To Shave or Not to Shave: A Woman’s Body

The first time I ever thought that something was unnatural about me was in the 7th grade. 

I was sitting atop my desk in 6th period Journalism class, talking to another classmate as the teacher used the restroom. He and I chatted about the recent test grades when, suddenly, one of my closest friends pointed to my legs and laughed. I still remember her words very clearly.

“Ew, that’s disgusting!” she had told me. “You’re so hairy!”

At that moment, I didn’t know what to think of it. I was eleven. My cheeks burned, and I laughed it off. No one else said a thing, only looking away in second hand embarrassment. The teacher returned, and the class went on as normal. But the moment I got home I asked my mom how to shave.

In the following years, I tried a variety of things. I waxed and cut and bleached every bit of hair on my legs. I would not wear shorts if I had not shaved. I went in with a razor at any faintest hint of a mustache. I would cry that my legs were too long, too rough, too bruised, too masculine, and not soft and feminine like they should be. 

As humiliating as these moments may sound, I don’t think I am the only one who has experienced something like this. We were pre-teens, children, ridiculed for something as natural as breathing and walking. 

Body hair is a topic that I feel has been barely touched upon, whether it be on your arms, legs, or anywhere. It is treated like a taboo—as if girls and women shouldn’t even think to have it, as if they don’t grow it at all. All sorts of excuses have been made to justify the removal of body hair. For hygiene, for looks, and more often than not for men’s eyes. After a few years, I began to realize something deeply strange about it, as well as other things in regards to the beauty standard of women.

This is my realization: There is a large overlap between pre-pubescent, child-like qualities, and the beauty standard of women. And it is not accidental.

Only young children that haven't gone through puberty don't have body hair. Only young children have spotless, porcelain skin. Only young children are small, fragile, innocent, docile, and unconditionally forgiving. Why are these same qualities expected in women? Why is the only way to be even remotely desirable is to be hairless? 

The answer is a mix of things. It is sexualization and pedophilia. It is homophobia and transphobia. It is misogyny. It is the sexualization of young girls, and it is societal standards for women and feminine-presenting people. 

Societal standards.

 Women and girls have been fetishized, mocked, berated, put down, and belittled for all of civilization. Women have been taught that the only way that they are good is to be feminine. To be a good wife, to speak softly, to submit to their husbands. To be small, to not take up space, to let men dominate them and everything about their lives.

Despite this historical knowledge, many will argue that the progression of women’s rights in today’s society has somehow erased all problems. It is unfortunately a common train of thought for some men that women are “equal” now. But things like beauty standards are deep-rooted in history—hair-removal culture having one of the largest roots. Gendered hair removal.

Charles Darwin, as an example, deemed body hair as uncivilized and stated that not removing it was as bad as regression to primal roots. Yes, Charles Darwin, coiner of the term natural selection. Charles Darwin, who spurred a scientific obsession with “racial differences.” For the record, this is what he looks like:

So much for thick hair being primitive.

19th-century scientists thought that thick hair was “linked to criminal violence and exceptional ‘animal vigor'”. It is hard to not see what is wrong with that. This so-called evidence was paired with other things to justify racism and white male supremacy. That, however, is a conversation for another time. So despite the start of the hair removal frenzy resulting in a Darwinian age, it didn’t take flight until the 1920s.

Around this time, the advancements in hair removal that we have today such as waxing and creams did not exist. Women and feminine-presenting people were quite literally dying to remove their hair. From Nadine Ajaka of The Atlantic: “In the 1920s and ’30s, women used pumice stones or sandpaper to depilate, which caused irritation and scabbing. Some tried modified shoemaker’s waxes. Thousands were killed or permanently disabled by Koremlu, a cream made from the rat poison thallium acetate. It was successful in eliminating hair, and also in causing muscular atrophy, blindness, limb damage, and death.”

Sounds familiar? This same sort of experience can be seen now, except with skin lightening and bleaching creams. Both beauty practices aim towards the same goal: having smooth, pale (child-like) skin. 

Yes, for some people body hair removal is purely cosmetic. If it tickles your fancy, then please feel free to do whatever you’d like with your body. But for many, it has become something that is a must. Hair removal has been redefined as a hygiene practice rather than a cosmetic one. It is something that you must do like brushing your teeth or washing your face—without the health benefits. In order to be a proper woman, you need to be free of body hair. But this is not some radical train of thought designed by me. It is a fact that many people know of. Especially advertisers.

Three ad campaigns by Veet released in 2014 are an example of this. They feature women who turn into overweight, hairy men after not shaving for one day. Yes. One day. A partner is mortified at his lover’s sudden transformation, a nail technician is disgusted, and a taxi driver refuses service because these women did not shave yesterday. Again, I don’t think it’s hard to find everything wrong with that. 

Veet’s problematic ad campaign

Don’t risk dudeness by skipping one day of body hair removal.

As well as that, there have been numerous occasions where women have been ostracized and harassed for embracing their natural growth. When a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio’s mom resurfaced, instead of talking about how cute baby Leo looked, all the talk was centered around his mother’s natural armpits. Another example was when Swedish model Arvida Bystrom received death and rape threats over an Adidas campaign with natural legs. 

The power that body hair holds over the perception of a woman is scarily vast, which leads to the second part of the answer: 

Fetishization, a power imbalance, and sexualization. 

