Mature Bush

Mature Bush

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For years, the trendiest pubic hair style was a trimmed or bald bush. But we've noticed a recent uptick in the number of women who've tossed out their razors and waxing kits in favor of letting things go au natural down below. Anecdotally speaking, lady lawns seem to be coming back into style—and it might be because more women are discovering the surprising health benefits.

“From a health standpoint, removing pubic hair can lead to irritation of the hair follicle, and open wounds or nicks, which may increase the risk for STI transmission,” says Maureen Whelihan , MD, an ob-gyn at the Elite GYN Care of the Palm Beaches in Florida. It's not clear if less hair means a higher risk of STIs, but one study did link pubic hair removal to increased transmission of herpes and HPV.

Curious about some of the other wellness benefits, we asked six women who love their hairy pubes to tell us how it's boosted their physical, mental, and sexual health. Here's why they've sworn off grooming for good.

“I always kept my bush because I never liked the way [my vagina] looked or felt without hair. For years I felt ashamed about that, especially in my teens and early 20s—when it seemed like everyone was totally bald. But by honoring my hair preferences, I knew I was a lot more confident in the bedroom than if I'd shaved. I also learned that if a partner didn’t like it, they weren’t the partner for me.” —Danny, 26

“Why am I bush-positive? Because ingrown hairs suck. And I don’t have to worry about getting them if I don’t shave or wax. When I did, I'd try to find shaving cream, post-wax oil, or some other soothing product that could prevent them. So I finally decided to leave my hair be. I'm glad there are plenty of people and potential partners who appreciate a full bush and think it's sexy.” —Ellen, 32

“Having pubic hair is like giving the finger to that prepubescent look that porn made so popular. My bush makes me feel powerful, and womanly, and 100% sexy. For me, it’s all about feeling confident and body positive in my natural state. My advice to any woman who is growing out her pubes for the first time is to own it. Strut your stuff. Embrace your natural body state.” —Meghan, 24

“My ex-boyfriend expressed a preference for hair, so I stopped shaving to see if I’d like it, too. I'd started removing my pubic hair as soon as it began appearing, so I’d never seen myself with a bush. Turns out, I loved it! Zero irritation, no razor bumps, no weird chafing from my spandex shorts or underwear. He and I have since broken up, but I still sport a bush. I recommend that any woman who has never seen or felt her lady bits with pubes grow it out at least once. You could find you love it as much as I do." —Elizabeth, 25

“Creams and at-home waxing kits made me break out, shaving left me with painful bumps, and plucking was a pain. Professional waxing was not only expensive and time consuming, but it hurt. After 15 or 20 years of this, I decided to finally listen to my body. Now I have a 1970s-style porn bush, and I love it. I can wear way sexier lace underwear without dealing with irritation because my hair protects me from nasty rub.” —Alexa, 35

“One day I was in the shower using a razor on my nether regions and I thought to myself, How much time could I save if I just stopped grooming? At first, not shaving was an experiment: save 10 minutes two to three times a week. But the longer I stopped shaving, the more having hair grew on me, and I ended up enjoying the look of it. By not shaving, I save 20 minutes a week, which is almost seven hours a year. LOL.” —Carly, 27

