You can always tell when various groups are trying to flag something up as 'a cause for concern'. Both the right and the left have got it down to a fine art now – a series of unconnected articles in different newspapers, websites and blogs, suddenly drawing attention to something that has been going on for years and hyping it into an issue that suddenly, urgently needs to be dealt with. Be it internet porn, violent video games, happy hour in pubs, fast food or whatever social issue newspaper hacks and editors have decided is Unacceptable.

In the last month of so, I've seen a few articles cropping up about pubic hair – or, more accurately, the removal of it. Paranoia about pubes has become a bit of an obsession for the extremist divisions of the right and the left over the few months. It's been a bête-noire for Guardian Comment Is Free columnists for a while of course, but now we have the BBC, The Independent and others climbing on the bandwagon. In the Indie back in March, Louisa Saunders states (in a piece stridently called The Politics of Pubic Hair) that “shaved genitals have somehow become the new normal for an entire generation of women. Surely it’s time we asked why.” One might counter that surely it's none of your damned business what women - or men, for that matter - choose to do with their own bodies. But of course, the entire raison d'etre of newspaper columnists is to make a big deal about things that really don't matter and to turn the personal into the political. And like a dog with a bone, the floundering rag has run another three pieces that discuss the 'issue', directly or otherwise, since.

The BBC also weighed in on their website at the same time, warning of the medical dangers and infections that could result from “seeking a well-groomed bikini line”, as they delicately put it, though the scare story was somewhat undermined by the statement that pox virus molluscum contagiosum “usually clears up on its own and does not cause any symptoms other than raised red spots.” Pubic hair does, of course, exist for a reason, as anti-shavers love to point out. But then so does the rest of our hair, and no-one seems overly worked up about people shaving their heads or their armpits. So far, claims of what shaving could do in terms of infection haven't been followed with any actual evidence of what it has done.

What goes without saying is that none of the writers currently 'debating' pubic shaving are claiming that it is a good thing. None of them seem to think that it is a personal choice that has nothing to do with them either. No, this is a Cause For Concern. It's something that people are not really doing through choice, but are instead being manipulated into thinking is acceptable by dubious outside forces. To paraphrase a Tory MP in the time of the Video Nasties, the public have made their choice but the public are wrong. Angry newspaper columnists know best. The idea that they, as people rejecting the choices of what they admit is the majority, are the ones who are out of step with the norm and in the wrong – well, that's just silly.

It is, of course, porn that is usually blamed for the trend. It's easy to understand why. Not only do these writers disapprove of porn in general to begin with, but it's within the adult industry that the trend is most obvious. We don't, after all, tend to see that many strangers naked from day to day, but porn allows us to see the newly hairless private parts of hundreds of performers. It must, therefore, be the fault of porn – another malicious influence on our soft-headed young people who watch this filth and think this is how people are supposed to look.

The problem with this theory is that it's one expounded by people with little actual experience of porn. As someone who has written about adult movies since the 1980s, and worked within the industry for some time, I can assure you that the theorists have got the chicken and egg situation backwards. Porn didn't start this trend, it simply followed it. I certainly remember that the gradual move towards the 'shaven haven' (as a once-specialist magazine was titled) - from basic trimming to landing strips to zero tolerance – was something I saw in real life a while before it became the norm in porn. My own experience is that all this began in the 1990s, hitting the fetish clubbers long before the porn stars. By the end of the decade, a hairless genital area wasn't an unusual sight.* Which makes you wonder why it has suddenly become such a hot potato now, a couple of decades on.

The rise in body grooming is, in fact, directly connected to the rise in body art. It's not unreasonable to think that a generation that increasingly sees tattooing and piercing as normal will want more control over the visual aesthetic of their body in general. If you have piercings, then you've already made that step to prettifying and emphasising that part of the body and you're probably not going to be inclined to hide them under a thatch of hair. If you are tattooed, then likewise you are turning your body into a work of art – it's unsurprising then that you might want that canvas to look its best. For many (though certainly not all) people, that means no hair. Of course, many of the people who are upset by pubic shaving are also upset by genital or nipple piercings, though they are often more reluctant to express that disapproval because doing so reveals their real problem – that ostentatious display of the genitals is unacceptably immodest.

What's also curious about the complaints is that no one seems to say what is acceptable. Are we supposed to let everything grow au naturel, or is some trimming of the foliage acceptable? And if so, how much? At what point does body grooming cross the line into unacceptability? If we are being told what to do with our own bodies, then surely we need full disclosure.

