When I lived in London in the early nineties, young single people who had yet to jump onto the property ladder often shared flats with strangers. Naturally, this was a hit-and-miss affair. When one of my less successful flatshares ended in a full-on, door-slamming row over the arrangement of personal belongings on a shelf (I know, I know), I found myself looking for a new flat-mate.
Amelia was one of the people I ‘interviewed’ and we hit it off straight away. She was a very direct, down to earth and funny northern lass who shared my love of Corrie’s Reg Holdsworth. She quickly became a good friend and confidante.
Amelia was also a very attractive woman who had an incredible effect on men. She was tall and toned with an enviable hourglass figure (we’re in Joan Holloway from Mad Men territory here). Combined with her natural self-confidence and world-class flirting skills, this meant that most men who met her were instantly smitten. She loved men, and sex, and if she wanted a particular man, she usually got him. The problem for the hapless men concerned was that she often became bored after a short time and moved on.
Well, talk about a trail of broken hearts. In those days before the mobile became ubiquitous, I soon got used to fielding calls from her discarded conquests.
Amelia had one other notable attribute, which, in hindsight, strikes me as almost incredible. She never removed any of her body hair.
Yes, Amelia was a stranger to the razor and the smelly depilatory cream. She never endured torture by wax strips. She happily wore vest tops and strappy dresses and wasn’t remotely bothered who saw her underarm or leg hair. When I asked her about this, she said she was doing it as a feminist statement. She was happy with the way she looked and, as a strong woman and a proud feminist who had read widely on the subject, didn’t see why she should remove her hair just to please men. She had a picture of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo on her bedroom wall, an artist whose self portraits usually depict her sporting a moustache and single eyebrow.
.jpg "Frida Kahlo")
Frida Kahlo, hairy heroine
Part of me envied her self-assurance, but I was never brave enough to emulate her. One of the reasons is that I am a much hairier person than Amelia. While she possessed light coloured, fine body hair, mine is thick and dark. If I didn’t regularly wield the tweezers I would soon resemble the long-lost, mono-browed sister of Liam and Noel Gallagher. If not kept in check, my legs would appear almost as hirsute as those of the average man. So I reluctantly get busy with the razor.
Actually, if I’m being honest, in the winter I do let things go a bit, knowing that I can hide away under long-sleeved tops, trousers and thick tights. Whenever I’m compelled to go through the deforestation routine (If I’m about to go swimming for example) I feel quite resentful of the whole business. Also, being very shortsighted, I always miss a few bits in the shower.
These days, even that would be seen by some as a radical admission of female slovenliness. In the years since I lived with Amelia, the notion has taken hold that women who fail to remove every stray hair from their bodies on an almost daily basis are somehow unfeminine, or even unhygienic. I have heard young men discussing the undesirability of girls who fail to keep their lady gardens closely trimmed. Radical waxing seems to have become the norm for the bikini area, to the extent that the complete removal of all body hair is not unusual. But the idea that women should want to make themselves look like pre-pubescent girls has always struck me as bizarre and, actually, a bit creepy.
I know that nowadays men also feel pressure to keep unruly eyebrows in trim or to do something about excessively hairy backs. But there is never any suggestion that their underarm hair is ‘dirty’, despite the fact that they sweat a lot more than women. I’ll never forget the furore caused by Julia Roberts when she dared to flash a bit of underarm hair at a film premiere (I think there was a similar incident involving – gasp! – a glimpse of female leg hair on the red carpet at this year’s Oscars). The whole thing struck me as completely ridiculous, but I think I was in the minority.
No doubt I will keep buying the razors and wax strips. But sometimes I just wish we could all be a bit more like Amelia.
Nice post, I really enjoyed reading that.
I think that the Gillettes of this world are really trying to promote a hair-free man ideal too, I keep seeing this ad on the TV for the Body Cruiser where the guy shaves his chest under the shower.
Admittedly I think that this has not caught on fully, I have certainly never had any pressure to shave anywhere except my face. I am very thankful for that because it would sure be a lot of hassle
It possibly hasn’t struck the young men who find any female body-hair a turn-off that there may be something wrong with them, not the ladies, and that men who don’t like real, flesh-and -blood women are not really much of a turn-on. Well, would you? Moderatio in omnis…including lady-gardening!