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Now Reading Photos Celebrating Natural Pubic Hair (NSFW)
It had its heyday in the '60s and '70s, but natural female pubic hair has since fallen out of favor. So much so that, apparently, there are now sexually-active hetero men who say they've never seen it . To celebrate the neglected bush, artist Marilyn Minter spent six months photographing it, asking "all kinds of women, [with] different hair colours, different textures, different skin colours" to grow out their natural hair down there and bare it for her camera. The photographs Minter took are collected in her first book, Plush .
"Over the last decade, pubic hair has all but disappeared in popular culture (which is fine)," Minter explains to us, "but I became interested in showing beautiful images of pubes as an alternative perspective. I suspect the no-fur trend might be a fashion, so I wanted to remind younger generations that fashion is fleeting, but laser is forever. Do whatever you want — just don't laser!"
The 70 full-colour images in Plush , released in a limited run by Fulton Ryder Press to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach, make an eloquent visual argument against lasering — and maybe even against shaving. Sensuous and unabashed, they're perhaps the most powerful interpretation of "Long hair, don't care" we've ever seen. In Minter's words, "Bush is beautiful. Bring it back!" Click through for 18 of the most striking photographs from the book.
And if you're inspired here's how to grow out your pubic hair.
Natural Pubic Hair Unshaven Women Photos
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Hayley MacMillen is the former digital wellness editor of Allure , where she oversaw the launch of the website's wellness vertical in 2017. She previously held roles at Cosmopolitan and Refinery29, and is now an associate attorney in California after graduating Berkeley Law School in 2021.
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It’s likely that you have, at some point, removed some — perhaps even all — of your pubic hair. A nationally representative 2016 study out of the University of California, San Francisco found that nearly 84 percent of the 3,316 women surveyed had groomed their pubic hair, and 62 percent had removed it all at least once. Shaving with a nonelectric razor was the most popular method of grooming, followed by trimming with scissors and shaving with an electric razor.
Of course, grooming doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and individuals have long made their follicular decisions according to trends. Even the current natural-is-beautiful, pro-body-hair movement is a cultural product (and one that tends to focus on the hair of cis white women , at that). Women and femmes are far from a monolith, however. Beauty standards interact with gender identity, race, sexuality, relationships, and, yes, simple convenience to influence how we approach our pubes.
As the summer season of greater exposure approaches, Allure is exploring five women’s diverse relationships with their pubic hair — and featuring original photographs of them and their hair, or lack thereof. The women’s overriding sentiment: I do what works for me; to each their own . And while ultimately we may not be able to separate our bush-care choices from beauty ideals, we can stop attaching moral judgments to pubic hair. Ahead, NSFW portraits and uncensored thoughts on the hair down there.
I don’t remember the exact age [I started shaving], but like middle school, I think, just seeing other girls do and it just being like, Oh, well, OK, I guess I’m gonna do it, too .
I’m a hairy person, but I’ve gone most of my life shaving most of my body hair just because there was this idea that I need to that I dealt with for a long time. And so I kind of just woke up one day and...it started off with my legs, and I was like, Why am I doing this? I don’t want really want to, so let me just see how long I can go with not shaving my legs and seeing if it bothers anybody , and no one ever said anything. So then I was [like], OK, so then, if I can apply this to my body hair on my legs, what about my bush? I’ve experimented over the years: I’ve shaved it off completely, I’ve trimmed, but this is the first time that I’m just letting it be completely. I feel really good about it. It makes me feel sexy, it makes me feel affirmed; I don’t know, I think it’s cute, I like it.
In the last few years, [with] this whole body positivity and body hair appreciation movement, I’m noticing who is not included. Especially being a black person, a person of color, it’s very obvious to me when people from my community are not present in things. So people being able to reclaim their body hair, that’s cool, but when it’s only light-skinned white girls who have, like, three, blonde hairs on their entire body, that sends a very strong message.
With this whole body positivity and body hair appreciation movement, I’m noticing who is not included.
To me, it just felt really important to do this [shoot] because I really wish I could have had some visibility as far as a hairy, dark-skinned person. Even within the movement, I feel like it’s more looked down upon that we show our hair because the hair is different, too. It’s not straight, it’s not blonde, you can’t really hide it, it’s there. The journey of my hair on my head, too, going from getting perms my entire life and then cutting it off to a half-inch when I was 17 and now letting it be wild and curly — this is how it grows out of my head — that’s also helped me feel better about body hair in general, because I’m like, This is how I want to look . And that’s really powerful, too.
I’m a queer person who has dated men, [and] I’ve really only had one partner that’s ever really commented on [my pubic hair].... It was one of the first times we were hanging out, and I didn’t tell [him] beforehand [that I let it grow] because I don’t really think it’s a big deal. They were kind of like, “Oh! You’re hairy!” and I’m like, “Yeah, I am!"... They were kind of surprised, I guess, because they were expecting me to not have any hair..., I’ve noticed just in general [with] the women and gender-nonconforming people I’ve dated, hair hasn’t really been an issue.
[As for how I see my partners,] it’s not really my place to police how other people maintain body hair and body image. Do your thing. I don’t necessarily think everyone should go natural or everyone should shave, I’m like, Whatever fits your body . I have friends who do have bush maintenance, and they do wax, and they do shave and that works for them, and I’m like, Yo, more power to you . So as far as grooming, I do still get my eyebrows waxed and shave my armpits. But other than that, everything is kept natural.
I am a non-monogamous person and have several partners and have for several years, and I think that maybe makes me feel more of my own agency about any kind of upkeep or how I want my pubic hair to be or how I want my body hair to be. None of my partners have ever expressed any preferences to me, which maybe is because I select for people who have that point of view in the world. But the fact that there are multiple people...makes me feel extra like I’m not seeking feedback about this. It’s just for me. There is a possibility that if people have preferences, they might differ, and I don’t care. I’m the constant in all of those circumstances.
I think I started to remove body hair in junior high; I don't remember any specific prompting event as much as just a vague sense that that's what people do with adult bodies. I experimented for a short period in my early 20s with not removing underarm or leg hair, which is a look I like on other femme-presenting people, but [I] actually just prefer the feeling of shaved legs and underarms for myself, so went back to shaving.
Sometimes I trim [my pubic hair]; sometimes I shave. I don’t wax.... I feel like I go through phases about it. I like my hair to be short because I think the sensation is better. I like there to be less hair in the way during sex. That is my own sensory preference. But I’m not interested in having no hair, I don’t think, and waxing just feels like an appointment to make and a thing to do, and I’m just not going to do it. [I’ve waxed before] just once to see [what it was like], and I liked having the skin-on-skin sensation, but it’s not a thing I’m going to do.
I am performing professionally [as a dancer] in a small amount of clothing some of the time, and even then I don’t really think about if some [hair] is showing — it’s fine. The artistic community I have is super progressive about all body things, so no one really is thinking about it or looking for it. But being at a pool feels like there’s more external pressure — or a beach. [I clean up the edges before the pool or beach] but mostly just so I don’t have to think about it or worry about it or wonder about it, not because I feel any actual pressure... It’s weird that [hairless] is what’s neutral: In order to not think about it, I have to do an action. But it seems like the path of least resistance in public, so it’s fine.
It’s weird that hairless is what’s neutral: In order to not think about it, I have to do an action.
I genuinely have no preference for the body hair of my partners; whatever grooming people like to do for themselves, I’m into. It does bum me out when it's clear that someone feels pressured into a particular body hair situation or is disconnected from their own aesthetic or sensation preferences. Individuality in self-presentation is sexy.
I’m a woman who is attracted to other women, [and] I find myself attracted to people with all kinds of body hair — whether that’s completely shaved, or styled, or just completely natural, all these things can be really, really sexy to me. On myself, though, I prefer not have any hair. It’s not so much a thing about femininity to me, it’s more just that I love the way that my skin feels when it’s completely smooth and bare.... So before I go out to a play party, or before I’m planning a big date, I’ll always be sure to remove all of my hair just so I feel nice and sexy about it. I’m heading to a party tonight; it’s a party that’s a BDSM and sex party just for women and trans people.
I love the way that my skin feels when it’s completely smooth and bare
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