SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Still, in Western countries, the “hairlessness norm” is gathering a lot of steam. Several recent studies reveal just how common shaving one’s nether regions has actually become. In a 2008 issue of Sex Roles , Flinders University psychologists Marika Tiggemann and Suzanna Hodgson, for example, found that more than three quarters (76 percent) of a sample of 235 female undergraduate students from Australia reported ever having removed their pubic hair. Sixty-one percent currently did so and half of this sample said that they routinely removed all traces of their pubic hair. The current trend for men appears to be no different. In a separate study the same year, with colleagues Yolanda Martins and Linda Churchett, Tigemann reported in Body Image that of 106 gay men, 82 percent had removed their pubic hair at least once. And lest you think that this is an artifact of gay male culture , straight men weren’t far behind on this measure. Out of a sample of 228 heterosexual men, 66 percent reported doing the same. MORE
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