Hope you all had a great Christmas and the months of madness leading up to it were worth the effort. It’s a busy family time, so I’ve not had much SL time this past week, but normal service is now resumed in the ‘Keng’ household, at least until next year.

All being well, I’ll have three naturist holidays in 2012 (two and a long weekend, more accurately) and, a bit of shopping aside, an almost 365 day naturist existence in Second Life. Maybe I’ll meet some of you inworld in the course of the year ahead.

I picked up this article in Jezebel magazine today, which asks the question ‘Is public hair coming back into fashion?’ My old friend Emmanuelle was a big pubic hair fan on her blog, and there are many posts on there about pubes. It was a topic of hot discussion amongst the staff of her 2ex blog (and inworld group) on several occasions, and I recall us discussing Naomi Wolf writing in New York magazine about a pubic generational divide. It’s also cited in the Jezebel article, which also notes Crystal Renn’s Vogue shoot, in which she is beautifully furry.

What has all of this got to do with SL? I tp’ed into the Nearly Tactile pubic hair store earlier and, damn!, if it wasn’t almost standing room only. It rather looks as though a lot of ladies (and guys too) are buying up pubic hair, and my own observations from some of SL’s naturist sims suggest that ladies are no longer prepared to be ‘as featureless as Barbie’ (as the Jezebel article accurately, IMO, puts it).

When I started in SL, three years ago, I felt I was the only one being ‘natural’ in the sims. I stuck with the look, as ‘Ella’ certainly reflects the real me to a scary degree -SL isn’t an alternate fantasy existence, but more an extension of the person who shoves the avatar around the grid and writes these words- and now I feel kind of vindicated. Wherever you are in SL in 2012, it rather seems there will be more pubic hair on display, either on the naturist beaches or in the private boudoirs.