I am a heterosexual male, and I have had an attraction to body hair on women since I was an adolescent in the 1960's. Hairy legs have been my favorite, but I also like body hair elsewhere, i.e. underarms, arms, etc.

I saw a fair number of women with hairy legs and other body hair when I was a college student in the 1970's. It has been one of my disappointments that that never became more common since. In fact female body hair has become even more unacceptable than it was in the 1970's. For instance I remember seeing a fair number of women with hairy arms in the 1960's and 1970's, but rather few now.

I have been puzzled as to why just about anything else has become acceptable in our society at some time since the 1960's except for natural body hair on women.

I respect people's personal preferences, and I respect that some people do not like body hair on women (and in some cases not on men either). However I am very sorry, and find it very sad, to see the number of people who have expressed comments like yuk, gross, or repulsive. I have to say that I am particularly sad and sorry that somebody who likes counterculture and radical feminist women would draw an arbitrary line at body hair.

In fact I am struck in noting that the feelings of revulsion for body hair on women expressed in some of the posts in this thread are identical to feelings of revulsion to homosexuality which were expressed by most "normal" people (and are still expressed by people in the Religious Right) before it became "cool" to be in favor of gay rights and to accept homosexuality as being something perfectly normal.

Not being gay myself, I admit I find the thought of any kind of sex with another man to be distasteful to me. And I myself thought of homosexuality as being something "deviant" and actually "icky" when I was much less enlightened than I am now. I later learned that people do not entirely choose who they are attracted to; they find that they are attracted to certain people, some people find that they are attracted to people of the same sex.

To me, before acceptance of homosexuality became the norm, I would have thought it much more radical to accept homosexuality than to accept body hair on women.

Even though I myself find the thought of sex with another man to be distasteful for me, that does not mean that it is wrong, "perverted", deviant, or "icky" for another person to be attracted to somebody of the same sex.

And I remember people (including myself) were very judgmental of boys and men wearing long hair when they first started doing so in the 1960's (as I remember it started with the Beatles in 1964). But then long hair became common and accepted, especially in the 1970's.

One thing that especially boggles my mind is that tongue piercing (OUCH!) and multiple body piercing are more accepted in our society than natural body hair on women. I personally consider body piercing to be a form of mutilation, and am at a loss to understand why people desire to pierce their bodies, or are willing to do so in order to hang objects on them. However if that is what other people want to do, then that is their business.

It should be noted that razor companies and cosmetic companies profit from women removing their body hair, starting from the time that they are young girls.

This started about 1915 when the Gillette razor company started an advertising blitz to convince women that they had to have bare armpits, and later that they had to have smooth legs. See the following links.

http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m062...

http://books.google.com/books?id=XmwCN-Bju...

The razor and cosmetic companies prey on women's fears and insecurities about being uncool and unfeminine, starting when they are young teens. This is not much different from the way tobacco companies have always hooked young people on smoking.

I have mixed feelings about men (or at least some men) now removing body hair as well as women. I remember that until fairly recently it was almost unheard of for men to remove body hair. Body hair, particularly chest hair, was considered to be very manly.

It has always seemed very unfair to me that women have had to go through all the pain and trouble to remove body hair, but not men. And it particularly bothered me in the 1970's that hairy legs and underarms on women never became common and acceptable like long (head) hair on men.

So if men are now removing body hair it seems a little less unfair and a little less sexist for women to remove body hair. (Though still by no means all men remove body hair.) However I would have much preferred for women to also grow their body hair grow out, rather than for men to remove their body hair.

Incidentally I myself have no intention of removing any of my own body hair; however I just have a normal, moderate amount of body hair in the usual places; I do not have any excessive amount of body hair anywhere.

I have to wonder how much of the dislike for body hair is really "real", and how much of the dislike is conditioned by advertising and societal pressures, and fear of being considered "uncool".

For myself I find very sexy the idea of a woman who by other standards would be considered attractive, and who has more than just a little body hair, and who lets her body hair grow out, and who loves and is not ashamed of her natural hair and her natural state. And I see nothing wrong with liking what I like.