If you just wanna say 'I have a kink for women with pubic hair and want more of that in my games' its ok to just say that, we all have our preferences, no shade.
Strange that you assume, that people debating about the likeliness of pubic hair of medieval women are just doing so because of a personal kink, while at the same time you and others being pro-barazilian waxing in medieval themed games, don't do so because of a strange kink about shaved genitalia?
What you are doing is called
projection...
From what its worth, from what I can find in a quick search, pubic hair (and body hair) was associated with 'unbridled sexuality' in the medieval eras. So quite a few of the more chaste women practiced hair removal as part of societal pressure. Funny enough I'm also seeing accounts of women removing body hair as part of 'trying to recapture their youth' (which actually kinda goes hand-in-hand with 'purity' and all that). Medieval era and all the way back to ancient Greece. Probably part of why women in medieval art were often shown as hairless unless their sexuality was being highlighted. " In order that a woman might become very soft and smooth and without hairs from her head down... "
You're deliberately misinterpreting the findings of your "quick internet research" (I call that low effort posts, copy pasting what you can find on google search page 1) and you're ignoring many of the passages of text contradicting you. Dig deeper, if you're really interested in how it was like in the Middle Ages, instead of trying to push your own kink, because this is your main motivation.
Since you've mentioned ancient Greece for whatever reason after all we're talking about the Middle Ages, and since you didn't dig deep, I'm pretty sure, you've stumbled upon
You must be registered to see the links
on page 1 of a simple google search.
There you've completely ignored this sentence, which is true in my opinion:
Pubic fads swung the other way in the Middle Ages, when the trend was to maintain pubic hair.
For the rest of your post, you've just paraphrased this
You must be registered to see the links
.
While this reddit user at least makes an effort unlike you or
Ragnar , his post is still debatable. He also mentions clearly, that we have sources mainly deriving from the very late Middle Age concerning pubic hair, but his main source is already Renaissance time frame, where different, classical antiquity deriving beauty standards were en vogue. After all he quotes Erasmus of Rotterdam, who lived between the late 1460ies and died in 1536.
Ragnar wrote, that we had plenty of sources within the medieval timeframe, which is simply wrong!
Mentioned reddit user also wrote:
Erasmus is of course writing satire, as are his contemporaries who ridicule prostitutes for trimming or completely removing The Hair Down There. That makes it hard to say how widespread a practice depilation actually was, on its own.
You are ignoring this statement for obvious reasons, because it underlines my argumentation. You don't argument on your own btw, you just copy paste here and there from the internet, what seems fit to you, while deliberately omitting those passages, which contradict your personal preference of shaved women.
You also seem to have no idea of medieval art in general. Most of the art of medieval Europe is religious in nature. Sex for fun was considered to be a sin by the church. Sex was tolerated by the curch for having offspring and only between married couples. F.e. bastard kids always carried the sin of their parents with them and were looked down upon.
The reddit user wrote furthermore:
Medieval art and literature make it clear that body hair was primarily a sexual symbol, associated as it biologically is with puberty. [...] Public hair/body hair did continue to represent unbridled sexuality.
So since pubic hair was seen as something arousing, you won't find any of that in medieval art, after all the church (an extremely powerful and influental institution in medieval Europe) would have condemned the artist for creating something sinful. Anyway the display of a sinful acts was sometimes tolerated, if it served a purpose like mocking religious enemies f.e. But the reddit user is also contradicting himself here and doesn't notice: If pubic hair was a symbol for "unbridled sexuality", as he writes, then this contradicts the above ridiculed whores, who shaved their pubic hair. After all prostitution is the definition of "unbridled sexuality" and it's uncontested that foremost whores shaved their pubic hair during the Middle Age in Europe.
Medieval Islam (which also influenced Europe as there was a good bit of travel and trade) also encouraged body hair removal as part of 'ensuring bodily purity'.
There was indeed some transfer of knowledge during the Crusades between the Muslim world and Christian Europe. That body hair removal was among them, is highly doubtful at best. First of all, the climate in the holy land was different to mainland Europe. What might have made sense under the hot sun of the southern Mediterranean, didn't make sense in rainy cold Scotland f.e. After all pubic hair helps to maintain the optimal temperature in the pubic region when the weather is cold.
You must be registered to see the links
mentions an episode within Usama ibn Munqidh’s
Book of Contemplation (the source is highly questionable btw., which is also a little bit discussed in the link)
, where a Crusader walked into a Muslim bathhouse realizing that all Muslim men had their body hair removed by shaving. He also wanted to be shaved and even brought his wife.
So what does this most likely purely fictional episode tell us really? Since you probably don't have the slightest idea of source criticism, I'll help you:
The Muslim author addresses fellow Muslims and wants to make fun of crusaders by trying to portray them as uncivilized and inferior. By letting the Crusader adapt Muslim body hair removal customs and by extending it even to his wife, the crusader acknowledges the Muslim superiority when it comes to body hygiene. It's a fictional episode, because it wouldn't have happened like this and there are many more episodes in his book, written for amusement, which are very much unrealistic.
Anyway there is one thing, this jokingly story tells us:
Crusaders didn't shave their body hair unlike Muslims. If they really adapted this practice, is doubtful, maybe in the Holy Land, but back in Europe with a much colder climate, it didn't make sense. After all there is no mention in the sources close to the timeframe of the crusades about a sudden trend of body hair removal in Europe.
It wasn't just about religion and sexuality and so on, it was also a matter of hygiene in an era before air conditioning, lice-removal meds, deodorant... easiest way to stay clean and was to just shave it all off down there using razors, abrasive substances, and plucking. And so on. From all I can tell, pubic hair was actually a bit more unusual.
Nope, as a matter of fact, during the Middle Ages it was more hygenic to actually have body hair and more safe, as I already mentioned in my previous post. There is actually another contradiction in your argumentation and the one of the
You must be registered to see the links
, you seem to have deliberately overlooked:
Henri de Mondeville, the early 14th century French surgeon, has quite a lot to say in his Surgery about women removing body hair! [...] While he is quick to say he disapproves, he is equally sure that medical practitioners must be involved or must at least give advice in order that they do it as safely as possible.
So this late medieval source admits that body hair removal was actually a risk for women to do it under maybe unsafe conditions with unclean blades etc. This also means that body hair removal was and is no advantage concerning hygiene, but in fact during the Middle Ages it was a risk for your health due to infections by making too deep cuts. Hence all these hygiene based wannabe-arguments are nonsense and are nonsense even to this day. F.e. today we know that regular shaving of your pubic hair increases the rsik of developing ugly genital warts.
As the reddit user you are simply paraphrasing goes on:
Henri explicitly connects hair removal with the restoration of youth and an attempt to cast a false air of chastity.
Pubic hair foremost stands for sexual maturity. So this late medieval source doesn't mention hygienic reasons for body hair removal, but portrays it as an attempt of some women to appear younger again, like before they went through puberty and reached sexual maturity.
Anyway I highly doubt that the users in here are really interested in historic facts and arguments. A real debate is also not happening, because people like you or
Ragnar exhaust themselves already by making these low effort posts by making these broad generalizing statements and simply paraphrasing the thoughts of someone else, while not adding a single unique thought of your own to it. Also none of you even tried to counter my arguments.
Therefore I'm not going to waste any more time on it.