Attraction to lack of body hair?

[excreationist]

Adult humans have armpit hair and pubic hair on their genitals. They can also have significant hair on their arms and legs.

I wonder if the modern preference (in porn, etc) for a lack of body hair, particularly in females, is instinctual or if it is just a cultural thing...

If it is instinctual then that suggests that we're hard-wired to prefer younger people who haven't yet developed pubic hair, etc. (since when humans were evolving they might be the only people who lacked body hair)

That was just something I was wondering about...

 

[bilby]

Adult humans have armpit hair and pubic hair on their genitals. They can also have significant hair on their arms and legs.

I wonder if the modern preference (in porn, etc) for a lack of body hair, particularly in females, is instinctual or if it is just a cultural thing...

If it is instinctual then that suggests that we're hard-wired to prefer younger people who haven't yet developed pubic hair, etc.

That was just something I was wondering about...

It's a fashion. It's fairly recent, and is already waning. Most fashions last a decade or two, so it's no different from fashions in clothing style, makeup, or tattoos.

 

[excreationist]

Adult humans have armpit hair and pubic hair on their genitals. They can also have significant hair on their arms and legs.

I wonder if the modern preference (in porn, etc) for a lack of body hair, particularly in females, is instinctual or if it is just a cultural thing...

If it is instinctual then that suggests that we're hard-wired to prefer younger people who haven't yet developed pubic hair, etc.

That was just something I was wondering about...

It's a fashion. It's fairly recent, and is already waning. Most fashions last a decade or two, so it's no different from fashions in clothing style, makeup, or tattoos.

What about arm pit hair and leg hair for women? Would that come into fashion? BTW I've seen websites with big "bushes". Many of them would be visible if the woman was wearing bathers/swimming costume. I wonder if there is any instinct to be more attracted to "bushes" than bald genitals...

 

[bilby]

What about arm pit hair and leg hair for women? Would that come into fashion?

It has been in and out of fashion, in various times and sub-cultures.

I doubt there's much detail in the instinctive attraction between humans, and it wouldn't matter much if there were, at least since clothing became commonplace - few men would decide not to go through with sex, once they have progressed to the stage where she takes her clothes off, unless the appearance of her genitals was a very extreme outlier indeed.

From an evolutionary perspective, it's a good rule of thumb to assume that men will try to fuck literally anything they can. If it looks vaguely like a female human being, that's a bonus, but far from essential.

It makes sense for women to be discerning. It makes little to no sense for men to be.

 

[excreationist]

@bilby
Is there an instinct to find particular female faces attractive?

 

[bilby]

@bilby
Is there an instinct to find particular female faces attractive?

There seems to be a tendency to find facial symmetry attractive, and another towards "average" faces - but neither is particularly strong, and whether they are instinctive or learned traits is impossible to say.

 

[Bronzeage]

Popular culture is easily influenced and manipulated.
In the days of oil painting, body hair was always one of the more difficult elements of portraying the human body on a canvas. Early motion picture makers faced the same issue. When the image was on the screen, a fairly large screen, chest hair looked the poor man has been rubbed with soot. The solution was, all the cut throat blood thirsty pirates shaved their chests.

Given time and improvements in technology, hairy chested men could be shown on screen without being sent to the showers for a retake. Hairy chested men became stylish again.

Attraction to body hair, or the lack of it, is generational, cultural, and too diverse, to use it to draw general conclusions about people.

 

[Elixir]

Attraction to body hair, or the lack of it, is generational, cultural, and too diverse, to use it to draw general conclusions about people.

Koko approves your post.

 

[ideologyhunter]

The cultural difference that I can't bring myself to feel neutral about is the use/non-use of deodorant. Ran into this on the British railway system, and never forgot it. Oofa!!

