Sex and Neotony: The Dos and Don'ts of Shaving Your Nether Regions

My friend who inspired this post wanted me to call it "Are you a 70s wo/man?" as a reference to the instantaneous and highly accurate dating of a porno movie that can be achieved just by looking at the amount of pubic hair that the stars and starlets are sporting.

So is it just me, or is nether shaving turning into a national craze? Is anybody NOT doing it these days? If you watch any porn, you know that not only do 99% of the girls shave off the bush, but also most of the GUYS are doing it too.

This I find very interesting, because porn is made for male consumption, meaning most of the audience are male, and the males that these guys are watching are doing something that I think most straight guys would consider to be somewhat emasculating, viz. shaving off their pubic hair.

With guys, I think the explanation is usually pretty simple (and very shallow): it makes your cocks look bigger. So sue us; we're guys, and part of our sexual self-esteem is tied up in how desirable we perceive our junk to be.

With girls, however, the whole pubic shaving trend probably seems much more worrisome to some people. The hand-waving, scoffing dismissal of the nascent male preference for girls to shave their pussies that I've heard is just that guys who like that are sick and secretly want to fuck 12 year olds. And although I think that kind of petulant response comes from the wrong place, it's not too far from the truth, I think.

Neotony, in evolutionary biology, is the retention by adults of youth-indicating features, particularly features associated with children. And like it or not, girls, a preference for neotony in potential partners is a fundamental part of male sexuality. This is because youth is the most reliable indicator of fertility, and it explains why men statistically prefer to couple with women who are younger than themselves. It also explains why NO HUMAN CULTURE IN HISTORY has ever sexually favoured older women to younger women. Of course, some individuals might prefer older women, but their genes should in theory be eliminated from the gene pool, because their partners would probably have been less fertile than a younger potential mate.

So that means that when you're in the gym killing yourself on the elliptical to work off those Cadbury bunnies you ate over Easter week-end and you see JoJo shaking her tits at the screen on the televisions, you should resist the urge to dismiss this phaenomenon as purely cultural. Although MTV and Maxim do affect the specifics of how male preferences for neotony play out, the male desire for Lolitas is hard-wired in us.

This might explain why men like shaved pussies, and in turn why women shave themselves. But perhaps there are other factors. Perhaps this should be filed under "TMI", but I'm of the opinion that everybody should be at least trimming their unruly body hair just as a matter of cleanliness.

Any input? Am I missing something critical here?