When did shaved pussies become the norm in porn?

[Nudist Couple]

I remember back when I was starting to become a major connosour of porn (starting around 1980), hair on pussies was the norm. We all know this, as is evident from all the posts here on hairy pussies and the love of vintage porn which had them as the norm.

And the thing is, you'd find "specialty" magazines or movies that featured women with shaved pussies. It was SO out of the ordinary that it would be highlighted whenever possible.

Now it's the exact opposite. The "specialty" porn is women with natural bushes. Shaved seems to be EVERYWHERE. Not only in porn, but everywhere else. I mean, I thought it was just a fad for a while, but doesn't seem to be going away.

So when was it that it became "normal" to have shaved pussies in porn? I'm guessing sometime in the 90's...maybe late 90's?

[casiosk1]

I despise this fad...and it will run its course.

[skor]

Years ago, a lot of girls doing porn were "hippie" type chicks out to prove something. Today most girls are strippers, who hate men, are are out for nothing more than a quick buck. Having a shaved cooch makes clean up a lot easier. A quick wipe, and off to your next gig.

[Aubrey]

I despise this fad...and it will run its course.

I hope so. It was good to see when it was a novelty. Now a good bush is a novelty (but that's always been best anyway, eh?)

[edgarcasey]

I think it was a gradual thing, and during the time it was happening, I swear, I felt like I was the only one who noticed or cared. I right felt like I was gonna completely lose my mind as well. I was about ready to slit my wrists or do something really radical.
I think Larry Flynt was one of the major culprits. His Hustler magazine was pretty much the first to start displaying all those nasty shaved pussies, more and more on a regular basis. Howard Stern certainly didn't help either. He got huge on terrestrial radio, imploring all the women: "You gotta shave that thang." That poor sonuvabitch never got any, so of course he had no idea of the extreme allure of a beautiful, thick, full natural bush.
That dovetails nicely into my next reason as to why this absurd trend of obsessive shaving took hold: the fact that people here in the States are just mindless sheep. Go with the flow. Howard says it? Oh, okay. We're supposed to dig shaved pussy. And blondes. And fake tits. And hideous tatoos. And piercings in every conceivable body part. Got it. Wouldn't wanna think for myself or anything like that. Hey, I love a nice hairy bush, but I better not tell anybody.
Bottom line: having pubic hair is normal. But now it's regarded as a fetish to be into it, which of course is ridiculous because, after all, those of us who are into it only like what's natural. What's truly fetishistic (if that's a word) is the ritualistic shaving of every microscopic hair off of a woman's body. So sad. So ironic, because the result is an exponential loss of quintessential feminine beauty.
As far as natural full bush ever becoming the norm once again, I really don't see it. I won't hold my breath.

[RyderKnightley]

Before my time, women in glamour photos didn't have pussy hair. It was either removed or airbrushed out because it was forbidden to show it by law. Then the law relaxed and us young lads got to see what real women looked like. Now women are bald again, this time by choice.
I remember the first time I saw a shaven pussy. It was in this set from M*yf*ir in 1989, but that was an exception. I was really interested in the set because it was a novelty.
I remember the trend as being a slow move to baldness. From the wild bushes of the 70's, they started to become more manicured and as bikini bottoms became smaller so did the size of the bush and then it disappeared altogether.
I don't mind a shaven pussy, but as I've said before on this forum, I crave variety. There is no variety with a bald pussy, they're just bald. With a bush there is variety of colour, coverage and shape. In my ideal world there would be bald girls, trimmed girls and fully bushed girls.

[edgarcasey]

Yeah, that was another huge factor: bikini bottoms becoming increasingly smaller and smaller. So women were eventually forced to remove all of their pubic hair. Because after all, it just looks so disgusting, right?
I believe that the real reason it is removed is not because it looks too bad, but because it looks too good! That's the reason that nobody will actually say out loud.

