We had differences Rebecca - we interviewed heterosexuals (all shaved), bisexuals (all shaved) and lesbians (trimmed now shaved) it is interesting as our findings (not evidence as this is qualitative research) suggest that this practice is driven by males in terms of sexual satisfaction which appeared to be driven by porn. Would be interesting to see if others have different narratives  

Hi! I'm Verónica Caridad Rabelo, a PhD Candidate in Women's Studies and Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Lesley-Ann: what a fascinating study, especially given your inclusion of heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women in your study.

Speaking to Rebecca's question, you both may be interested in following the work of Breanne Fahs at Arizona State University (http://www.breannefahs.com/).

In particular, I'd flag the following:

Fahs, B. (2014). Perilous patches and pitstaches: Imagined versus lived experiences of women's body hair growth. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(2), 167-180.

• http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2014_psychology_of_women_quarterly_fahs.pdf

Fahs, B. (2014). Genital panics: Constructing the vagina in women's qualitative narratives about pubic hair, menstrual sex, and vaginal self-image. Body Image, 11, 210-218.

• http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2014_body_image_fahs.pdf

Fahs, B. (2012). Breaking body hair boundaries: Classroom exercises for challenging social constructions of the body and sexuality. Feminism & Psychology, 22(4), 482-506. 

• http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2012_feminism__psychology_fahs.pdf

Fahs, B. (2013). Shaving it all off: Examining social norms of body hair among college men in a women's studies course. Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 42(5), 559-577.

• http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2013_womens_studies.pdf

Fahs, B. (2011). Dreaded "Otherness": Heteronormative patrolling in women's body hair rebellions. Gender & Society, 25(4), 451-472. 

• http://gas.sagepub.com/content/25/4/451/suppl/DC1

Fahs, B., & Delgado, D. A. (2011). The specter of excess: Race, class, and gender in women's body hair narratives. In C. Bobel & S. Kwan (Eds.), Embodied resistance: Breaking the rules, challenging the norms (pp. 13-25). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

• http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2011_embodied_resistance_fahs_delgado.pdf

I hope these are helpful/interesting to your research!

Cheers,

Verónica

Thanks, both! This is more of personal/sociological interest than research-related, but I will check out those papers, and thanks for your response, Lesley-Anne. It's great to see research like this being done!

Thanks for these Veronica much appreciated.  We are still in the process of transcribing interviews so nothing is written up as yet but these are certainly useful. Thanks again

Hm, this could be an example of scientific imperialism ;-)

just joking, but honestly, any finding in the US or the UK however well reseached, can not be generalized to other countries or - as science becomes more of a world-wide-science (WWS) every day - to the world in general.

There may be other findings in Europe already regarding how many different cultures there are there. This goes on to India and China where we find about 2/7 of the world population.

So any study should state in as much its findings can be generalized.

Just one example: I started a project here on researchgate regarding female orgasm, then looked up related articles here too. One of the first interesting articles was from Egypt, led by a dermatologist https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282966821_Is_female_orgasm_an_earth-moving_experience

this article is remarkable in many respects: they exclude groups for various reasons (unmarried, illiterate etc.), but include women that did undergo Female Genital Cutting. They have a high prevalence of female ejaculation. So from these two examples we can already infer that Egypt is different from many other countries. The study may not be reliable in some findings of course.

In any case this shows that Egyptian sexology is part of WWS and we hardly know anything about it.

Sexual behaviour is determined by a lot of factors. Education, world views and these days influences by media play their respective roles. There are vested interests involved. Whole industries rely on attitudes of people in order to sell their products. So science has great responsibilty. Our findings and conclusions will most likely have effects. If we are good, we want that and give our best to have an impact. There will be side effects though as well.

In any case: very interesting research, following from now on!

Article Is female orgasm an earth-moving experience

I think that women should nt shave their pubic hair, except in the case of a very large pubic hair area. Actually, shaving pubic hair is a very recent and innatural practice.