Between hygiene and peer pressure

Whether you find hairless or hairy more erotic is a matter of taste. But the more people do something, the more likely it is to become the norm . This also changes our taste. And we get used to almost everything - just think of the fashion of the 80s, which we thought was sensational at the time. And we all know how embarrassed we looked back on it later. But back to nudity. A study by the Institute for Sexual Research and Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Hamburg found that the younger people are, the more widespread depilation is. 81% of 16 to 19-year-old boys and 94% of girls of the same age get rid of all or at least some of their annoying hair. This goes so far that the first hairs are plucked as soon as they see the light of day. Some people don't even know what they would look like without hair! And who dares to swim against the tide and show their hair, especially at that age? This means that a whole hairless youth is growing up!

Hairless is supposedly also more hygienic. Millions of bacteria are thought to live in pubic and underarm hair. These need to be eradicated. Things were different in my day. It was all about pure sex. A naked female pubic area was clearly a sexual provocation. And I loved to provoke. Men, on the other hand, wore their pubic hair unobjectionably, trimming it here and there at most to make oral sex more appealing to women. After all, who likes hair between their teeth? I experienced my own blue miracle when I moved from fashionably sleepy Kiel to trendy Hamburg in the early 2000s. Oh my God, I thought, when I saw the first completely naked male pubic area in the sauna. There was such a poor little penis dangling from the man, so vulnerable and defencelessly exposed to view. And there were countless other such sights to follow, because I am a diligent sauna-goer. As already mentioned, it wasn't as if I didn't know intimate hairstyles. But I found this complete nudity neither masculine nor attractive. And it took some getting used to. But you get used to everything. And I did too. At least in moderation.

Is the age of hairlessness coming to an end?

But I'm glad that trends have a habit of coming and going. And the example of the male beard clearly shows a shift away from total nudity. It's no longer just in the hip districts of big cities that it's sprawling across faces. As I sit here writing in my favorite bar in Ottensen, outside the window every second man over the age of thirty is sporting facial hair. The bushier and thicker, the better. The revolutionary has to come up with something very special to stand out here. It's just a shame that I can't see what's going on under the clothes. After all, a shaved male body doesn't go well with a beard, does it? Something is also happening when it comes to female body hair. After all, anyone who dares to wear pubic hair is now benevolently described as "retro". Women with a fluffy triangle between their legs are increasingly seen as feminine and smells are once again considered erotic and animalistic. So, are we on the verge of a complete trend reversal? Will we soon all be wearing head, chest, leg and armpit hair again? No, again, I don't think so. Society today is too heterogeneous for that, and the movement and counter-movement have enough leeway to coexist peacefully. We will therefore find both the one and the other. But it seems that our taste simply has its limits. After all, Madonna and Miley Cyrus' armpit hair advances came to nothing. Nothing can be done. Armpit hair is out.

Anja Drews, sexologist for ORION