Ladies, put your razors away: Women should embrace body hair

Women on campus and everywhere should put away their razors and reclaim their body hair this summer.

The woman who chooses to give up shaving doesn't just save herself some time, money and skin irritation, she can discover the sense of personal acceptance, freedom and natural beauty that her body hair can bring.

Women are compelled to shave more in the summer as their legs, armpits and bikini lines become more regularly exposed.

Women don their shorts, skirts, tank tops and swimming suits and try their best to sustain a standard of hairlessness that is inextricably tied to American society's perceptions of beauty and femininity.

This standard is symbolically oppressive and absurdly impractical, but American women willingly persist in the 20th-century tradition of shaving.

American women did not remove underarm or leg hair prior to 1915 because full-coverage clothing styles made these areas rarely visible, according to an article, by Susan A. Basow, in the Psychology of Women Quarterly entitled "The Hairless Ideal: Women and Their Body Hair."

As skirts got shorter and silk stockings became fashionable in the 1920s, advertisements began to encourage women to "smooth away" body hair that was described as unwanted and ugly. The majority of American women have been shaving ever since.

An American woman begins shaving as an adolescent rite of passage into the world of womanhood, a habit that is adopted and unquestionably upheld.

Society teaches her that shaven legs and arms and a well-maintained bikini line are essential to feeling beautiful, feminine and sexy.

She believes she must strive for hairless glory as a necessary part of maintaining her sex appeal and attracting and pleasing men.

But is there really anything intrinsically attractive or sexy about a woman's lack of body hair?

Shaving commonly causes cuts, scrapes, razor burn, dry skin and ingrown hairs. These skin afflictions are not only irritating and painful, but are unnecessary and unattractive.

In addition to the physical hazards involved, shaving is a symbolically unsettling practice.

According to Basow's article, "As middle-class white women moved out of their 'separate sphere' of domestic life ... the removal of body hair may have served to maintain a distinction between the genders and de-emphasize women's adult status."

The presence of body hair is an indicator of a woman's sexual maturation. Removing it denies that maturity and independence.

Basow wrote that hair removal symbolizes "that a woman's mature sexuality is controlled at the same time as her 'tamed' sensuality is on display."

On a more practical note, shaving and hair removal in all its other forms wastes time and money. Five minutes of shaving on 100 sunny days add up to more than eight hours of skin scraping.

Couldn't women better spend that time enhancing who they are instead of taking away from it? Rather than being trapped in the shower shaving, women could be frolicking in the sunshine or reading in the shade.

At $1 or $2 per razor head, women spend their money on yet another frivolous beauty product marketed with and sold off of the idea that women need to buy items to make them beautiful.

Despite all the symbolic, financial and time-related reasons not to shave, many women shy away from the possibility or don't even consider it because they fear the stereotypes often associated with women who do not shave.

They do not want to be viewed or labeled as the organic, tree-hugging, penis-loathing, militant, lesbian feminist.

They do not want to go against the norm or draw negative attention to themselves, so it's easier to remove socially unacceptable body hair than have to explain it.

"Although shaving, for most women, is habitual behavior and usually viewed as trivial, the intense social reaction to violations of this norm emphasize its power," Basow wrote.

Women need to critically consider why they battle nature by removing their body hair and decide what it means to them.

They need to realize that their body hair can be a liberating and valuable element of their bodies and lives.

A woman's body hair is not a hindrance to her femininity; it is a symbol of her sexual maturation and womanhood.

The woman who gives up shaving is one step closer to learning how to truly accept and love her body the way it is.

