While I don't believe my pussy looks like a child's when it's hairless (mostly because I have a developed clitoris and labia that I distinctly remember not being that way when I was a child), it's true that the porn industry is what made it appealing to people. They've proven that the porn material you watch can influence what you get aroused by, to the point that men who aren't pedophiles start getting erections when they see their baby girl naked, because they've been so trained to see that kind of genitals associated with sex.
And since porn stars often also have surgery on their labia to make sure nothing "sticks out" (which by the way is counter-intuitive if the only point was to make it so people could see everything, it's quite obvious that it's not the only reason here).
I personally don't think the idea was to make women look like children, though, but like dolls. Dolls have nothing showing, they're smooth everywhere, they don't have discoloration around their asshole, etc. So to achieve that "plastic" look porn introduced shaved/waxed everything (except what the barbie doll has: head hair and eyebrows, the later still needing to be trimmed to look the "right" way). And yes, it changed what people react to, but the point wasn't to make them children, it was to make them objects, to remove their humanity and animality (what's more animal that hairs when you're a mammal?)
It is a shame when people start to require it or become unable to orgasm or get excited without it, and it's definitely a matter of habit (I've noticed a similar thing with attraction towards males, in North America people seem to find circumcised penises to look better, and uncircumcised ones to look "weird". Believe me, people don't think that way in Europe where less that 1% of males are circumcised.
Now, does it hurt anyone if you do shave? Not really. But being asked to is definitely something that makes me more than uncomfortable. It means "you must match what I've seen in porn" rather than porn reflecting real life.
Anyway. My husband shaves sometimes. I don't like the way it looks at all, but it's his decision to make. I hate when it's growing back though, because it hurt having sex, the hairs scratch my clitoris and it's very painful. It's also less enjoyable when he's bald than when he has all of his hairs, because there are no hairs to stimulate me as he trusts in and out, meaning my clitoris gets no stimulation instead of getting tons.
Anyways, it's definitely not normal to be turned off by hairs, when hairs have been until so recently the thing that made adults arousing and children not arousing. I wished people with hairs had representation in porn (as well as everywhere else in the media, really, because I don't limit that to just pelvic hairs), because some women being shaved, bleached and implanted is fine, but if you can't find anything else, or have to look for it specifically, we're just training new generations of teenagers to be attracted to things that don't exist naturally, and making it hard for people to make a decision of what they want to do with their bodies.
I know people often think I'm overreacting when I say things like those, but as someone who, for several years, made the decision not to shave anything (not my pelvis, not my legs, not my armpits, etc), I'm only too aware of the hate speech you can get just walking in the streets. And that makes no sense to me, and in the end even I was pressured into shaving again just so I can walk in the street without being insulted or having children point at me like I'm some sort of circus freak.
I mean think about it. I merely made the decision not to alter my body, and somehow that made me dirty, disgusting,obscene to children, someone who didn't take care of herself, someone who couldn't expect anyone to ever be attracted to her, etc.
I certainly resent the fact that I now spend hours every week changing myself, giving myself the message that the real me is ugly and I need not to be it, only to be able to go get groceries in peace. It just wasn't worth it in the end, but it's hours every week doing something I don't really have a reason to do, except knowing that I'll be discriminated against if I don't.
And I still can't wrap my head around thinking it's the way it should be, that people should go through something they find uncomfortable and painful (even shaving leads to razor burns, itchiness and ingrown hairs, waxing/epilating is of course even worse pain-wise) before they can be "normal". Shouldn't "normal" be the way people are in the first place?
I mean imagine if we as a society thought everyone needed to have a tattoo, otherwise they're gross and unfuckable, and so people who weren't interested in tattoos in the first place had to go through getting one just so people would leave them alone. You'd probably think "well obviously, everyone who wants a tattoo should be free to have one. But in all logic, that would be the exception, not the rule".
I feel the same about body hair. How many people would have decided to shave if they had never seen anyone shaven, and just came up with the idea on their own? Most people don't make the decision, they just follow what they've been told, and that kind of sucks, because people really should be given personal freedoms about things like that.
I don't like shaving. It hurts, I sweat more and stink as a result, it takes a lot of time, it feels less nice and when I look at myself, I feel like a plucked chicken.
And I really dislike that it's spreading to men too. It feels like at some point someone thought "hey, women are supposed to shave body hairs but men aren't, that's not fair", and instead of making it so that everyone could decide either way, they concluded "let's make it so men are supposed to shave as well".
I don't think that one is porn-related as much as it is about cosmetic companies thinking they'd make more money if they also sold products to men.
I mean, it could be porn-related. But really, you can see a guy's junk regardless of how long his hairs are, unless he's really small, and porn actors definitely aren't. And the interesting parts of a man's penis to show on camera are at the tip of it, not the base. And as for the doll thing, that would presumably only apply to gay/bi porn, where a man is the object of desire (women notoriously prefer other forms of porn than the visual one, so pictures and videos are rarely targeted to them).
Well, I wasn't expecting to rant for so long! I'm not saying shaving is wrong, bad or anything. I'm fine with it, I just wish it was a decision that wasn't made for me. And while I know I can make the decision not to shave, I also know the consequences of that, and they're even worse.