 

[TSwizzle]

Fashion/fads. Mullets were popular for a while then were ridiculed and they disappeared for and now the mullet seems to be having a bit of a renaissance. There was a time no self respecting hockey player would be without a mullet. I remember there was a period in the 80s where men, particularly footballers had their hair permed. Graeme Souness had a beezer and I think Charlie Nicholas had a perm and a mullet at the same time. Facial hair is another one, beards were all the rage just recently but seems on the wain. I think most young women shave their legs and then stop once they get married or hit their 60s, which ever comes first. I believe they always keep the armpit hair shaved until much later. Tampering with pubic hair seems a reasonably new fad. Maybe porn prompted that particular fad and I doubt it will fade anytime soon as it seems pretty popular for men and women. I doubt the lack of pubic hair is some hard wired preference for pre-pubescent partners. I see some blokes and at first glance you think they are wearing a mohair sweater but alas, it's just their incredibly hairy body. I believe people get that waxed from time to time.

 

[Elixir]

I believe people get that waxed from time to time.

interesting choice of words.

 

[southernhybrid]

I agree it's cultural, but those of us who make it past menopause, usually lose our armpit and leg hair, so no more having to shave our legs or armpits, if that was our thing.

 

[excreationist]

About faces:

Attractive Athletes: Why Are Sports People Good Looking

Have you ever noticed that athletes tend to be good looking? Not just in terms of their physique, but their facial structure too. There is a perfectly logical explanation as to why athletes are attractive.

www.ericdavisdental.com

If you look at athletes, you'll typically see the following characteristics define their faces:

Straight teeth
Defined jawline
Proper bite
High cheekbones
Good proportions
Good symmetry

Similarly, what you don't often see in athletes is:

Overbite or underbite
Long face
Hooked or crooked nose
Poor proportions
Asymmetry

From AI:

These traits might be linked to evolutionary preferences, where physical fitness and health are associated with attractiveness

Male athletes with higher world rankings are better looking

Who will win? It seems you can judge an athlete by their face – if they are a man, that is. Male athletes with a higher world ranking tend to be judged as more attractive by women, but there is no such trend among women. Several studies have previously reported a link between facial attractiveness …

www.newscientist.com

It seems you can judge an athlete by their face – if they are a man, that is. Male athletes with a higher world ranking tend to be judged as more attractive by women, but there is no such trend among women.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I suspect there's an advantage to it in porn in that hair gets in camera's way.

 

[excreationist]

Long Hair, Don’t Care: Welcome to the Great Pubic Hair Grow-Back

Forget waxing, shaving, or trimming: The bush is back. Why now?

www.highsnobiety.com

The pendulum is swinging back with such force, in fact, that Fahs is beginning to notice merkins in porn. That’s right: 49 years after Hustler helped popularize hairlessness, pornography is reversing course — but instead of eroticizing real pubic hair, it’s eroticizing synthetic pubic hair.

Why go faux? It may be for practical reasons — years of Brazilians and laser hair removal can damage hair follicles, causing new strands to grow thinner (and in some cases, preventing new growth altogether). But Fahs suspects porn is turning to pubic wigs because our baseline understanding of pubic hair is so deeply warped.

Still, razors were primarily being used on the face, leg, and underarm area — our pubic regions hadn’t yet entered the chat. But in 1975, Hustler magazine published a spread that would shift perceptions of where hair should and shouldn’t grow, specifically on vaginas. As Rebecca Herzig recounts in her 2015 book, Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, the publication ran photos of “very young models without visible pubic hair under the headline ‘Adolescent Fantasy.’ The feature provoked ‘enthusiastic responses’ from male readers and organized outrage from feminists.” In the years following, Herzig writes, “content analyses confirm a sharp decline in visible pubic hair on nude centerfold models.” The absence of pubic hair in adult content wasn’t a fleeting fad — it stuck

“We have a long history of associating hair with power and hairlessness with powerlessness,”

The very young models without visible pubic hair involve powerlessness in two ways (age and hairlessness). I think that can be a turn on for some men. At the extreme there are men sexually attracted(?) to toddlers and babies. Pubic hair (or merkins) could involve more modesty.