Fair play to Amelia and her ability to drive men crazy while still being hairy! It’s a clear achievement in our increasingly hairless world. I lived in London in the early 90s too! Back then myself and my flatmates all went on a brand of pill which made us mad hairy (said pill has been taken off the market since due to its skipload of after effects) and I’ve never really bothered shaving everything off since. I used to but then realised the ridiculous effort involved…for what? I tried wax strips once and nearly died of the pain….should they not come with an epidural of some sort? I’ve met men who were hairier than the woolly mammoth, layer upon layer of back hair spreading out and about like ivy on an Edwardian house and it wouldn’t even cross their minds to be self conscious about it. I don’t really see the point in cutting the grass in an endless summertime.
Great piece! While I can’t imagine not shaving/waxing the whole “Hollywood” wax job down there is really bizarre. I do not understand why men find this attractive, and I blame modern porn for encouraging this completely-bare, pre-pubescent look. And to the men who complain about “hairy” women: Try grooming that forest between your legs every so often. If you’re going to insist that women keep up with hair maintainence you should be doing it too.
Fantastic post!
I shaved under my arms for a wedding this weekend, for the first time in two years, and was surprised by what a relief it was. I abandoned the razor for the same reasons as your Amelia, but always feel slightly defensive when I am out with my armpits on display. I know I’ve showered that morning and wear anti-perspirant, I know men don’t shave under their arms and that’s just fine, but I still feel as though I am perpetrating a bit of a visual and hygienic outrage on unwitting witnesses.
So there you go. Being feminist and natural, it’s not all that simple, especially for someone who tries to be stylish everywhere else on her body, and does wear makeup. I think I will probably continue to swing between fashionably satiny pits and feministly furry ones, for each gives me a different sense of security. I won’t touch my legs with a razor, though, and as for the ‘bikini’ line… the very thought of depilating is horrific.
Did you watch that Channel 4 series on young people’s attitudes to sex? (I can’t remember what it was called but it focussed on school kids in Britain.) There were boys on that show who didn’t even know that girls were supposed to have pubic hair (all of their sex education/formation had come from porn) and the others said they wouldn’t dream of going near a girl who didn’t have a “shaven haven” – their words.
The girls were just as informed/shaped by the expectations of porn and admitted that they felt compelled to be entirely hair free if they wanted to seem attractive to the boys.
These young people were under a pressure that I never felt at their age (at 16, I would never have considered a Brazilian. It would never have crossed my mind and I’d have been petrified it if had.)
This issue isn’t going to go away…
No, I didn’t see that programme, but it sounds really depressing. Reminds me of that recent Anti-Room post by Amanda Brown about mothers taking their 10 year olds for bikini waxing. If they’re getting that negative message from their own mothers what hope do they have?
Catherine,
I found it quite shocking to be honest. And I’m not that easily shocked!
It’s 17 years since I was 15. That’s not that long ago in simple numerical terms but it seems light years away when you compare the attitude I had to my body (not a totally comfortable one but pretty healthy) to that of many young women today.
And bikini waxing for kids! Don’t get me started…
Great post! Love the sound of Amelia!
Ive had an internal battle with my own body hair for a long time, and most often veer between being bare and being extremely hairy depending on my mood/time of month/year etc. Im never embarrassed to have hair on display… and yet I do occasionally like the feeling of being completely hair free. I shaved my head before to get rid of dreads and found it liberating, this started my years of experimenting with hair-nohair.
I have dabbled with complete hair free-ness in the hollywood waxing department, because I wanted to experiment with hair vs baldness and see what it felt like to “go bare”. It was actually a great experience overall but the pain of waxing was such that it wont be repeated. I drew the line at decorating it with rhinestones though, an added bonus on the waxing salons menu….:-/
Great post. Like the first commenter said, it seems that the razor companies are trying to get men into shaving more, too – but I can’t say I’d find a guy who shaved attractive. As far as women go, I don’t have Amelia’s confidence – I wish I did – to forgo the razor, but I am baffled by the number of men who expect a woman to shave EVERYWHERE, and the women who do. Like you say, what is appealing about looking like you have yet to hit puberty?
