evaluate your reasons for wanting to remove your body hair

Armpit Hair
Arm Hair
Leg Hair

This page looks at the reasons women and girls often give for removing body hair. It agknowledges but also challenges each reason.

Most of us can identify with the reasons, but the question I think women should be asking is, are the reasons good enough to warrent body modification?

Do you remove your body hair to please strangers?

Many people feel they have the right not only to make judgements about the people they see in the street but also comment on their appearance. To safeguard against negative comments and to make sure they appeal to people they are yet to meet, women tend to pay particular attention to grooming, something hair removal has become an intergral part of. But why let the opinions of strangers govern what you do?

Negative comments by strangers can be surprisingly hurtful. We often worry about how we are perceived, whether we think we care or not. If you trip over and flash your undies to a busload of complete strangers, you still find yourself blushing.

Close friends are not afraid to make criticisms, listen and think about what those who know you well say. Learn to recognise the comments that are immature and judgemental, and learn to dismiss them. At the end of the day, you're the only one who lives in your body.

You will find that with leaving your body hair the way it grows, you develop the ultimate body confidence knowing you're beautiful just the way you are. ~ Genevieve, 20, NZ

 

Do you remove your body hair to please friends?

Ask yourself if your friends would like you any less if you didn’t shave. If you can honestly say that, without a doubt, they would disown you in disgust … well then they are not being very friend-like. A lot of people, male and female alike, haven’t realised that shaving isn’t a requirement; that hairlessness doesn’t mean desirability and acceptability in everyone’s mind. Perhaps you can be the one that opens your friend’s eyes to another option; the alternative; the idea that it isn’t really necessary to follow the crowd and become hairless again as you were as a child.

 

Do you remove your body hair to please your partner or appeal to someone whose opinion you care about?

A lot of people, even when they decide shaving is a waste of energy and effort, still feel like they won’t be desirable to their partners or to potential partners if they’re not shaved. Why?

Hair grows at puberty as we approach adulthood and goes hand in hand with sexuality and maturity. People's aversion to hair is often conditioned into them because it is sold to them over and over again through advertisements, glossy magazines and other visual media. It is ‘a look’ we’re familiar with.

The good news is that the reality of hair often opens people’s eyes to the beautiful truth of it. People who are adverse to the idea initially have been known to change their mind once they get the chance to see and get used to the idea of a hairy woman. Some people even prefer hair and are passionate about their preference.


CASE STUDY - cheyborg neckmonster
quoted from LiveJournal (here)

"Body hair is not ugly. For a long time I accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be pretty without shaving my underarms and my legs, that I wouldn’t attract anyone (even friends!) if I had body hair where it “shouldn’t” be. Unable to disassociate myself from the expectations of others (and of myself), I was stuck in a vicious cycle of cutting myself with razors, destroying my skin, and undermining my self-esteem. Once I stopped, it became easier and easier to see my hair as a natural function of my body and nothing that any taboo should be associated with. I have been letting my leg hair grow for almost two years now, and it’s stayed at a fairly short length. (This may be because I ’m Irish and I don’t have very thick hair on my limbs anyway.) Body hair is natural and beneficial. Hair is on the body in various places to help regulate body temperature-- you lose lots of heat from your scalp when it’s cold; your hair keeps the heat loss in check. This principle also applies to the underarms and pubic areas-- places where glands and organs need to stay at a fairly constant (healthy) temperature. We get goosebumps when it’s cold outside because of an evolutionary memory of raising our arm or leg hairs to trap heat as a regulatory measure; these hairs seem pretty useless now."

~ cheyborg neckmonster (above)


Body hair is a sign of maturity, like breasts, it appears at puberty. Image by Kell Doley.
E. Moly
Jo
Madie

Do adverts make you feel you should remove your body hair?

Advertising and similar media are skilled at making people feel they should shave and be hairless for all sorts of false and often farcical reasons - see Why The Constructed Body: Advertising. It is important to remember that an advertisements sole purpose is to sell a product. Behind every advert is a company whose primary goal is profit. They want to make money off you by convincing you that you need what they have to sell, even if you don’t. Try not to place your trust in ads so readily. Most of the methods used to sell you a product are tricks. To become less susceptible to these techniques look into how they’re used - see Why The Constructed Body: Semiotics.

On Kaz Cooke’s website completely GORGEOUS she explains a few things that it might find helpful to keep in mind:

“Magazines regularly run stories about new hair products, some claiming ‘technological breakthroughs’ in shampoo, conditioner, colour or removal. The last thing they want you to do is leave it alone and stop spending money on your furry bits.

And remember, the more you do to your hair, the more you risk damaging it through heat, chemicals and harassment…

Anyway, do you think articles on hair removal have anything to do with the accompanying ads? What about the ‘promotions’, in which what is basically an ad for hair-removal products is presented like a typical story with the magazine’s layout and design style and a file photograph of a model with shorn legs? Let’s get this straight. Magazines are unlikely to run a whole page of stuff on hair removal unless somebody is directly or indirectly paying for it.”

Advertisements continue to encourage men and women to look upon hairy armpits as objectionable by refusing to represent the minority of hairy women and pro-hairy men.

The September 2003 issue of Elle magazine features a hairless model (Britney?) on its cover which helps sell the magazine by appealing to, and reinforcing, the hairless ideal. (see image, left).

Ads for female razors and waxes are another major culprit. (See The Sexual Feminine: Veet Cream)
American advertisements were encouraging men and women to look upon hairy armpits as objectionable as early as 1915 when the advert (below) was featured in the May issue of Harper's Bazaar (a magazine aimed at American high society at that time).
 

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