Pubic hair hasn't ever been my favorite variety of hair. But recently I saw an article about the return of women's pubic hair and I got to thinking about it. When I started reading I was looking forward to some good news. But even within this notice about a "change" there are jokes about not wanting women to be too hairy.
Of course, in my teens and early 20s I went with the mainstream brainwashing that a woman's hair on anything but a her head would be too manly. In those days (80s and 90s) some women had begun the pubic shaving fad, but it wasn't so popular that "everyone" was doing it. I can remember feeling ugly and masculine if I didn't have baby's butt smooth legs. A classmate once teased me because I hadn't shaved my thighs.
Thankfully, my husband doesn't subscribe to the hairy = manly theory. It was soon after I realized he accepted me as I am that I freed myself from the shaving nightmare. If I lived a truly authentic life consistent with my values, I'd stop shaving everything and embrace every little hair on my body. I still find it nice to occasionally shave my shins -- especially before bed. The slipping around in the sheets feels lovely. I also tend to my armpits with every shower. I've got friends now who don't shave their pits, and I can see how even that doesn't make them any less feminine or womanly. It's something I, so far, haven't gotten past.
This fear of female hair we have in this country intersects on several levels with our obsession with the perfect female (ultra thin) body. It's maddening.
Watching ice skating a few days ago, a usually very well-informed woman said to me, "After Katarina Witt had her baby her body changed so much it's no longer a beautiful thing to watch her." We were watching her as she said it. At first, I was outraged. The woman was beautiful. Some woman's curves, sure, but very healthy looking (and that isn't a euphemism for overweight). As we watched, though, I realized how we've been trained to see a lithe, almost hipless slender woman as the most beautiful skater. I hated that I watched her and saw some clunkiness to her performance. She skated beautifully. But, she looked like a grown-up woman and that didn't meet our expectations.
This is all maddening. How can I bring my daughter up believing we are loved exactly as we are? She already sees what my niece does just to "get ready" to go somewhere. She knows I shave my armpits and sometimes my legs. She hears women talking about gaining or losing weight, not related at all to health.
That a culture has its standards of beauty, I can accept. But there is a deep-seated fear in this country that forces extremes in our definition of femininity. Keep women as child-like as possible so we know they aren't too powerful. Skinny and hairless. Breasts are fine, but if they get too big they're something to comment on. I won't even get into the lengths women go with high-heeled shoes and hours of body pruning, trimming, and coloring.
How are we supposed to accept and love ourselves when the only real beauty is hairless and thin? I'm disgusted by the conditions we place on our own beauty (*if* I were thinner, *if* I shave/pluck/remove those hairs, *if* I'm wearing makeup). I look forward to the day when we love our roundness (or our thinness, if that's what's healthy for you) and our natural hair growth. If nothing else, I can't help but think of the thousands of women who won't have to deal with what I can only imagine must be the most excrutiatingly uncomfortable stubble growth between their legs.
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Saturday, December 27, 2008
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4 comments:
Yeah, I remember a calculus teacher I had way back when in 1979 (first semester of college, U of I) -- she was a great-looking woman, very feminine, also some sort of athlete, had a boyfriend, but DID NOT SHAVE HER LEGS! It was completely obvious, and everyone stared for the first few classes, but then, eh, no big deal. Kinda cool.
Totally spot on. A darker read on hairlessness in women is a kind of masked pedophilia...but I think that's not the main cause. Hair has been considered ugly in men, too -- increasingly in contemporary middle-class America, but in the past, too. Hair = animalistic = not divine...? Anyway, it's all pretty unhealthy.
Though I would like the hair to stop growing on my ears!
Re your remark about the way the ice skater looked: I haven't shaved anything in most of a decade (and don't plan to ever again). This means that I get kind of a frisson of shock when I see, say, movies with bare-pitted women. But, I STILL also get a small weird frisson when I see natural, behaired pits. I've gotten over my cultural conditioning enough to see the first as abnormal, but not enough to stop seeing the second as strange, at least on first glance. This just tells me this is all much harder to change on a cultural level than I'd wish it would be -- and that the whole culture needs to change.
But still, I prefer both on myself and on others natural legs and pits -- trim if you feel the need, but don't scrape bare, at least not for my sake. Once you get over the cultural shame, it feels so fabulous both physically and psychologically.
I can only sympathise with women who are made to feel they have to shave everything on a constant basis. Was a one time only deal for me.
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