15 Little-Known Facts About Pubic Hair

1. The longest pubic hair in history was 28 inches.

A woman named Maoni Vi from Cape Town, South Africa had a pubic hair that measured 28 inches. She also had an armpit hair that measured 32 inches. (source)

2. In Asia, women pay for pubic hair transplants.

As opposed to the West, where women are relentlessly pube-shamed and are always waxing themselves to the point where their external genitals are as smooth as a baby seal, Asian women—particularly those in South Korea—pay top dollar to have pubic hair implanted onto their crotches to give them that fuller, lusher, more natural look. (source)

3. Pubic wigs are a thing.

These genital toupees—formally known as “merkins”—were thought to be first introduced in the 1400s as a means for prostitutes to cover up signs of STDs. They were also popular in the sexually repressed Victorian era. These days—when shearing one’s natural wool is all the rage—sometimes actors will wear merkins if they’re trying to recreate “period pieces,” pun partially intended. (source)

4. There’s a biological reason the carpet doesn’t always match the drapes.

If a person’s pubic hair is a different color than the hair on their scalp, it may not be due to the fact that they’re dying either area. Hair color is determined by the amount of melanin in the area where the hair is growing, which is why one’s pubic hair is almost always darker than the hair on their head—because there’s more melanin around your crotch than on your scalp. (source)

5. Pubic balding is also a thing.

Medical conditions such as menopause, alopecia, an underactive adrenal gland, and cirrhosis of the liver can cause pubic hair to fall out. You may not have to pay for painful Brazilian waxes and expensive laser hair removal after all! (source)

6. The weird history of pubic-hair souvenirs.

The British upper crust of the 1700s and 1800s had an odd habit of collecting the pubic hair of one’s lovers as a souvenir—or, if you will, a hunting trophy. Scotland’s St. Andrews University has a museum containing a snuffbox that is stuffed to the gills with the pubes of a mistress of King George IV. Other men of the era would attach their lover’s pubic hair onto their hats as a public display of their sexual prowess. (source)

7. You had hair on your genitals as a kid—you just couldn’t see it.

What is known as “vellus hair”—thin, fine tufts that are nearly visible to the naked eye—is present on all children. What is known as “pubic hair” is the coarser, curlier, bushier hair that appears during the onset of adolescence. (source)

8. There’s actually a technical term for the onset of pubic hair during adolescence.

That term is “pubarche.” I can see that word being repurposed as a synonym for “douchebag.” Yeah, that guy was acting like a total pubarche last night.

9. The first major adult magazine to show a full-on bush was Playboy in 1971.

Although “smut” rags and still photos have featured full-blown “disco bushes” since photography was invented, the first major adult mag to show a healthy, vibrant, lush, exotic, three-dimensional female bush was during Liv Lindeland’s Playboy pictorial of January 1971. (source)

10. The strange case of the 16-month-old Alabama infant with adult public hair.

A 2007 issue of Clinical Pediatrics details the case of a 16-month-old Alabama boy with full pubic-hair development and an adult-sized penis. It turned out that his father had been prescribed testosterone gel, which he’d smear all over his body before climbing into bed and cuddling with his newborn. The excess testosterone induced an extremely premature adolescence in the male infant. (source)

11. Missouri has a pubic-waxing law for minors.

In Missouri, children under 18 are forbidden from being waxed “on or near genitalia” unless they provide proof of parental consent. (source)

12. Why it’s curly.

Under a microscope, pubic hair is flat in shape like linguine. It is similar to African scalp hair in configuration, which causes it to curl when it reaches a certain length. In contrast, long, straight hair looks is shaped round like spaghetti when viewed under a microscope. (source)

13. Female pubes popped up all over the place in famous paintings of the 1800s.

This includes Katsushika Hokusai’s The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (1813), Francisco Goya’s La Maja Desnuda (circa 1800), and Gustave Courbet’s L’Origin Du Monde (1866), which features a bush so lush, you could plant tomatoes in it.

14. But one art critic of the 1800s allegedly divorced his newlywed wife when he discovered that she rocked a bush.

Art critic John Ruskin must not have been paying attention to all those famous paintings of female pubes during the 1800s, because according to a biographer, he thought his wife was “a monster” on his wedding night when she revealed a natural bush instead of the marble-smooth mons pubis one sees in ancient sculptures of women. (source)

15. Pubic hairs are exchanged during sex.

If you and your partner both have pubic hair, chances are that you will swap a few stray pubes during intercourse. Hey, it’s better than transmitting an STD or inducing an unwanted pregnancy, right? (source)