Simple question, difficult answer. If you glance through several decades of sexually explicit magazines, you would see that pubic hair fashion has changed over time.

In the '70s, most models had an unrefined and natural look. Magazines from the '80s started to exhibit some stylized looks and the '90s ushered in smaller and smaller patches of hair.

Do these commercial ventures reflect the current tastes of many men, or do they create the trends of the future? It's hard to say. Probably both.

If you pick up a current Playboy magazine (or similar publication), you would see only a small amount of pubic hair on the female models. Same thing in recently produced erotic videos. Because it's today's "look" in sexually-explicit media, more men may be asking their female sexual partners to trim their pubic hair.

Of course, there are plenty of heterosexual and bisexual men who never look at these magazines or videos and still favor the trimmed look. Where else could this preference be coming from? There are many possibilities.

As baby boomers age, they've shown a preoccupation with preserving and revisiting youth to an extent that previous generations of Americans have not. Plastic surgery is at an all-time high, and many sorts of exercise machines are making their way into many homes. There's even a throwback to the fashions of the '70s. (Some of these trends are better than others!)

It's my hunch that trimmed pubic hair on females makes some baby-boom men "feel young" because it reminds them of early sexual experiences when their female partners were pubescent and pubic hair was still sprouting. They may link that style of pubic hair with good memories if they had very positive initial experiences.

Other men may be making the same link to positive sexual experiences they had with women of other ethnicities. This is common, for example, among American men who have traveled or fought in wars in Asia, where many women have relatively little pubic hair.

Pleasant early experiences like these often format a man's "hard drive" of sexual tastes for his entire life. Though these men may have since partnered quite happily with other women, they may still be aroused by sexual features that remind them of young or foreign partners -- like relatively little pubic hair.

Still other men may like trimmed hair because they simply find it more aesthetically pleasing. Some prefer to give oral stimulation when the pubic hairs are shorter and fewer. Some find female genitals very arousing visually and want little blocking their view.

No doubt, I have left out some reasons why some men think less is more when it comes to pubic hair. Send me an e-mail if you have some insights to share.

Louanne Cole Weston, PhD, author of Sex Matters®, is a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor and a board-certified sex therapist in practice since 1983. Her work in the field of human sexuality includes extensive experience as a therapist, educator, and researcher.

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