(Another noder had originally written that body hair is unhealthy, unsanitary, unsightly, and that, now that we have shelter to keep us warm, it no longer serves its evolutionary purpose. That writeup has long vanished.)

If you're going for that argument, the same goes for the hair on top of your head. If you're in the sun enough to risk sunburn, you can wear a hat.

As near as I can tell, body hair is no more unhealthy than, say, applying a sharp blade to every square inch of your skin on a regular basis. Sure, some of the hair traps sweat, making you smell bad, but that's hardly unsanitary. Far more unsanitary are the little nicks you would get from shaving, which contaminate your environment with blood and leave you prone to infection.

I believe the previous noder's views on this matter are pretty much directly derived from the Victorians; look at the cleanliness/success link in many novels of the industrial revolution in Britain and the U.S. (Charles Dickens and Horatio Alger come to mind). I'm also willing to bet CzarKhan is American---merkins (it works on so many levels!) have this bizarre fascination with cleanliness.

I remember reading somewhere that pubic hair does serve a useful purpose beyond keeping you warm and its curly twisted crazy ways are necessary for it to function in the way that God intended. And the function is... (drumroll please) ... to prevent chafing. Yes, that's right; to stop your high-friction skin from causing that painful inflammed malady that can make your walk like you want your legs to be as far apart from each other as possible. That can look strange especially when your arms also want to follow suit and get that "hey, I'm trying to hug a big beachball that you can't see" look.

So there you go. I would also like to think that pubic hair has other decorative functions, otherwise why would merkins have been invented?

BTW a good liberal application of zinc cream usually gets rid of any chafing. Looks ugly, but feels damn good.

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