We seriously doubt any guy would retreat if he came to find you had the “wrong” downstairs hairstyle, but a new study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine shows that most men prefer hair-free lady parts.

For the study, researchers asked 1,110 college-aged men and women how they maintained their pubic hair, the reasons behind their styles, and how they preferred their sexual partners groom down below.

It turns out, the vast majority of both men and women keep things tidy down there: Ninety-five percent of the study participants had trimmed or removed at least some of their pubic hair in the past four weeks.

Meanwhile, half of women and one in five men said they typically went hair-free. Both men and women were more likely to groom if they expected to receive oral sex soon.

Of the bushy minority (the five percent who didn’t groom), the overwhelming majority was guys.

Most of the men surveyed said that, in the past four weeks, they had either trimmed a bit or just let their hair go wild.

Funny—since 60 percent of the men surveyed preferred their partners to be hair-free. The remaining guys said they liked their partner to have some down-there hair, were up for several styles, or flat-out said it didn’t matter to them. (For the record, women were pretty much split four ways between preferring dudes hair-free, partially shaved/waxed, trimmed but without any actual hair removal, and not caring one way or another.) 
 

“These results suggest pubic hair removal patterns and preferences are related to gender norms and reflect how the beauty ideal can vary by gender,” says lead study author Scott M. Butler, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant director of the School of Health and Human Performance at Georgia College.

Hence why, if you are going to de-hair your nether region, the best reason to do so is because it's your preference, says Butler, who notes that some women said they waxed because it made them feel clean and made sex more comfortable.

And on the flip side, if you squirm at the thought of having an aesthetician between your legs or don't feel like breaking out a razor on the regular, that’s totally cool, too.