In The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg briefly mentions what is probably one of the most pervasive body projects among women: hair removal. As with hairstyles and body weight, there is a perceived need among many women to “control” the body by means of hair removal, and the means for removing “unwanted” body hair are numerous. Since the early 1900s, women have been shaving, tweezing, plucking, and cutting unwanted hair from their bodies. They have undergone waxing and electrolysis treatments—sometimes at the price of mild discomfort to great pain—and they have received rashes from depilatories and burns from laser hair removal treatments.
While the removal of body hair among women is arguably the most practiced of all body projects, there is a paucity of scholarly research on the subject. With the exception of a few notable essays and empirical studies, most research on women’s hair is focused above the eyebrows. And the available literature that does deal with women’s body hair is usually written from a medical or cosmetic standpoint. In The Hairlessness Norm, a study of shaving practices among college and high school-aged girls, Tiggemann and Kenyon note, “perhaps the major reason that hair removal has received so little research attention is that the practice is so socially normative as to go unquestioned” (873). But a closer examination of the issues surrounding hair removal reveals just how socially constructed these practices are. What emerges from this examination is not a biological fact about female physiology, but a culturally upheld ideology regarding sex. The ideal of the “hairless woman” is a product of a society that continually valorizes and reinforces specific patriarchal views about gender, sex, and race.
My essay examines four persistent rhetorical discourses which comprise the hairless woman ideal. Firstly, women’s hair removal practices, though often portrayed as traditional customs, are a recent and artificially created phenomenon with clear origins in the twentieth century, reflecting a growing consumer-oriented society’s influence on notions of sex and gender. The assumed societal notion that regards women as “polar opposites” of men is another discourse that has established and maintained hair removal practices. The discourse surrounding the pathological condition known as hirsutism places the hairless woman ideal within a medical paradigm, raising concerns about the influence and relationship of medical science on the hairless woman ideal. Finally, the rhetoric of anxiety, which often permeates medical and cosmetic discourses concerning female body hair, not only reinforces gender stereotypes, but it further illustrates the role of medical science in maintaining the ideology of female hairlessness.
The purpose of my paper is to bring into sharper focus the issues and discourses that currently surround female body hair removal and to identify some of the culturally prescribed assumptions that enforce them. Currently, a majority of the information concerning female body hair removal, whether in scholarly journals, health and beauty publications, or medical literature, remains segregated. My paper broadens the context of the study of hair removal, attempting to pull together the various issues of female body hair removal as expressed in feminist studies, popular beauty discourses, and more scientifically oriented texts that have, so far, remained on the periphery of cultural studies.

Some Supporting Quotes

“By the 1920s, both fashion and film had encouraged a massive ‘unveiling’ of the female body, which meant that certain body parts—such as arms and legs—were bared and displayed in ways they had never been before.” (Brumberg, 98.)

“The woman suffering with [superfluous facial hair] almost invariably develops a ‘shrinking’ or ‘negative’ personality.” (Hoffman, 27.)

“…many completely normal women are more hirsute than many completely normal men.” (Parrish, 112.)

“Why choose a diagrammatic rather than photographic mode of representation? Given that hirsutism does not occur to all degrees on a single individual, it is not as easy to standardize photographically…” (Kapsalis, 97.)

“Perhaps a major reason that hair removal has received so little research attention is that the practice is so socially normative as to go unquestioned.” (Tiggemann and Kenyon, 1.)

“…linking shaving or smooth skin to feeling attractive and feminine is the major pitch of nearly all current advertising. Yet this is an artifactual link which has been societally constructed, for biologically mature female sexuality is in fact linked to the presence of body hair.”
(Tiggemann and Kenyon, 6.)

Proposed Structure

I. Introduction
II. History
III. Contemporary Methods of Hair Removal – A Summary of each?
IV. The great pains of beauty. Pain factor in hair removal.
V. Cosmetic and Medical Discourses surrounding Hair Removal
a. Assumptions that body hair is “superfluous.”
b. Assumptions that hair removal is timeless “custom” in women’s history.
c. Assumptions that body hair leads to psychological problems.
d. Assumptions that certain ethnic groups are prone to a medical condition (Hirsutism), rather than view female body hair as normal.
VI. Responses to Questionnaires & Analysis
VII. Hairlessness In Light of Course Readings
a. Eating Disorders- Flapper style encourages exposure of the female body; the body as political showcase--women who don’t shave do so consciously in order “not to conform” or to resist; Anorexia-result is an increase in body hair (counters lack of body fat)
b. Choosing to shave/choosing not to shave: expressing agency through body hair
c. Barbie-The issues of race in the American beauty paradigm: Barbie is Nordic not Greek.
d. Public Privates-Danforth’s Obstetrics and Gynecology. Medical establishment’s resistance to see body hair as normal; Shaving pubic hair at childbirth.
VIII. Beauty is Youth; Youth is Beauty-
a. Contradiction of the hairless woman. Hair = sexual maturity,
b. Fallacies: Nordic vs. Mediterranean.

Problems, Questions, Concerns

History Section. Brumberg makes it clear that the “hairless ideal” became important in the 1920s, but I’m certain that 100 years ago people were not ignorant to the fact that hair grew on women’s legs, under their arms, etc. I see this, though, as getting too bogged down in research. Plus, how necessary is that?
Not quite sure if my structure is progressing logically. Where’s a good place for questionnaire responses? Early? Later?
And this ties in with previous question. I want to make sure that the various sub topics are working together as a unified whole, rather than just tossing out a lot of non-connected ideas. I do sort of want to bring to light, all the issues which surround hair removal. But it’s all got to tie in nicely to some “greater master plan.”
Do I have to take a stance? Hair removal as good/bad body project?

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