There's a page-view-baiting essay in Salon today about how, because of the recession and widely acknowledged creepiness, women are going retrobush and shunning Brazilian waxes. But!
Unfortunately, there are no pube-based statistics to back up this shocking discovery, so I'm calling bullshit on the entire thing and saying that not that many women were ripping off all their pubes in the first place.
Writer Lisa Germinsky uses totally anecdotal evidence from her group of friends to prove that women are letting their pubes run wild like the grasses of the Serengeti plain:
As my friend Jen put it, "My landing strip has turned into more of a Dorito." It should probably come as no surprise that the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression would inspire a little fuzz. Conspicuous spending is out, after all. And maintaining a stripper-worthy wax job ain't cheap. "It's back to shaving in the shower for me," says Catlin, a brand manager for a Los Angeles fashion label. "It's a fortune to keep a trim bush," bemoans Meredith, a healthcare marketing executive.
I'll take her anecdotal evidence and raise her my own anecdotal evidence! Maybe the porn world saw the rise of the retrobush, and desperate trend story writers used that, and one Sex and the City episode, as evidence that more and more women were going bare down there. But of the women I know, a couple have tried Brazilian waxes one time, but the vast majority have close to their original plumage.
Germinsky quotes Bill Maher, who says, "Bring back a little pubic hair. Not a lot. I'm not talking about reviving that 1973 look that says I'm liberated ... and I'm smuggling a hedgehog. I just want a friendly, fuzzy calling card that tells me I'm not going to get arrested." But I'm pretty sure the majority of dudes of certain generations always felt this way, and that the editorial whining about men wanting their girlfriends to look like 12-year-olds down below was an exaggeration. Much like the Brazilian wax itself, I find this trend story to be semi-painful and totally unsatisfying.
Bush Is Back! [Salon]
Earlier: To Strip Or Not To Strip?