The hairy covering of the female genital organs is in adults, and especially in brunettes, very abundant; above, it is usually sharply limited by a transverse line across the top of the mons Veneris, and it extends outwards only a little beyond the labia majora, whilst below it extends only to about the middle of the sides of the perineum. According to Bergh, however, who made an exact study of this matter in 2,200 women of ages for the most part between fourteen and thirty years, in some cases the shape of the patch of hair (which is in such instances always very thick) resembles that so common in the male, there being a pointed process, usually rather narrow, extending upward toward the navel. This masculine form of the pubic hair is by no means common in women; according to Lombroso it is met with more frequently in Italian women than in those belonging to other European nations. In most women, the thick hairy covering of the mons Veneris is sharply limited above by the curved line that indicates the upper margin of the eminence, whereas in men a strip of hair usually passes up from the mons pubis to the umbilicus. Still, exceptions are met with. Thus, in 100 women, Schultze found five in whom the hairy covering extended up to the navel. Sometimes other variations occur, for instance, the hair may extend laterally into the groin, occasionally as far as the anterior superior spine of the ilium, and across the upper part of the front of the thigh, not infrequently in association with a thick growth of hair along the sides of the perineum as far as the anus. Of women with the hair growing in this fashion, not a few appeared to Bergh to have unusually strong sexual passion.
In contradistinction to these cases in which the development of the pubic hair is thick and even excessive, we meet with others in which it is very scanty, and this not only in quite young individuals (at an age from 15 to 18 years), with but slight development of the labia, but also in older and fully developed women—for the most part blondes.
The growth of the pubic hair is thickest and strongest near the median line, whilst laterally the hairy covering is thinner and weaker. The thickness is extremely variable. “In some women we find a flattened, occasionally frizzled, turf-like covering; in others, a dense, elevated, luxuriant bush of hair” (Bergh). The length of the pubic hair is variable, but as a rule it is somewhat shorter in the female than in the male. Still, cases have been known in women in which it reached to the knees.
The colour of the pubic hair commonly resembles that of the hair of the head, but the pubic hair is usually the darker of the two. Blondes with dark or black eyebrows have, according to Bergh, usually dark or black pubic hair. The pubic hair turns grey late in life, later as a rule than the hair of any other part, a fact known already to Aristotle; it is rather late in life also that the pubic hair becomes thin, and in this state it remains almost invariably up to an advanced age, even when the scalp has become almost or quite bald.
The pubic hair, according to the same author, is seldom straight, being almost always curly, frizzled, or more or less rolled up into rings or spirals, generally forming smaller or larger locks. Fairly often, we meet with curled locks, either one pair or two, symmetrically disposed on either side of the depression adjoining the præputium clitoridis; these usually have an outward direction. Much more rarely we find similar locks symmetrically attached further back on the labia.
In the case of 1,000 adult women examined by Eggel with regard to the colour of the pubic hair, the colour of the eyes, and the colour of the hair of the head, there were 239 with dark eyes, 333 with dark hair on the head, and 329 with dark pubic hair; contrariwise, 761 had light eyes, 667 light hair on the head, and 679 light pubic hair. Obviously, then, a considerable number of women with light-coloured eyes must have had dark pubic hair. Roth, in 1,000 North German women examined by him, found the pubic hair blonde, but a rather dark blonde, in a large majority of the cases; in red-haired women, the pubic hair was in all cases bright red, in black-haired women the pubic hair was black in two-thirds only of the cases, in nearly a third it was brown, in two cases dark blonde; in Jewesses, in a large majority of instances, the pubic hair is brown. The arrangement of the pubic hair is described by Roth as very variable. “Sometimes it is short and frizzly, sometimes a luxuriant bushy growth; sometimes the hairs are scanty and thinly set; sometimes they are irregularly distributed; sometimes we see only a narrow strip of long hairs down the middle of the mons Veneris, which is bare at the sides. In some the lateral boundaries of the pubic hair are sharply defined, in others the hairy covering spreads beyond the usual limits.”
Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, it was customary for women to remove the pubic hair, a custom even now observed by all oriental races; for this reason in ancient art the nude female body is depicted without pubic hair. According to Stratz, in the Chansons de Bilitis it is said of the priestesses of Astarte: “They never draw their hairs out, in order that the dark triangle of the goddess shall represent on their bodies the form of a temple.”
The physiological purpose of the pubic hair is to prevent irritation of the genital organs by the sweat that would otherwise run down upon them, and to protect the skin from direct friction during the act of copulation.
The labia majora in women during the menacme are usually strongly developed, their outer surface is hairy; in parous women we almost invariably observe small or even large lacerations of the frænulum pudendi or fourchette, in front of the posterior commissure of the vulva. On the inner surface also of the labia majora, the general characters of which are those of mucous membrane rather than of skin, fine hairs are also to be found. In multiparæ, and even in women who have frequently had sexual intercourse, these inner surfaces of the labia majora are not usually any longer in mutual contact, so that the rima urogenitalis or vulval cleft gapes more or less. In well-nourished women who have led the “sheltered life,” the dense and fat-containing connective tissue of the labia majora (continuous with and similar to that of the mons Veneris) gives these structures a certain firmness and elasticity, and the labia minora or nymphæ do not project beyond them. But when the genital organs are not well preserved, projection of the nymphæ occurs. In women whose genital organs are beautifully formed, the nymphæ are of a soft, delicate consistency, and their mucous membrane is of a pink color; but when the reproductive organs have been subjected to excessive stimulation, the nymphæ are dry, hard, brown in color, and they project from the vulval cleft. In women of the Hottentot and Bosjesman races, the nymphæ attain, as is well known, an excessive length, forming the so-called “Hottentot-apron;” and in certain other indigenous races of Africa, the enormous size of these organs renders resection necessary.
During this sexual epoch, in women with strong sexual passion and having frequent sexual intercourse, the clitoris is largely developed, and sometimes the dorsum of the organ protrudes from between the anterior extremities of the labia majora.