My ex used to bug me to NOT shave (my face), she wanted me long-haired and bearded! I, on the other hand, kept shaving the scratchy stuff off
Why did she like this? I can see a simple explanation. Facial hair is associated strongly with men, not women. By growing a beard I would have been exentuating my masculinity, which she found attractive.
Presumably the same goes in the opposite direction. In various cultures women have exaggerated those biological traits that identify them as female (European corsets exaggerating curvy figures, Chinese binding emphasising feminine small feet). If body hair is more associated with masculinity then the absence of it is associated with femininity.
Great post… I wish I had the courage to be like the hairy flatmate but like the writer, I dont really. Although as winter approaches I will certainly take a much more relaxed approach to it all.
However as the mother of a 23 year old daughter, I find the whole waxing of your pubic hair really disturbing. All her friends do it, especially when going away. Its beyond weird and slightly scarey. But I suppose it goes with the whole sexualisation of girls – unless maximum amount of skin is on show, its not attractive. It the easy access to internet porn to blame? Or is it the music industry – so many female singers are now so overtly sexual. Oh I dunno… I am heading back to my rocking chair to continue my knitting before my head explodes!
Maybe there is a generational difference here, as it appears to be younger women who regard the full Brazilian wax as necessary/normal. Then again, I saw a Q&A with Anne Robinson somewhere recently where she revealed that she had just been to the salon for one. She strikes me as someone who is doing all she can to halt the march of time!
Frida Kahlo’s look and dressing, indeed her image,
was totally identified with her love of indigenous
mexico.
Her dressing was a political act which she turned into
image after image which she used to highlight the
separation between Fordism and The mexico she adored.
Her reaction to industrial consumerism wasa wee bit like
Lorca’s who notoriously wrote his landscapes:
‘Landscape of a vomiting multitude’ and ‘Landscape of a pissing
multitude’
(from ‘Poet in New York’).
So am attaching one of her (Kahlo’s) most famous images with a question:
In 1910 / (11) Rebecca West abdjured the wimmin of England
to engage in Riotous Living to counter the self-abuse
of other’s attempts through media, sermon and politics
to create an image of woman which was at odds with
the actual reality, did she succeed in encouraging women
to blast the mythos ?
http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/My-Dress-Hangs-There.html
Is there really any difference between this social expectation to shave body hair and older social expectations to wear make-up or bras?
I wouldn’t regard the wearing of a bra as a social expectation. It’s more a matter of comfort and practicality I would say, especially for the more well endowed woman. As for make-up, I enjoy wearing it when I’m going out, because it enables me to transform myself and it’s part of ‘dressing up’. I never bother on a day to day basis and have never felt any social pressure to do so.
Perhaps these girls also enjoy shaving or waxing as part of a similar ritual?
I mentioned above that the phenomenon of females shaving body hair is understandable if body hair is associated with men, seen as a masculine trait. (Which in turn is understandable since men tend to have more of it.) In history women have often artifically exaggerated perceived feminine traits, think push-up bras, corsets, Chinese foot-binding, lipstick, etc.
Perhaps shaving body hair is being discussed here only because it’s a relatively new form of this, and hasn’t become completely normalised yet. It seems quite arbitrary to consider not shaving “just to please men” a feminist gesture if wearing make-up or attractive clothes is still cool. Maybe in the future some young women will refuse to wear high heels “just to please men”, but will cheerfully take for granted the shaving of body hair.
I, on the other hand, do nothing “just to please women”, but I know that if I turned up to a date looking terrible then it would be much harder to attract this woman. So for me this would be about sex, sexual attractiveness, but not sexism.
Perhaps these girls also enjoy shaving or waxing as part of a similar ritual?
Would I be right in thinking you’ve never had anything waxed? Because unless someone is into masochism, they’re really not doing the actual act for pleasure! Just getting an inch of skin waxed makes your eyes water. And when I got my eyebrows threaded I had to ask her to take a break half way through because the pain was so awful. Everyone’s pain threshold is different, of course, but I’m sure there are relatively few people who actually look forward to getting hot wax ripped from their skin, pulling out every single tiny hair with it.
