by Rachel Stewart

I’m not gonna lie. I’ve got a bit of a thing about hair. As in, I like it residing in all the usual places.

Firstly, the hair on your head serves a purpose. It has a cooling effect in summer because it holds sweat which helps cool you down, and in cold temperatures it achieves the opposite. In both cases, your brain is protected so that you can find a way to either get cool or find warmth so as not to die. Isn’t human biology awesome?

Lustrous locks and lots of it on both sexes has also served a reproductive purpose since the beginning of human time. Balding usually happens later in life so as not to affect that too much – in other words, he’s usually managed to hit the cavewoman on the head and drag her away and bred with her before it’s kicked in.

But, interestingly, a man who does lose his hair early usually indicates high testosterone levels, so attractiveness is not too badly affected due to potential mates often being magnetically and unconsciously drawn to that particular hormone.

For men, long hair on women has long been considered the ideal aphrodisiac because again, often subconsciously, they recognise it as an indicator of youth, health, and feminine fertility.

And then there’s the insane amounts of money humans spend on hair. From styling and treatments to hair extensions and colours. The revenue generation on hair alone is enough to confirm the part hair plays in sexual attraction. Sadly, this guy’s not gonna get lucky for quite a while.

So, where am I going with this? Well, brace yourself. But first let me start with a story from a small afternoon party I went to some years ago. I got talking to a gorgeous young woman in her late teens, and after enough alcohol imbibing had occurred, we got talking – as you do – about her generation’s increasing obsession with having zero pubic hair – or any hair on the body whatsoever. I asked her why she thought that was.

She gave me her explanation by describing her very first nervous, butterfly stomach, heart-fluttering sexual experience with a young man she really liked who was in high school with her. After a romantic evening together the moment arrived. Things progressed as they do, and then he took one look at her pubic hair and said WTF?! His next move was to bail. He told all his mates at school, of course, that she had hair down there! She was humiliated both publicly and privately.

Her take on the whole situation was that unfiltered access to porn had made young men so used to hairlessness on girls that anything outside of that was now considered gross to them. She went on to say that while she was embarrassed beyond words by the whole thing she also felt that maybe she dodged the strangulation bullet. You know, this new norm whereby she is grabbed by the throat during sex and was expected to love it. Another preference for the porn addled.

I asked her whether she now indulges in hair removal down there. She said, “no way” while adding that it has limited her pool of potential suitors as the hairless thing is now so pervasive. I admired her a lot for her non-conforming stance, and I hope she’s gone on to have a great love life with a decent man.

Because in my bones I think there’s something not right about it. It’s an unfashionable thing to say, I know, but since when have I cared about that? The reason it makes me prickly – excuse the pun – is twofold. It’s a clear-cut by-product of porn culture which I despise – but that’s a subject for another day – and the look is distinctly pre-pubescent which gives me chills.

Pubic hair is there for a reason. I hear many young women – and older too – say it’s “my choice” and I do it for “hygiene reasons” or “it’s empowering”.  As if removing it somehow is a form of bold feminism. I call bullshit on that. Not that only women are doing it. Men are indulging more and more in trimming the shrubbery.

The reason it’s there is to regulate temperatures, absorb sweat, prevent infection, and it acts as a “dry lubricant” during intercourse by helping to prevent friction and chafing for both parties. But the biggest thing is it’s a clear visual signal of sexual maturity and the ability to reproduce. No hair should mean OFF LIMITS. Now, the prevailing madness is it means PRESS GO.

Humans have become so far removed from our own biology that we’ve collectively stopped wondering how as a species we’ve made it this far, and what we’ve lost in the process.

And I’m here to tell you it’s a lot more than hair.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun.