Forced grooming

[year_anda_day]

So angry right now. One of the autism spectrum communities I belong to had a post from a 'concerned parent' who is trying to get some advice on getting her 15 year old daughter on the spectrum to shave her legs and care about fixing her hair. Why, why why for the love of all that is holy would you force someone who has sensory issues to shave their

Comments

[ertla]

I'm curious what rock this woman is living under that she believes that females are still expected to shave their legs. You shave your legs if and only if you wear skirts - and even then only if the skirts aren't long enough to conceal your legs.

My other comment is that as a child I interpreted advice to improve my appearance as "you need to be attractive to men". (It was generally phrased as "being attractive" which I'd figured out was frequently a euphemism for "sexually attractive". I reasoned that if I didn't feel a need for a boyfriend etc. at the time, they must be advising me based on their perception of my future needs. In particular, that they expected me to make a career as a prostitute of some kind, e.g. mercenary supported spouse. Why else would it be important to practice "looking attractive"? My reaction was to intensify my efforts to be sure I'd never need to have someone else support me... I already knew that "supported spouse" was an unstable career, especially with a high wealth husband - who'd probably turn you in for a younger model eventually.

Perhaps one way to deal with her would be to ask if she expected her daughter to require "attractiveness skills" in order to make a living. Making quite clear what you were implying, of course, so that she'd freak out completely.

[ertla]

*blink* The only reason for shaved legs is pantyhose/stockings. Shorts aren't worn with stockings.

And truthfully, if her classmates are picking on her for appearance, and that's what her mother cares about, you'd think she'd have started there, not presumed that the only solution was to dress the kid like a supermarket manikin, and enforce that appearance by punishment.

Mom needs her feminist consciousness raised. She also needs to decide whether she wants a daughter or a manikin. Because this sounds like she's doing her unconscious best to produce depression and low self esteem. Those tend to lead to unpleasant places - but perhaps mom will be less ashamed if her daughter runs away, commits suicide, takes up self-hating promiscuity, etc. Just so long as she looks "normal". Or perhaps just so long as she isn't in Mom's sight.

[fredtheguava]

I'm confused - are you stating your opinion as a fact, here? I'm an aspie and strongly prefer the feeling of shaved legs to non-shaved in every situation: legs out or not. I shave regularly and NEVER wear skirts. I don't think the *only* reason to shave is that. It's personal preference, surely.

[ertla]

I guess what I'm saying is that in the past decade or two, I have not encountered a _requirement_ for females to shave their legs, regardless of their own tastes, except when the legs are visible under a skirt ... or when the female in question wishes to look like a model. Even then, if the skirt is of the country/hippy type, not generally worn with pantyhose or stockings, shaving still isn't _required_. I also haven't encountered any requirement for females to wear skirts, except when those skirts were part of a uniform.

This has nothing to do with personal preference, except for the observation that one can avoid the shaving requirement by avoiding skirts - except in the case of uniforms. If you like to shave your legs, go for it. And be thankful that you won't get picked on for doing so. (Although with that male-looking nick, I'm surprised you don't get flack for it, if you ever wear shorts.)

Things were different 50 years ago, when I was a child. My aunt felt a need to apologize for wearing casual slacks for exercise and gardening. Wearing slacks to work - any kind of job - or school - was unimaginable.

[pklemica]

This has not been my experience in the least. I am the only women I know irl who is willing to wear shorts without having shaved. Granted, I'm a fair amount younger than you, but there are a lot of women my age at least who if anything feel pressure to remove *more* hair: some think it a requirement at this point to have even their vulvas completely hairless.

[fredtheguava]

Ah, but that is not what you said. You said: "you shave your legs if and only if you wear skirts'" suggesting this was the *done thing* these days which I disagree with entirely. Almost everyone I know, and I really only know women on that level, chooses to shave their legs and underarms regardless of the outfit they are wearing. Perhaps YOU only shave your legs if you're wearing a skirt, but it simply isn't true to put that point of view onto everyone.

No, I don't get flack when I'm wearing shorts. To be honest, where I live, I wouldn't get flack if I didn't. I'm lucky to live in a relatively progressive city, and spend alternate summers in an even more progressive city. My nickname is just that: a nickname. I am a dyke, sure, but definitely a girl. If anything, at times, the opposite pressure is true in the dyke community: the pressure to NOT shave. But I do it because I choose to. And I do so even in the depths of winter when no-one but me is going to see or feel my legs.

[ertla]

True enough. I was in the context of parental force being used on a 15 year old, as if not shaving was a serious problem, and I was angry. I also didn't have your experience of pressure not to shave, and I'm afraid it didn't occur to me that someone else might have experienced that, and thus see what I was writing as more of the same.

Worse, I'd very much gotten myself back into the headspace of myself at 10 or 12 or so - pressure to act femme for no sane reason - or 14-15, when I was encountering routine sexual harassment (these days we'd use words like assault, since it was physical) and was told it was inappropriate to get angry about it. I was a very angry tween and early teen, and it took specific explanations to get me to see someone else's point of view. (Though I did realize there was something 'off' when I saw one of my smaller female classmates being picked up and dropped in a large trashcan by some of my male classmates - she was protesting, but somehow not angry. I restrained myself from leaping to her defense, physically, and consulted an adult, who said this was probably flirtation. On the other hand, when someone tried "flirting" with me by knocking my books out of my arms, I knocked him down, sat on him, and hit him.) I wasn't a very subtle child :-(

Damn - I'm back in that headspace. I hope I'm making sense here. The anger's never really gone away; it just doesn't come up often, since I'm 55 and no longer a target for "grabby" males. So it's very hard to write about those days while maintaining active consciousness of other people's differing viewpoints and experiences.