I am actually pretty shocked when I meet women who’ve never grown their body hair out. I’ve gone backwards and forwards on body hair since I was twelve: shaved my legs on and off as a teenager, deliberately didn’t shave them as a Statement when I was 19-24, started again, have had a Brazillian and a shaved pubic area once each out of interest, have never shaved my underarms (though have very little hair there), remove hair from my chin. I’ve also never, ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend who cared whether or not I shaved my legs, except for an ex-girlfriend who preferred that I didn’t because she hated the feeling of re-growth.
I tend to assume that I’m a bit more on the hairy hippy side than average, but I am still genuinely shocked when I meet women who have literally removed hair from their legs/underarms/pubic areas for their entire adult lives, and who have lovers who would object if they didn’t – or at least believe they would. I’ve another friend who keeps telling me proudly that her boyfriend doesn’t complain when she hasn’t shaved her legs, as this was a exciting positive characteristic, rather than really the bare minimum you should expect from someone you’re sleeping with. That normal assumption of “must be removed” just boggles me, and does make me wonder how I managed to grow up in a side-slipped culture where it doesn’t really matter all that much either way.
Body hair on women seems to be one of those highly devisive subjects that can surprise even the most confident and self assured of ladies into realising they’d never set foot outside the door with an unshaven limb (and yes I do mean limb – friends of mine go so far as to remove even the hair on their forearms.) The difference between social norms for women like wearing make up or bras versus body hair removal is most acutely felt in the reaction to the absence of provision for one of these norms. If you were to leave the house without foundation or mascara, most people, particularly men, probably wouldn’t even notice and if they did there is little thought outside of ‘Huh, she’s not wearing any make up’ that would really pass through their minds. The braless thing, depending on the chosen apparel, would again probably invoke reactions along the lines of ‘Wow, I bet it’d hurt if she tried running for a bus like that’ or ,in the case of a rather tight top on a cold day, ‘Phooar, did you see yer one? No bra!’ The presence of prevelant body hair on the other hand will almost universally cause the same reaction – that of shock and disgust. The idea that a woman could or would chose to leave her body in all it’s natural glory is just too much to take in. While going without a bra or make up these days is hardly taken as a side swipe at modern femininity, those comfortable enough to leave their body hair as is are often viewed as trying to be provocative by bucking this social norm. To leave the house without make up or a bra on will cause little upset in the lives of others, however to bear an unshaven pit it seems is as offensive as if you called their first born ugly.
Strangers judge us by how we appear. But we don’t need to care what strangers think.
If I wandered around the North Circular Road in a skirt I would attract a hell of a lot of negative attention. Thankfully I don’t have that inclination, but if I did I would be forced to weigh it up: am I willing to accept the negative reactions of strangers or am I going to cave to peer pressure and dress normal?
The same is true here, as far as I can see. Women who don’t want to shave can choose not to, and perhaps suffer some negative reaction, or to conform.
All people are subject to pressures to appear a certain way in a given culture, but in liberal countries we mostly have freedom to ignore social expectations and do what we want.
Well said – there’s a huge taboo about female body hair and it doesn’t really have any equivalent – certainly not make-up. I leave the house without make-up almost every day and don’t feel self conscious at all, but I wouldn’t feel the same if I hadn’t had a ‘tache wax (and there are relatively few dark-haired, fair skinned Irish women who don’t naturally have a bit of a ‘tache).
Wow, I was rushing. Just clocked all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors! The shame, oh the shame..
I think the Brazilian/hollywood trend-turned-orthodoxy is really interesting because its so much newer than the development than the practices of wearing bras and make-up, we can actually claim to have witnessed it in full. For the most part we have seen its development since the mid-’90s and I feel like it definitely has a major relationship with the rise of the internet and the coinciding rise of easy-access to pornography. More specifically it relates strongly to the rise of hard-core porn (as evidenced by the full-bushed ladys of the 70s) where a cleanly shaven undercarriage permits more visceral depictions of eg. penetration.
