IN A discreet London clinic, 32-year-old Emma is lying on a couch, naked from the waist down, nervously waiting for a white-coated therapist to start work.IN A discreet London clinic, 32-year-old Emma is lying on a couch, naked from the waist down, nervously waiting for a white-coated therapist to start work.The last time she was in this position, 10 years ago, she was spending £2000 (about R46000) on laser hair removal designed to deforest her lady garden for good.She'd previously been having monthly Hollywood waxes to remove every last hair from her nether regions. They were expensive, painful and inconvenient, so when her salon introduced a laser it made sense to go permanently bare. Six painful and expensive sessions later, she achieved her wish. Her garden was now a desert. A happy ending? Not quite.Today, Emma is about to undergo an even more excruciating - and nearly as costly - new treatment that she hopes will cause those expensively obliterated pubic hairs to flourish again. Because it seems Emma is one of what seems to be a growing number of women suffering from what's been dubbed "Hollywood regret" and she's turned to Victoria Smith, director of Absolute Aesthetics, in London, for help.The treatment is platelet-rich plasma therapy, and it's similar to the "vampire" facial made famous by Kim Kardashian. It involves drawing blood from the patient's arm, separating out the platelets rich in growth-factor, and then injecting them back into the skin.This therapy is better known for skin rejuvenation, with Kim and other celebrities among its fans. But studies also suggest that it can coax dormant hair follicles back to life.When Smith introduced the £1300 treatment to her clinic 18 months ago, it was mostly for balding males and the odd over-plucked eyebrow."When Emma told me she wanted her pubic hair to grow back, I was surprised - but I agreed to try it," said Smith.She added that Emma's case is not unique: "Some women who see me about hair-loss also mention that they wish they hadn't had their pubic hair lasered away."Emma's change of heart is representative of a bigger shift in attitudes towards down-there hair. Online, you'll find women who have used hair-restoring lotions on their lasered bald bits (even though manufacturers advise against its use on sensitive skin), and in South Korea pubic hair transplants are actually "the thing".In 1999, Gwyneth Paltrow said that her bikini waxes "changed her life". But by 2013 she had U-turned and said, "I rock a '70s vibe down there."Cameron Diaz has also written in defence of the "lovely curtain of pubic hair that surrounds that glorious, delicate flower of yours", and actress Gaby Hoffmann appeared naked, unwaxed and proud on US TV series Girls. So what's behind the bare backlash?Emma, newly married and planning a family, explained: "I'd started to wonder what my children would say if they saw that mummy had no hair down there."It felt prepubescent not to have anything at all and I felt really uncomfortable about it. It was such a big trend 10 years ago, but it feels wrong for the person I am now," she said."My mother warned me not to do it," she said resignedly. "I wish I'd listened to her."Olivia, 38, a London mother of two girls aged 12 and eight, stopped having Brazilian waxes which remove all hair bar a thin "landing strip", a year ago out of a similar feeling of unease."I started having waxes in my 20s," she said. "Friends were all talking about it, it was on Sex and the City and it seemed like fun."But then, as my elder daughter got closer to puberty and I was telling her to embrace what was happening to her body, I felt like a hypocrite. I didn't want her to get on the waxing treadmill or give her unrealistic body-image pressure, so one day I told my husband 'I'm not doing that again' and found he didn't care either way."It's not just being a role model for her daughters that motivates Olivia."As I get older, and I've been married 14 years, I feel I don't need to do it any more. It was a fad, part of that self-indulgent, conspicuous consumption, fake look, along with permanent make-up, French manicures and fake tan. It just seems a bit naff now," she said.The porn industry's enthusiastic adoption of the pubic-hair-free look has also put some women off the trend. So perhaps it's not surprising that a recent UK poll found that 51% of British women didn't trim or wax at all - with 45% admitting they "could no longer be bothered to keep up the grooming"."Like a lot of my friends, I gave up waxing when I had a baby," said Julia, 41, an academic, whose daughter is now two. "It seemed too much effort. Anyway, it would have shown my Caesarean scar. That alone makes me grateful I didn't have it lasered."Megan, 46, says: "It looked OK when I was young and slim, but now being bare seems a bit try-hard, and makes me look fatter."At Strip, the UK chain of wax bars frequented by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Victoria Beckham, director Maria-Louise Featherstone was so worried that her clients would regret permanently removing all their hair that when she introduced laser hair removal to her salons she also created the Laser Wax.Back on the couch, Victoria Smith infuses Emma's pubis with dental anaesthetic through a cannula and then applies a thick layer of local anaesthetic."It's a very sensitive area," she explained. "I'll only treat the top and front, not underneath. I've warned her that this might not work because she had laser treatment so long ago."Emma then endures dozens of injections, which leave her sore and badly bruised. This causes some consternation, as it turns out she hadn't told her husband what she was going to do."I suppose I'll have to tell him now," she said.Six weeks later, Emma reports her husband was surprised but supportive. - ©The Sunday Telegraph..