Below the Bikini Line, a Growing Trend

Gwyneth Paltrow referred to the more natural look of the 1970s when describing her bikini area on last spring’s press tour for the movie “Iron Man 3.” Lady Gaga posed on the cover of the Winter 2013-14 issue of Candy magazine in full pubic bloom. And then the actress Gaby Hoffmann appeared naked, with an untrimmed thicket, in the film “Crystal Fairy and The Magical Cactus” and on the television show “Girls” (playing a similar troubled but free-spirited character in both).

In an interview, Ms. Hoffmann said she simply prefers a fuller style on herself. “If I just stay true to what I like, every decade or so I come into fashion,” she said, adding that her experiments with hair removal have been limited. “I grew up with a lot of naked women with big bushes,” she said. “It never occurred to me to remove it. I was going to a friend’s wedding in southern France. I knew she would be tickled if I showed up with my bikini line waxed. I got it, and it was a first. I find it uncomfortable.”

She is equally uncomfortable, though, with the attention she is getting for the look. “It’s one of those topics that unfortunately is a conversation that won’t be over until we get over our weird puritanical obsessions with sex and the female figure,” Ms. Hoffmann said.

Grumpy puritanical conservative-type that I am, I consider it the end of civilized civilization that this is a national conversation (particularly involving individual people). Obviously, though, Peter has a vested interest in such things.