A new study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine looks at how college students today view pubic hair.
Debby Herbenick, Ph.D. and her team of researchers gathered data from a total of 1,100 students (671 self-reported women, and 439 self-reported men) at a large public university in the Midwest and a small university in the South.
“The study aims to assess pubic hair removal/grooming practices, pubic hairstyle preferences,” the study reads, “and genital outcomes associated with pubic hair removal among men and women in a college sample.”
Here are just some of the study’s groundbreaking findings:
How about we take this to the next level?
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Men are bushier than woman. 13 percent of guys reported not trimming or removing any pubic hair in the last four weeks, compared to just 4 percent of gals.
49 percent of males and 82 percent of the females said they had shaved off all their public hair at some point in the past month. 38 percent of total respondents said they are “typically hair-free.”
Approximately 95 percent of respondents said they had done some sort of hair removal (shaving, waxing, trimming, etc.) at least once in the past four weeks.
Hair removal cream is more popular than waxing, but shaving is the preferred method for pube upkeep, with 76 percent of respondents saying they’d done so in the past month.
Around 80 percent of people who removed their pubes reported “genital itching” at least once over the past four weeks. 12 percent said that they felt itchy every time they remove their pubes. (Must be rough.)
Nearly half (45 percent) of all pubic hair removal was associated with some sort of “genital rash.”
60 percent of women and 32 percent of men said they removed their pubes “because it makes me feel clean.” Other reasons included: “It helps me feel sexy,” “It’s a comfortable style,” “It makes sex feel more comfortable,” “It’s affordable,” and “It’s how most people my age wear their pubic hair.”
Sexually active people reported a higher rate of pubic hair removal than single people.
h/t: Buzzfeed
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Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
hyhybt
The last one’s obvious enough; why go to the trouble for an area nobody’s going to see?
Jason b.
You make a good point. It would have been interesting if the 13% of the guys who do no trimming overplayed mostly with guys who aren’t sexually active. That number is likley very close to the population of virgins in college. Sadly, I was not sexually active in college as I was so deep in the closet.
flamingSPQRmonkey
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFHuVHUc5DI&w=640&h=390%5D
ric
I’m sorry but I like natural. No shaving,no trimming. And the fuller the pubs the better.Getting with a man who shaves is just to weird for me. Give me all man or no man at all.
I'm Black, and HIV-Positive.
I groom.
wombat.nyc
I really understand this,
My body hair started growing in junior high, it was a full carpet by H.S. also a gay teen in the 90’s, when most of the gay men either lusted after or wanted to be the hairless, overly tan, saturday morning cartoon hero-esqe “Chelsea muscle clones”. And I was a hairy Southern European.
I pretty much declared war my hair. I was the only 15 y/o I knew that was shaving his chest & back (no easy feat) and trimming the rest of my body. I kept that routine up for over 10 years. all the while, I was chasing hairy guys. lol
I decided I had to learn to like it as much myself, as I love it on other guys.
Now I keep it mostly natural, at least as natural as I want it to appear. and I love the way it looks. I Probably Manscape (not shave) twice a month just to keep it groomed. my back hair and I however were never meant to be, and we parted ways at a Laser spa.
I think it’s great more and more people are taming their own beasts, all in our own way.
wombat.nyc
as a result of this massive shift in the popularity of body hair “detailing”, One of life’s cruel & humiliating offenders may be an endangered species soon enough.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564756/
hyhybt
@wombat.nyc: Good riddance.
DonW
Please, God, say this “groundbreaking study” wasn’t funded with a government grant. Teabag heads are exploding coast to coast.
Slash
I am naturally hairless except for pubes and under arm so I feel lucky not to have fallen into this unfortunate chore of manscaping. I don’t really like back hair but I’m fine with whatever a guy naturally has on the front. I guess I fall into the 13% that don’t manscape and like my men natural. As a side note, only one guy has ever complained about me not shaving my pubes, at least to my face.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Not in favor of a simian styled guy, not totally against chest hair, but detracts from actually seeing a nice tight bod……
Guys need to shave their balls, hate seeing what looks like dust balls hangin in front of my face! But I do love nice thick pubes and love to make a pit stop the same way :p