternation when she appeared in an episode of Entourage sporting a ‘70s style full bush. If the comments on Twitter are anything to go by, the bush is certainly divisive. While some commentators commended Grey on looking like a real woman, others were less than impressed. “That shit was uncalled for!” noted one post. Another asked, rather ungrammatically: “Did anyone else think that was disgusting. ITS 2010!”
Given this kind of climate, perhaps it’s not all that strange that even in my dreams I want to be groomed. But I had a hard time believing that the Twitter outrage really reflected general opinion. I decided to ask both men and women how they felt about pubic hair. The answers were as varied as pubic styles themselves.
All of the women I spoke varied their pubic styles. None of them had ever been denied sex when sporting a full bush, but then maybe that’s because they haven’t been getting naked with some of my respondents.
“Neat and tidy is the order of the day. If it pokes out of the sides of underwear, put your goddamn pants back on!” said a horrified Gareth. Alan agreed: “A full bush? Whoah, that would be a no, Chewbacca!”
Phillip wasn’t fond of the bush at all. “I like nuffin’, a bare Hollywood. But I also think the whole hair thing for women can be a political issue so I’m all in favour of women simply refusing to wax or shave.”
Hmmm interesting… But then I wanted to know if a woman with pubic hair would be less attractive to him and therefore less of a romantic prospect?
“There’s the irony of course,” he agreed. “I don’t find hairy women particularly attractive despite my political protestations. Body hair in itself isn’t a deal breaker – but the more there is undoubtedly the less attractive I would find any female so I guess, yes, the less viable as a long-term romantic partner she might be. I was never a fan of a huge full bush, but I don’t think I ever thought about a bare-all until an ex did it once. Also, I think the mostly clean-cut porn I’ve watched – oh the joys of being single – has affected my taste too.”
Ah porn! Now of course I could blame porn – it’s an easy target after all. In fact a right-on feminist reading of this hairy issue would say that it’s all an oppressive capitalist patriarchal plot; that women are taught to feel self-disgust with their bodies by forces that want us to spend money on beauty products and services; that extreme waxing is part of the so-called ‘pornification’ of culture; and that women should burn their razors and home waxing kits in protest – or at least recycle them in the proper manner, since backyard incineration is environmentally unsound.
Now I’ll admit that there may be something to this argument – but I’m not going to get on a soapbox and blame porn for fetishising the hairless vagina. For a start it’s lazy; and secondly the facts don’t seem to bear it out. A recent study in America found that most women keep some hair on their genitals, although women with boyfriends are more likely to go bald, at least now and again. Single women and the married rarely bother, and frankly, you can’t really blame them – the Hollywood wax is p-p-p-painful!
Interestingly, the study found that women who do take it all off generally liked their vaginas better than those who didn’t. This may be the reason why they dare to go bare in the first place or it may be because these women were younger or hadn’t grown up with the idea that genitals are disgusting, sinful things. Either way, blaming a generation of men raised on internet porn for the trend for hairless snatches doesn’t seem correct. There aren’t that many women who sport them, and unlike Phillip, most of my respondents were less keen on the Hollywood than you might think. In fact, most didn’t like it at all.
Although not fond of the full bush, Alan thought the Hollywood looked “borderline paedo,” a response echoed by almost all the men I spoke to. “Plastic”, “too porn star” and “creepily like a child” were just some of the comments.
“With a recurrent female partner all options can be explored and enjoyed, although the Hollywood is the dullest for me,” said Mark. “What does your pubis currently sport?” he cheekily asked. “Whatever it is, I’ll like it!”
I cornered Jamie outside the pub. “A full bush can be really sexy now and again,” he said and went into a little reverie, practically licking his chops. “Oh, sorry,” he apologised before continuing. “I like variety, removing just the hair from the clitoris down can be good. Hey, I like to look! No hair? It’s okay every now and again, but too often and it gets bit paedo. You’re a woman! I want to see I’m with a woman – grow some damn hair!”
“It’s all good! I like it all! It’s all there, or not there, to enhance God’s finest masterpiece – the VAG!” reckoned Charlie, and you’ve got to give the boy kudos for enthusiasm.
For many men, while neat and tidy is preferable, a full bush wouldn’t put them off sex either. As Cian put it: “It’s a trade-off between not making a vagina look like it belongs to a child and a large comfort bush which you nearly need a machete to get through. When you love going down on women you want to get in there and don’t want to have to navigate through the jungle.”
Fair enough really, and frankly a lesson many men could take to heart themselves. Whether you are male or female, a little trim around the nether regions is appreciated as it makes oral sex much easier. If I have hair in my mouth or my throat, I am going to stop administering a blowjob and get rid of the damn thing first. Selfish perhaps, but there it is.
Hair, no hair, does it really matter? As it turns out the man in my dream (not to be confused with ‘the man of my dreams’) wouldn’t have minded the slightly ungroomed state of my lovely vagina. Good to know, but frankly I expected no less. When I choose my men, even my dream men, I, like Oscar Wilde, have simple tastes – I am only satisfied with the very best!