Pubic art has a long history influenced heavily by the customs, traditions and restrictions of the period, leading to variations in pubic hairstyles that could be depicted by artists of the time. Pubic art is mainly focused on female pubic hairstyles with scarcely any application to the male pubic hair.

Art in ancient times mostly showed pubic hair in the form of triangles. In the middle ages, female pubic art was generally not shown and male pubic hair was usually omitted. Female hair was shown only on the head and never below. Northern Europe during the Renaissance was more open to pubic art than was the southern part of the continent. In the 17th and 18th centuries, erotic engravings and paintings understandably led the way to a more open depiction of pubic hairstyles. Fine art and sculpture, however, continued to show women without any pubic hair. So puritanical was society’s attitude towards pubic art that John Ruskin, an artist and art critic, is reported to have been so shocked at discovering his wife’s pubic hair that he had the marriage annulled. Goya’s “The Naked Maja” was one of the first European paintings to show a woman’s pubic hair and was considered pornographic as was Courbet’s “The Origin of the World” which depicted exposed female genitals with thick hair.

But pubic art goes with the times. Today’s more liberal attitudes have given rise to a variety of pubic hairstyles. Some of the more popular pubic hairstyles are:

• Natural or Bush style which does not require any trimming and maintenance and the pubic hair is left to grow naturally.
• Trimmed style, where the pubic hair is shortened but is not removed or cut into any shape.
• Heart shape has the pubic hair trimmed and cut into the shape of a heart. It is a pubic hairstyle that is very popular with women, including the fashion designer Mary Quant.
• Triangle cut is a style where the pubic hair is removed from the sides, usually by waxing, to form a triangle. This type is popular with women who wear bikinis because the pubic hair cannot be seen beyond the bikini’s edges.
• The Hitler Moustache is one where a vertical rectangle, about ¼ inch long, is formed at the center by removing the hair at the sides. It is also known as a “Landing Strip” style

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• Brazilian Wax is a pubic hairstyle where all the hair is removed except for a very thin narrow stripe less than one centimeter long above the vulva.

Suffice it to say that students of pubic art in the future will have a wider choice of pubic hairstyles to write about.