I love your blog. I feel like I’m home here.

My thoughts on the matter have been well-aired – but for those who want to hear them anyway:

I choose not to shave. I trim about twice a year, purely to keep the heat down (but even trimmed, it’s not trimmed close). On my lovers, I have no preference whatsoever. Bare, shaped, furry, fuzzy, shaggy – if it’s what makes them comfortable and happy, so be it. I have no problems putting my hands, face, and sundry body-parts near them, and delight in their choice.

xx Dee

and while i do shave my legs and armpits on a semi-regular basis, i’m not motivated enough to be perfectly smooth constantly. and when it comes to the vulva, it is a) painful, b) a huge time-sucker, and c) *expensive*. so it comes down to throwing time and money down the drain just to gain some massively itchy bumps and huge, swollen ingrown hairs.

i wish there wasn’t a hairless imperative. i wish that more people found pubic hair exciting and sexy instead of either being disgusted or, at best, neutral.

(n.b. can you tell i have some really big not-femme-enough issues? argh.)

However, as someone who dates both men and women, I have noticed a difference in preference in the queer and straight communities. Sometimes I wonder if the reason that I shave is because of the adverse reaction that I would receive from a straight man if I didn’t. Every man that I have been with or spoken to about women and shaving has basically said that anymore hair than a landing strip or a very close crop is a huge turn off.

However, women don’t seem to care either way. I have never been with a woman that cared or even commented on the fact that I shaved. However, I have been with many women who didn’t shave. And many who did.

I think that the straight (male) community has a stronger and more adverse reaction to the shaving thing than the queer community, but that is just my personal experience.

I personally say, whatever blows your skirt up, doll. It’s all beautiful to me.

I can do this with little hassle or ill effects. I’d prefer to shave just a little bit of a bakini line as well…but it grows back in an irritating way, and I get constant ingrown hairs. So, I don’t do it. I don’t shave my armpits for the same reason.

Once a boyfriend convinced me to shave completely, and I simply abhorred the feeling, the stubble, the grow back, the look, everything.

I’m pretty sure that every female lover I’ve been with has shaved in one way or another. So I’d be a touch surprised if I ran into someone completely au natural. I don’t think it would particularly be a problem for me…but it’s not really my preference. I’ve always thought different women looked good different ways. I generally feel that we should all keep our bodies in ways we find comfortable and pleasing to ourselves.

Come to think of it, the only objections I’ve had with lovers are with guys actually. Overly scratchy cheeks. Stubble. The guy who suddenly started trimming the chest hair that I so utterly loved snuggling into and running my hands through.

However, I personally don’t like the look of a shaven vulva. To me, it looks too much like a little girl’s. I don’t want to look like a little girl. It looks so bare and naked and cold.
But then again, I also don’t like untamed pubes. I slept with a friend and I practically needed a machete to hack the hair out of the way to get to her cunt, and that was uncomfortable and kind of icky.

I feel the same way about male pubic hair – I like it there. I just prefer it trimmed a little bit. Naked peni looks so out of place. Though I do like the smooth balls now and then.

maybe it’s just the bottom in me, but i think it is totally *sexy* to *choose* to give your partner(s) power (in general, so also in this case). or, if it’s not a major issue for you, why not do what your partner thinks is sexy?

personally, shaving doesn’t work very well for me. plus, i have nice pubic hair; it’s like a little ‘fro…leading the girlfriend to put her comb in it like a pick the other day. i really tried to look “not amused.” and totally failed ;)

I’m a queer woman and I am completely au natural. I have experimented with shaving, but my ancestry makes me the naturally hairy type, and shaving irritates my skin, creates ingrown hairs, and has to be repeated constantly in order to maintain the effects, which only irritates me further. I’m usually left with red, inflamed skin and a 5 o’clock shadow that looks very unattractive, especially when compared to my full 70s porn bush. My lover is fair and nearly hairless, but she also has sensitive skin, so she only shaves very infrequently, for a change of pace, and even then she has to deal with skin flare ups. But I think shaving can definitely be sexy, and I’ve been meaning to incorporate shaving into our sex life for a special occasion or two. Using a brand-new, high-quality razor and cream cuts down on razor burn and irritation, but that’s an expensive habit to maintain.

I guess shaving doesn’t cause these skin reactions in a lot of women? Although I’ve slept with and enjoyed many smoothly shaved pussies, I’ve also noticed some that suffered from bad cases of razor burn and ingrown hairs, and *that* could sometimes be a turn off, whereas a full bush never is. Specifically, I’ve slept (safely) with women who had red sores down there, probably caused by shaving and not an STD, but when it’s a one-night-stand in the semi-dark, that can give you pause, you know? If you know the person, it’s a different story, and I do know people who prefer hairless, irritated pussies to hairy ones.

My lover and I do infrequently trim ourselves with an electric razor, but that often makes my bush spikier instead of soft, and my lover says she loves going down on my full bush, so I don’t bother to do it much and vice versa. You know, if you hold the pussy open, you won’t get pubic hair up in your grill. If you do like to just rub your face all in it, then you might have to deal with a hair or two in your mouth. But that really doesn’t bother me.

What does bother me are people like my lover’s ex, a self-identified feminist, who demanded that my lover get a regular wax, despite the pain and skin irritation it caused her, because it was just a “common courtesy” or somesuch. I don’t think anything that hurts your body (and not in a good way) could possibly be performed as a common courtesy.

What does scare me is the fear and disgust many people, both men and women, feel toward a natural bush. It’s a symptom of the increasingly sterilized views we have of the human body. On the other hand, fear and disgust toward a shaved pussy is also a widespread, sex-negative reactionary impulse that I equally condemn. The bottom line is that all hair types should be accepted, especially when you’re intimately and lovingly involved with somebody’s body.

For me, I just like to be more manageable. When someone says they don’t shave, that suggests literally not touching the pubic hair at all which is quite messy – at least for me.

I agree, it’s all personal preference and should suggest nothing about gender, sexuality or feminist tendencies

Though I am not queer, I can’t see why it would matter. Being straight doesn’t automatically mean “must shave” so I, personally, can’t see why being queer would mean not shaving.

Oh, I definitely have a preference. Shaved, please. I know it’s extremely superficial, but I was with a man once who did nothing. It was like a jungle. I just *couldn’t* go down on him. My rejection of hair may be more than a simple preference, but I’m fine with that.