Lolita was a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. It follows the story of a middle-aged literature professor who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, which leads to him becoming her stepfather, and him sexually molesting her. Nabokov’s intent was to expose the gruesome psychological way of thinking of pedophiles, to explore the surrealist world of a rapist. But the story has been entirely spun on its head in the years following its release, twisted into something of erotica and romance. Lolita was adapted into not one but two movies, each featuring an underage actress as Dolores and a much older man as Humbert, an opera, disturbing fashion subcultures, spin-off novels, and most unfortunately an entire archetype of a character.

Nabokov’s book had two film adaptations which centered around the relationship between a minor and a 30-40 year old man

Despite its deeply sick and twisted nature, the novel and its adaptations became a staple of American media. Mainstream media for decades has been focused on the image of a “sexy young girl” (which are words that should never be in a sentence together.) No American character influenced the media as much as Lolita did. 

For example, let’s take Riverdale. It is a show that many young people know and it is also a show that should have no connection to Lolita. All of the characters are sophomores in high school, early high school, so they are around ages 14-16. Yet the girls are often depicted as sexy, their actresses are in their mid-twenties, and a lot of the plot revolves around romance and unfortunately, sex. 

Many other shows set in high school adamantly and openly sexualize girls. The actresses wear tight, revealing clothes. The school uniforms are unbuttoned and the skirts are rolled up. They go to parties where they do a variety of highly illegal things. The worst part is that the normalization of this instills the idea that it is okay to do this at a young age—when in reality, there is no such thing as “sexual liberation” when you are under the age of eighteen. Films and shows like these so openly utilize the Lolita trope.

A key component of what makes the character archetype so effective is the girl’s youthful features. Her hairlessness, her naivety, her caring nature, her softness, and her so-desirable smooth skin. Any signs of aging or puberty such as wrinkles, body hair, cellulite, or scars and pimples are deemed undesirable. Women are not allowed to age or grow. Women must always be youthful. And as a result of these traits being marketable and successful, all of these things have been pushed upon every woman in western culture. 

Hair, essentially, equates to masculinity. Hairlessness equates to femininity. Anyone who does not adhere to gender stereotypes is strange, unlike the others, and the dreaded “different”. Women who are painted as aggressive and domineering are also often painted as hairy and masculine—because those are “male traits”. These heterosexist ideals especially impact the way women are perceived, how they perceive themselves, and how women-led campaigns and movements are viewed. And this leads to the third component: homophobia and heterosexism. 

From Breanne Fahs, Arizona State University professor and author: “The fear of being perceived as ‘other’—in particular, hairy, manly, angry, and lesbian—has long been the basis for women’s shunning of the feminist movement.”

Fahs goes on to say that, “Women learn to dislike or deny their bodies; hide their menstruation; women of color often adopt hair-straightening and skin lightening procedures; and sexual minority women are often encouraged to pass as heterosexual to escape workplace discrimination, violence, and negative judgments.” 

This theory of heterosexist and patriarchal societal standards impacting the idea of womanhood and a woman’s body is more than just a theory, however. As a part of an extra-credit assignment, Fahs put this into play. Whoever was willing to participate would grow out their body hair and write a paper about their experiences.

I won’t go too much into detail, but in summary: “Bisexual and lesbian women who grew out their body hair confronted issues of sexual identity disclosure and direct homophobia and heterosexism, often prompting them to feel outed in public, less in control of identity disclosure, and fearful about other’s negative responses.” 

Among other responses from students, one in particular named Evelyn said: “I keep worrying that it’s not just fun and games having body hair. Maybe some guy at a bar will see my armpit hair and think I’m a lesbian, and he’ll round up a group of guys and attack me. I have heard about it happening to women who were perceived as LGBTQ+. I’ve seen guys harass girls who want nothing to do with men.”

And, finally, from Fahs: “...women must not deviate because those who deviate face violence and harassment. The enforcement of gender here—again shadowing fears of trans identity, gender-bending, and crossing lines of femininity—speaks to the networks of power that enforce both heterosexuality and femininity. [A student] must reassure others that she is “still a woman” because anything representing a middle ground becomes too threatening.”

Read that again. ‘Anything representing a middle ground becomes too threatening’. I find this to be the clearest answer of them all. A woman who dresses masculinely, or perhaps a woman who does not shave, maybe even a woman who dares to have wrinkles and fat on their stomach is found to be threatening. Threatening to fragile masculinity, to a heteronormative society, to a society that sexualizes and fetishizes women in every single aspect. Anything outside of the gender binary quite literally spooks many men. 

Of course, shaving and body hair removal is not the singular most important aspect of women’s beauty standards. It is not the end-all-be-all. But it is one of many incredibly relevant examples of how women are perceived in the modern day. Gendered body hair removal has roots that twist deep into our society. Similarly, the patriarchy and oppressive systems that uphold these ideals are firm in our culture. Dismantling these power structures will not be easy. It will not happen overnight.

However, we can still make this world safer for those who do not align with societal standards. Reading and educating yourself about topics like these as well as challenging your firm beliefs will lead to progress. Having an open mind and listening to women helps to mend deep heterosexist beliefs even more. The more people who understand how these things affect women, the more change we will begin to see.

Who knows, the next time you’re perched over the bathtub with a razor in your hand, maybe you’ll realize that you don’t really have to shave. And maybe, one day, others will too.