For this reason I think it goes beyond explanations such as the infantilisation of our culture, or the a masculine/feminine essentialism (though I agree that both play significant parts in this development). It is interesting to the think a little bit about the *way* in which the body is modified by shaving. That is, by further exposing the vagina there is a sense of a more penetrating visual display. That is, there seems a slightly different character to depilation as a beauty practice from the application of make up for eg. in that its elicitation of arousal is grounded in an apparent revelation or exposure rather than masking or reshaping. I dunno, I think its kindof interesting to think about.
Shane, I think you’re missing my point here. It’s not about doing something in the knowledge that ‘Hmm if I do this I might cause a stir but screw it, I’ll do as I please’. It’s the very idea that this queerly specific thing i.e. a woman leaving her body hair unchecked, would even cause a reaction such as this! As I pointed out, there are other ‘grooming’ rituals so to speak that we can go without and no one passes a jot of heed, but an unshaven leg or scraggy bikini area is cause for a commotion. Why? Why is the removal of body hair, above all other arteficial traits of femininity, the most important? The one that will cause the most issue and debate? I think so much of it comes back to, whether consciously or not, the societal vice that is our obsession with a youthful image of beauty. The presence of this very grown up thing called body hair is just a no no.
That’s a good point Gobby, and it does seem a bizarre situation that women feel the need to shave body hair in particular. (Although I suspect that a lot of men, like me, really don’t have any idea to what extent women do this.)
I also think that the fact that we can see this taboo arrive and gain cultural dominance is what makes it weird to us. To give an example, we take for granted the wearing of clothes that cover genitalia, yet some cultures do not and to them this cultural taboo must seem arbitrary and odd. But since we’re used to this, we’ve internalised it, it seems normal. And if some naked dude walks past in Tescos, most of us would be a wee bit uncomfortable!
but … [a] scraggy bikini area is cause for a commotion
Is it really?! Where? I mean, it’s overwhelmingly been my experience that the magazines think you should care, but nobody actually does.
Those Channel 4 programmes talking to kids were genuinely unsettling. Their attitudes to what was a “normal” amount of body hair were very different to those of our youth. And it certainly didn’t seem to be bravado. Obviously I think anyone is entitled to shave or wax whatever they want, but I thought it was very depressing hearing teenage girls, let alone boys, talk about why natural pubes (or indeed any pubic hair at all) were messy and gross.
Sliding off-topic, perhaps, but it’s a tad bizarre that the prejudice is reversed when it comes to the top of the head, where hair is most visible. A bloke with a bald / shaved head barely merits a second glance, whereas a woman with a shaved head is still unusual enough to turn heads.
To be fair, there is quite a bit of difference between making a feminist statement when you have gorgeously fine fair hair and when you, well, don’t.
So, so true.
Indeed. Quite a few of the women I know who don’t remove their hair aren’t very hairy at all anyway. Which doesn’t make it less significant a statement for them, of course, but does make their experiences quite different to what mine would be if I let my true hairiness grow wild and free. And I’m not even unusually hairy in my natural state.
The difference between expectation and reality is age-old, unfortunately. Take the example of the marvellous Effie Gray, wife of the great thinker Ruskin, who had her marriage of eight years annulled because it was never consummated: Ruskin was revolted by the reality of her and loathe to touch her.
Effie wrote a letter to her father which said: “He alleged various reasons… and, finally this last year he told me his true reason… that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person.”
Ruskin confirmed this in his statement to his lawyer during the annulment proceedings, saying: “It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it.”
Hair maybe? Smells? Moles? Cellulite? Luckily Effie had a robust ego and remarried, going on to have a clutch of children.
I pity young girls though, with so many extreme expectations and their boys growing up thinking girls’ bodies are truly like the smooth, airbrushed, hair-free, FHM-droids, and I pity the boys because… well, because humanity is grubby and smelly and sexy and loaded with pheromones, none of which they’re told about or encouraged to explore. Nowadays, getting dirty requires surgical cleanliness.
I hope Amelia has not succumbed…
Oh, and ironically Ruskin famously said: “Nothing is beautiful which is not true.”
Hmmm.
Jennie, I absolutely loved that commentary. Loved it. Nail on the head and what not. Wonderful stuff.