I'm going to start out this article with an insane, mind-blowing, completely unbelievable statement:
Women have body hair.
WHOA! Who would have ever thought? Geez, I must be getting carried away.
Now I know what you're thinking: Obviously women have body hair, that's nothing new.
However, contrary to common sense, many of the people I've met believe women should be hairless. They believe women are meant to be hairless.
But it's not just people around me, it's our society as a whole.
Our world presents women as smooth and silky barbie dolls way out of the norms of nature.
This obsession with hairless women is detrimental in more ways than one.
To state the obvious, shaving has its costs. With all the other products women are expected to buy in order to "feel good about themselves," we end up spending much of our time and paychecks on fitting into the societal notion of beauty.
Shaving creates another standard for women to live by. Not only do we have to watch eating, exercise, hair, and keeping acne in check, we have the recurring chore of shaving our bodies.
This standard becomes more harmful when it's taken to a new level; that is, when it becomes an expectation.
This article isn't about shaming women who shave. Shaving really should come down to a personal preference. But we must question why it has been made into an expectation rather than a preference.
While it is okay to have preferences about hair or other parts of a woman's body, the way in which one shares these preferences is extremely important.
For example, the video by YouTube star Nash Grier "What Guys Look for in Girls" in which Grier shared that he even found arm hair unappealing on girls, was done in a way that formulated expectations.
The video has since been removed, but here's a link to an awesome response video that goes further into the contents of the original video.
Yet it's obviously not just men perpetuating these expectations.
This promotion video done by Schick and Skintimate for the new Pitch Perfect 2 movie really plots women against each other. The songs in the video attempt to come off as light-hearted and catchy but hold dire messages within.
When I first watched the video, lines such as "I must confess I had my fuzzy legs in my sweatpants", "I'm like a cactus I've got thorny thighs I can barely dance" and "she got more numbers than the stock exchange cause she kissed her thorny legs bye bye" filled me with anger.
Women singing to other women about how they are "cactuses" and certainly won't be liked if they don't shave is almost worse than a man doing so. By using women, we see a reflection of ourselves in the advertising and are more likely to feel the need to buy the product because we see other women using it.
Not to mention the outright absurdity that the women shaving in these commercials are already hairless. A woman's body hair cannot even be shown on an advertisement about removing it!
The typical areas of hair women are expected to remove include the armpits, legs, and (at least partially) the vulva. Some take their hair removal to their face, getting rid of peach fuzz in fear of looking like they have a mustache; some become self-conscious of their arm hair and seek to remove that as well.
Shaving is not only a financial and time-consuming feat, but most of all, because it has become an expectation among women, we feel the inherent need to do it to be accepted by others. It is not a choice, it's an obligation.
If we choose not to shave, we are immediately disregarded as different, unhygienic, or attempting to make some sort of "feminist statement" through our presence of hair.
Men with hair are strived after and fantasized about. Facial hair is more often than not seen as an attractive feature for men.
They can choose to shave their faces or leave them hairy, and whatever they decide to do, they aren't ridiculed for that choice as women are.
Here we arrive at a double standard: A man choosing not to shave his face may be seen as attractive, while a woman doing the same with her armpit hair is tossed aside as an "outspoken feminist".
I have been ridiculed for the lack of hair on my head and the presence of hair on my armpits and legs.
For me, not shaving came down to more of a comfortability with myself and meer laziness rather than some sort of statement; but either way, why must it be looked down upon?
Even more so, why is my body consistently turned into a political battleground? My choice of whether or not to shave should be my business. And I shouldn't have to explain myself in regard to those choices. None of us should.
So I leave you with questions to think about:
Why do we deem women's bodies unacceptable, and even repulsive, in its natural state?
Why must we remove a part of ourselves to be considered "normal" or beautiful?
Why is the focus for women always on beauty, rather than other attributes?
It's something I'm continually pondering. I hope others begin to as well. Then we can take the next step:
What will we do about it?
