As I understand women didn’t shave their armpits until after WWII when some model or celebrity did it on a whim and people actually hated it – this changed over time. So any of these changes to pubic hair removal are recent, as well. I have this theory: in recent times, in Western Society, there has been an upheaval of cultural and gender norms – when this happens, people react in ways that makes things more traditional but in our times, this means clearly differentiating men from women leading to hairy men and hairless women so that sex/gender differences can be maintained because people are scared about all this equality and fight for equal rights and what some perceive as women taking men’s spaces and jobs.
A hairless woman looks more like a child, less dangerous (more fragile, softer so that people can say ‘look how complementary the sexes are…yin and yang, etc.) – long hair has always been associated with sex appeal, with wildness, with power (Samson and Delilah, anyone?) and we simply can’t have that these days, can we? Let the women be as little like men as possible even if it means they have to put in money into countless pointless rituals to get rid of all natural hair growth. This just wasn’t an issue when Hefner was younger, porn was more realistic, people were people, 70s and 80s were freer in terms of loving ourselves for who we are. There is something about our times that has to do with making everyone look like a ‘fixed up’ fantasy – like a Barbie. Well, eff that noise, I hate having to shave anything on my body simply because of the way it’s perceived to be necessary and I don’t have the patience (because I get homicidal) to deal with people when I don’t shave anywhere.
Oh, I also wanted to mention that the overbearing consumerism of our society aids all of the above as well – it’s all about buy buy buy so that you can look better, smoother, etc. for no reason at all but it sure wastes/makes a lot of money. Nor are men immune from this trend either because we’re even more removed from the animality/realness of our bodies than ever before as we are the most removed from nature and the environment than ever before.