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Femme enough for ya? |
I once told my sister that I sometimes felt that my beauty routine was a constant battle against "unwanted" body hair. She agreed heartily and said that she spent so much time on body hair removal that it was insane. Being biologically half (hairy) Dutch, I am cursed with hairy arms, legs, eyebrows (that keep growing in despite plucking since the age of 15), and have several wiry black chin hairs making my life difficult. I have been removing hair from my legs since I was about 12 years old. That's when other girls in my elementary school began to take stock of our hormonally changing bodies and began to compare ourselves against each others flaws. It was shit. I remember how many times I seemed to nick my legs in those early years - I still have a few scars from those days. I bleached my arm hair a few times before the bleaching made my skin super dry and itchy.
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The cartoon reads: Beauty, slightly mutilating the natural state of your body in order to be deemed acceptable. |
It's not really surprising that Femme women feel pressured to shave. The cosmetic industry has been after our hard earned cash ever since the 1920's and before that, there was a pervasive negative attitude towards "hairy women." In fact, social Darwinism is a bit to blame here. During the latter part of the Victorian era, people believed that
"body hair could show the genetic superiority—or inferiority—of a person. As Herzig writes, 19th-century scientists thought that thick hair was “linked to criminal violence … and exceptional ‘animal vigor.'” Suddenly, hairlessness was en vogue for Western women. And that's about the time advertisers got involved."
quote taken from this very informative article.
Nowadays, Femmes are still pressured to be hairless to be accepted by society. Something that masculine folks don't really have to worry about (unless you are a certain type of gay boy being pressured to shave your chest or something). In fact, I worry more about how straight women react to my leg hair than men or queer folks. I know that the next time I go to get a pedicure, the nail salon ladies will be talking about my leg hair in their language so as to not insult me directly to my face. Femmes (especially women) subject one another to the most rigorous scrutiny when it comes to appearance. It's toxic, and shitty, and needs to just stop already.
To make things even more troublesome, Femmes are expected to be hairless in order to be considered desirable or even date-worthy by (mostly) men. Check out this rather sad visual statistic:
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"Shave the date"? go to hell! I tried to relocate the link to this survey and failed. D'oh! |
The double-standard with regards to men's body hair (and legs in particular) is deplorable. Men don't have to worry about their legs being too hairy for a woman to take interest in them (that doesn't mean these men don't exist though). I have yet to meet a guy who was rushing home to shave his legs, armpits, trim the bush, and pluck his eyebrows and chin hairs to be considered attractive for his date that evening. And yet, women do this ALL THE TIME. Including when they are heavily pregnant and can no longer see their leg or pubic hair!
Usually, I will have my legs waxed about once a month during the summer months (May - September) so I can enjoy wearing skirts, dresses, or shorts without the bother of shaving. In previous years, I have also waxed every couple of months in the winter time to keep my leg hair "manageable." This year though, I have been growing it straight since the end of September (or thereabouts). As a result, my leg hair currently looks like this:
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Foxy legs, photo by Yak. Legs look hairier in natural light for some reason. |
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This Carol Rossetti cartoon floated around the internet last year. It was the first time I ever saw a cartoon (or any depiction) of a Femme-identified person with hairy legs and a positive message. |
...hair is there for a reason...
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