Judy Wearing was a PhD student at Oxford studying mating behaviour when she had a thought that has apparently haunted her ever since: what is the actual purpose of pubic hair? Or armpit hair? Or any of our body's furry patches? When the published literature failed to provide satisfying answers, Wearing decided to investigate herself - because nothing says "academic rigor" like spending three decades on a question nobody else bothered to ask.

Her aim was to shed light on why we evolved these particular patches, with pubic hair proving the most puzzling of all. Was it for warmth? Protection? Or something else entirely? Thirty years later, Wearing is still tangling with those questions, which is either admirable dedication or a sign that the academic job market is truly brutal.

Now an author and editor (largely in the education sector), Wearing has revisited her fascination with hair in a new book, *Anxious and Hairy: The Evolution and Culture of Human Hair*, exploring its unexpectedly dense and layered place in our history and psyche. Even Wearing was surprised by where her research took her, and by the mysteries that remain unsolved. "A lot of these questions, no one's actually looked at," she says over Zoom, presumably while running a hand through her own hair.

The article promises a mere snip of the fascinating facts she's uncovered - including why baldness is super-masculine, how a pubic bush could be a "cheating detector," how our armpits betray our emotions, why some gentlemen really do prefer blondes, and the reason we evolved to have eyebrows. So if you've ever wondered why you have hair in places you'd rather not think about, congratulations: you're about to find out, whether you wanted to or not.