Saunders comments that she sees this as a feminist issue, and to a degree, she's right. Though it's certainly not a mainstream feminist issue. As far as I'm aware, most feminists see a woman's right over her own body as fundamental, and rightly so. I've known several women who trimmed or completely shaved their pubes, and if you suggested to them that they were bad feminists, they'd probably punch you in the face. And you'd probably deserve it.

But there are the extremists in any movement who view any variation from their own narrow orthodoxy as heresy. Given that it was a badge of honour for the extreme RadFems who rose to prominence in the 1980s to reject armpit and leg shaving, along with make-up and styled hair, as pandering the the male gaze and a media-created definition of 'beauty' - as was their right to choose to do - so pubic epilation is bound to have the same implications. Though of course, the 'let it grow' ethos was roundly rejected by 90% of women at the time and it must be frustrating to see that the situation has, if anything, become 'worse'.

The idea that modern women might not toe the party line – that they might actually exercise their individual freedom of choice instead of switching from one form of oppression to another – is one that they seem find hard to stomach. Surely no woman would reject these dictates by choice? And so we are told that the trend is because of the malicious influence of internet porn, of male demands or – most idiotically – because of some paedophile fantasy that wants to turn women into hairless child-women (though quite how this fits with that other porn staple, the boob job, is never quite explained). After all, the other explanation – that these women, perfectly capable of thinking for themselves and making their own choices, have simply decided that they find the shaven look more aesthetically (and possibly sexually) pleasing – is unpalatable.

On the Right, pubic waxing is equally distressing. Not only is it related to the evil porn merchants in the minds of religious and moralistic zealots, but it also seems an ostentatious display – an attempt to bring the previous hidden and dirty female genitalia into the open, possibly even drawing attention to it. My God, not only are women shaving their pubes, but they can even buy 'vajazzling' kits in Poundland! No matter that classical images of Adam and Eve are hairless – the removal of pubic hair is seen as nothing more than a brazen display of sexuality and wantonness. After all, they will argue, why prettify your privates unless you intend to make them public? Another group who shout loudly but actually have little public support, the religious Right are continually mortified that, despite their best efforts, people are still having, and enjoying sex. They are, at least, more open in their fear of sexuality, but their arguments are no less fatuous. No one is stopping the religious from loathing their genitalia, but that does not give them the right to dictate what others do with theirs. But as they know - control what someone can do with their own genitals and you control their entire sexuality. And then you control them. No wonder they focus their attention on women.

But of course it's not just women who are preferring the hairless look. Look at any media image of a hunky man with his shirt off and you won't see a single hair on their body. No male model is going to get work with a hirsute torso. In fact, hairy chests have become associated with the 1970s, but that isn't because there has been a sudden genetic shift in the last few decades. Men are not suddenly growing up devoid of hair. Chest shaving and the 'back, sack and crack' trend suggest that men too are falling for the depilated fashion, though I don't recall anyone suggesting that they are removing chest hair because women want to see them as children. Are they too pressured by porn? Or is it simply that a generation of men, like women, have seen the groomed look and decided that they like it?

In the end, all this gnashing of teeth is really just a sign of frustration. Frustration that, despite all the newspaper columns, the tweeting and the hand wringing, most people are continuing to think for themselves and to behave accordingly. How awful it must be to know better than everyone else, only for them to ignore your wise words and make their own decisions. And for all the anger, what the hell can they actually do about it? Ban razors, waxing and body trimmers? Reclassify any image of a hairless vagina as child porn? I suspect some people would like to do both, but in the real world, it's not going to happen.

Personally, I don't give a damn what someone chooses to do with / to their own body. I have my preferences, of course, but my opinion on the matter is nothing more than that – a personal one. If you want to be as hairy as a werewolf, that's fine; if you prefer to be as smooth as a billiard ball, that's fine too. It's really none of my business. And it's none of anyone else's either. Leave people to do what they want to their pubic hair – grow it, shave it, sculpt it, dye it or use it as a work of art or political expression – it really doesn't matter. Whatever makes you feel happy. Either way, unlike most body modification, it's not permanent or invasive – if you change your mind either way, it's easily 'fixed' - and despite attempts to claim otherwise, clearly isn't causing a public (or pubic) health epidemic. Unlike the shrill and desperate columnists, I really don't think that it's an issue worth getting worked up over.

* Of course, the hairless look was common – in fact, legally essential – in 1960s nude photography, though no-one seems to be suggesting that it led to a spate of copycat trimming.