Saturnalia, QED

Dagmar wasn't prepped for surgery; she (obviously!) was not about to give birth. No, she was about to take part in a saturnalia. QED. [1, p. 15]

This is an interesting one. A saturnalia is supposed to be a celebration of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and harvest, which was celebrated with unrestrained merrymaking. Emphasis on unrestrained. In one of my previous posts, it is mentioned that on this fantasy planet, there is a festival called Fiesta, or as we later find out, La Fiesta de Santa Carolita. It is hinted fairly strongly that this festival involves large outdoors orgies. The ancient Roman Saturnalia likely also included orgies, so the description is appropriate.

QED is a sort of acronym meaning quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for "which was to be demonstrated". It is used by mathematicians at the end of a proof in order to indicate that they are done, and to indicate that their initial supposition has been definitively proven correct. In this case, Heinlein posited that women who shave their pubic hair are unrestrained hedonists. He then goes on to use Dagmar as evidence of this: she is shaven down there and she is about to engage in a Saturnalia. In the previous paragraph (not quoted here), he posits that there are essentially only two other reasons why a woman's pubic hair would be shaven: in preparation for some kind of vaginal surgery, or as preparation to give birth, and that she was not about to engage in either of these activities. This leaves the only other option: unrestrained sex. Thus, he has proven his point beyond refutation, and thus ends his "proof" with QED. Thus, you can think of QED as being a synonym for "I have thus proven my point, and therefore rest my case." Dagmar is a female nurse who is about to perform a procedure on the protagonist, by the way. Because this book was published in 1987, Dagmar likely refers to Virginia Ruth Egnor (or later, Virginia Lewis, after marriage). She was a famous model/actress who played a dumb blond called Dagmar, with Dagmar being a German and Danish name meaning "dear great" and "day maid" respectively.