Ever had a bikini or Brazilian wax? It’s not for the modest or the faint of heart. You pay between $40 and $90 for a stranger to strip you naked below the waist and manipulate your legs like a ragdoll into revealing positions that some people wouldn’t do even for their significant others. Hot wax is then poured onto one of the most sensitive parts of your body, and the hair is ripped out from the follicles. Sounds really pleasant, right? Why do people subject themselves to this?

“I keep nearly hairless because I find my own pubic hair and partners’ pubic hair to be uncomfortable and aesthetically displeasing,” answered one student.

“I’ve just been conditioned to view it as disgusting and annoying,” remarked another.

Personally, I fell into the trap of spending hundreds of dollars to get waxed multiple times—dealing with the pain and unsightliness of ingrown hairs afterward—because I thought it was what I was supposed to do and what everyone else was doing. Magazines, television, and porn perpetuate the idea that women must (and do) remove their pubic hair. A quick online search about pubic hair provides hundreds of sites about how to remove it. I was under the impression that it was exceedingly common for women to remove pubic hair, and that both men and women preferred their partners’ nether regions to be strictly tamed. I was sorely mistaken.

At the 5Cs, half of females report keeping their pubic hair trimmed, and 20 percent keep their pubic area totally hairless. Yet more stay all natural (20 percent) than mostly hairless (13 percent). Three-quarters of males trim, while 20 percent stay all natural. Very few men dare to go mostly or totally hairless. Almost all students who groom their pubes use a razor (manual or electric) or scissors; hardly anyone uses wax. While the trend of “manscaping” is reportedly growing, I’d like to focus more on female pubic hair since the statistics I gathered about men met my expectations. It was the results about women which surprised me—as our society promotes the image of the hairless vagina, it was interesting to see that so many Pomona women choose not to go that route.

In both amateur and commercial porn, women are almost always completely hairless. Pictures in magazines show women with completely smooth pubic areas with not a hint of stray or puffy pubic hair—to find vulvas that look natural, you often need to click on the sub-category “hairy.” Commercials advertise tools specifically for grooming the bikini line. Salons promote bikini and Brazilian wax services and laser hair removal. An ideal of hairlessness as perfection, like all other things sexual, is perpetuated by the media and dispersed among the public to dictate our beliefs and expectations.

Why do we rarely celebrate the positive aspects of pubic hair? After all, it serves a number of great functions. It traps scents and pheromones, and though it sounds a little gross, I’m sure you’ve had experiences with a partner where you can’t get enough of his or her individual scent. Pubic hair aids in this, albeit less conspicuously. It also helps to protect our sensitive pubic area from germs, friction during sex, and skin infections. Most importantly, it helps to identify a person as sexually mature. In fact, in reference to themselves, students reported this as one of the major appeals of pubes—as one survey respondent asserted, “I refuse to be anything but the awesome WOMAN that I am. So deal with my womanly hair.”

So if pubic hair serves some important functions, where did this ideal of hairlessness come from?

“I’ve heard that the reason some men prefer hairless women is because it reminds them of prepubescent girls,” one female said. Though this sounds gross, it might make some sense from an evolutionary perspective. Straight men might be attracted to bare vulvas because a woman with a relatively hairless pubic area is closer to an optimally reproductive age. The cultural reasons are perhaps the most powerful. As I mentioned before, word of mouth and porn exaggerate the importance of bare pubic areas. One student said, “I did get some strange ideas about women from porn, and I think to many guys, a trimmed or completely shaven pubic area on girls is thought to be common, when in reality that may not be true.”

Some people’s grooming habits may have been influenced by previous partners who had strong preferences. One female said, “I once got in an argument with a guy who said he thinks it’s gross when girls don’t groom their pubic hair—but then admitted that he doesn’t groom his at all. When I got mad about the double standard, he said something along the lines of ‘Girls gotta look good.’”

One male said, “I once had a girl tell me that penises are gross and that not having pubic hair makes it all the more obvious.” Some men say that trimming their pubes makes them look bigger. And some people simply enjoy the look and the feel of a bare pubic area.

We seem to be in a vicious cycle: we think that hair removal is the norm, so we perpetuate it as such. This causes many of us to feel self-conscious or inadequate if we choose not to remove our hair. And yet people’s preferences are quite different from what we’re led to believe. According to the survey, equal numbers of straight men preferred female partners to be trimmed, mostly hairless, and totally hairless. Almost all females preferred a male partner to be all-natural or trimmed, and a female partner to be trimmed. And many of those surveyed reported having no specific preference, with comments such as “I like all types of pubes; give me variety!” and “I don’t particularly find it unattractive if my partner doesn’t trim their public hair. I think the sexiest thing someone can do is be comfortable in their own body.”

Many students wish for the all-natural trend to reemerge or are even beginning to buck the hairless trend themselves.

One student said, “I do not know why some people are so anti-hair. I think they are foolish and that shaved genitalia can look prepubescent and make me feel like a pedophile.” Another said, “If I thought it were socially acceptable enough, I just wouldn’t groom my pubes at all.” And, “I think a lot of guys in our generation fail to realize that up until recently pubic hair was considered part of a woman’s sexuality.”

A few people had some interesting suggestions for pubes: “I think it’s boring to keep your pubes at a certain length for eternity. It’s more exciting to grow them out long, then trim very short, maybe shave certain parts, then grow them longer again, etc. Who doesn’t appreciate a vagina in flux?” Another said, “I think people should get super creative about how they style their pubic hair. You see a lot of really exotic hair styles these days (highlights, dying, gel, designs); let’s see some of that below the belt.”

Ultimately, our preconceptions about pubic hair are far from the truth. Many students have trouble talking about the way they keep their pubic hair and how their partner prefers it, so they assume certain things that may not be true, perpetuating a false and often unhealthy ideal. Let this article be fodder for discussion, allowing you to start a conversation that you otherwise may have been too embarrassed to have.