Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in PregnancyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
The pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but
thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter
than those of men, as Pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually
stronger than light. In both length and size the individual
variations are considerable. The usual length is about 2 inches,
or 3-5 centimeters, occasionally reaching about 4 inches, or 9-10
centimeters, in the larger curls. In a series of 100 women
attended during confinement in London and the north of England I
have only once (in a rather blonde Lancashire woman) found the
hair on labia reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and
forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery.
But Jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that
of her head, reaching below her knee; Paulini also knew a woman
whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make
wigs; Bartholin mentions a soldier's wife who plaited her pubic
hair behind her back; while Brantôme has several references to
abnormally long hair in ladies of the French court during the
sixteenth century. In 8 cases out of 2200 Bergh found the pubic
hair forming a large curly wig extending to the iliac spines. The
individual hairs have occasionally been found so stiff and
brush-like as to render coitus difficult.
In color the pubic hair, while generally approximating to that of
the head, is sometimes (according to Rothe, in Germany, in
one-third cases) lighter, and sometimes somewhat darker, as is
found to be the case by Coe, especially in brunettes, and also by
Bergh, in Denmark. Bergh remarks that it is generally
intermediate in color between the eyebrows and the axillary hair,
the latter being more or less decolorized by sweat, and that,
owing to the influence of the urine and vaginal discharges, the
labial hair is paler than that on the mons; blondes with dark
eyebrows usually have dark hair on the mons. The hair on this
spot, as Aristotle observed, is usually the last to turn gray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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