[spoonman2]

I think it's mistaken to see this as a porn trend at all. It's a reflection of society's changing norms. One way to look at it is to compare; why do all women shave their armpits? Armpit hair is normal, and women had it for most of human history. Then it became fashionable not to, and quite rapidly, at least in the anglosphere, it became considered improper, or dirty, to have unshaven armpits. It became a marker of decency and good grooming.

One simple reason is that fashions changed and armpits were on display for the first time (in our recent history). In the Victorian era, the progressives became obsessed with sanitation and cleanliness- exhibited in the sanitation movement. THis wove into the idea that pit hair was slovenly, unkempt, a sign of not being sanitary, and associated with being dirty- the idea that the woman isn't bothering to look after herself. Thus cleanshaven (note the word "clean" thar) armpits became a signifier of "classiness"; literally that one is in a better class of people than the scum below. It also, as it goes, fed into male grooming too, though not body hair- beards went from being very fashionable to being very unfashionable, and male hair became very short indeed- the "short back and sides".

Broadly, there is a strong link between fashion/grooming and socially liberal values. Gay clothes and long hair occur in liberal times; short hair and drab clothes in more puritanical ones. The puritans show their sobriety in their restrained personal presentation. They are neat, and tidy, and dull. The cavaliers had ringlets and bright clothes, the roundheads (were named for) their tightly cropped hair, and of course they wore dull black and white clothing. Very neat, very tidy, very *clean*.

The golden age of porn occurred during a liberal phase of western society- the 60s and 70s. That liberalism screeched to a halt by the end of the 70s, as conservatives on both left and right pushed us back into another moralist, puritan phase (which is what "political correctness" is a manifestation of, as it goes- it is a Cromwellian state mandated moral code). Male grooming went from hippie locks and facial hair to roundhead style again- extremely short and even shaven heads- and women progressed from armpit depilation to muff shaving.

Show a normal, full muff to a young roundhead these days- particularly an american, the US being the most "sanitation" fascinated of the anglosphere nations- and he'll react with disgust, considering it to be, genuinely, dirty. What was normal just 20 years ago is, for many/most young males, now considered beyond the pale, and for most young women considered normal/obligatory grooming. I read an article a while back by a woman (in her 40s) about how she'd noticed in the swimming pool changing rooms that virtually every girl is now trimmed or shaved, and she was the odd one out with her normal complement of pubic hair. The ideological hegemony of armpit shaving, about a century ago, was similarly rapid.

There seems to be a myth, I've seen it put about by some gender feminists, that evil porn has created this thing, and forced young women into shaving because of the evil power of porn. It's nonsense. This message board is stuffed with evidence that porn was entirely unconcerned with pubic hair for years. Porn is following, not creating, the trend.

[edgarcasey]

Great post, spoonman
I believe that porn is partly responsible for this absurd trend. (When guys like Flynt featured shaved girls in magazines, it was initially appealing simply because it was something different, and then the whole thing kind of snowballed from there. Hey, people here in the States would cut off their ring fingers if they thought it was the 'in' thing.) But the responsibility for this moronic trend falls far more heavily on big corporations and mass media. Gillette figured (correctly) back in the early part of the twentieth century that they could cash in big time by promoting shaving as a way to further differentiate between the sexes. And as you mentioned, changes in style of dress figured heavily into that.
And of course women look at television and glamour magazines and try to emulate what they see. Of course they're being brainwashed by media as well, bombarded with subtle and not so subtle hints on a daily basis.

[burpman]

I think some of spoonman's arguments make good sense for most of the visible areas of ones body. However, I think to some degree the advent of the thong bikini/underwear has contributed to this trend as well. The pubes become more and more noticeable with this modern style of clothing and the 'runway strip' becomes more of necessity as unmentionables quickly become dental floss. The next logical step is the total absence of hair altogether. Take a look in any store and you'll notice even fairly conservative panties have a bikini like styling. The "granny panties" of old are long gone or quite hard to find.