Essay season is upon me
Sometimes, if the topic is really interesting and I don't have any imediate essays of my own to do, I wil lwrite my friends essays for them. The problem I find wit hessays is the length; teh require ti to be too short and thereby I mfeel I miss half of teh information.
However, I did get to stay up all night to finish. I get a secret high when it is I up alone all night, writing, pondering...procrastinating for somereason. I get t osee the cycle of the world and mmm...It feels good. A nice 2am stroll, a 4am wakeup shower..A 6:30 completion. I like the world this time of day. i do. I like lsitening to cars fade away, and then the city come back to life again like it's on it's own path to somewhere.
It's the last day of Nanowrimo and I have two classes and 15thousand more words to write. I can do it. I don't mind if I finish tomorow; it would be close enough for me. I didn't write for a week, so one extra day isn't going ot be bad.
Anyway, for your pain and my enjoyment, I thought I would post my essay I just wrote. I don't know. I like essays. I mean, when I put in the effort i'm known for doign okay on them. I find them fulfilling because I really like learning and doing research to apply, sort of or vaguely, what I have learned in the classroom. I like giving my brain a break when my friends take courses hat I care about deeply but don't take. The class this essay was for is Culture: normally, I don't take it because it is laced wit hstereotypes in teh context of deconstructing stereotypes. But I thought the topic of choice for this en was particularly entertaining.
Enjoy! It may lack complete coherency....but....you know...
Hair is as much a fact of life as eating or breathing. It is everywhere; covering our entire bodies. It would seem bizarre, then, if there were to be some kind of stigma attached to the act of growing and hair. Leave it to the practices and norms of Western culture to be bizarre, then; hair is definitely not stigma-free. A brief look at research done by people such as Tiggemann and Kenyon, who in 1998 did a study on ‘the Removal of Body Hair in Women’, will show exactly the opposite; that hair today is seemingly demonized and unaccepted. Not just hair in general, but more specifically body hair on women. Women consistently pluck, shave, wax and perform various other forms of body hair manipulation to rid themselves of it. It is with this research, and others, in hand that this essay will examine this discourse of western cultural norms that frowns upon women’s body hair. What makes it so unappealing? Why is there so much effort put into getting rid of something that happens to almost everyone? Where did these beliefs come from? These questions will be looked at in order to examine the relationship between women in today’s western world and their body hair in order to address the possibility that conforming to this ideal of a woman’s hairless body (save for the scalp) is unnecessary and only really works to further the patriarchal tendencies of our culture.
Although hair removal for women is not originally western and is also not a new concept with roots mainly in ancient areas of Africa, Greece and South America (Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi; 399), the popularity and widespread use of body hair removal techniques by woman today has occurred primarily in North America, the UK and Australia (Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi: 400; Tiggemann and Kenyon: 873). Tiggemann and Kenyon along with Labre attribute this trend to the rise of popular media in the early nineteen hundreds and new more revealing clothing fashions. Just prior to this, Labre discusses, was the newly created medical field in hypertrichosis (the condition of excess body hair on Caucasian women) in 1877 that implied that having too much hair was a call for measures of ‘treatment’(114) to get rid of this hair. The media, when less conservative fashions came to be popular, promoted being hairless as being more feminine and attractive, as well as cleaner (114-115). Labre proved this with ads from that time such as one in Dunsworth Laboratories of Indianapolis that said: ‘Freedom from Unwanted hair opens gates to social enjoyments that are forever closed to those so afflicted’(115). These trends and values have continued to be entrenched in our society’s views of women’s body hair today as noted by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi on page 400 of their study when they quote Tiggemann & Kenyon and Whelehan as noticingthe female body …depilated, with smooth unwrinkled . . . skin, is part of the current, dominant, mass media image of ideal femininity’ (399-400).
Many things these ads were implying, however, were not true. For example, to further use Labre as an example, women of early hair ‘treatment’ options such as radiation, suffered illnesses associated with the use of radiation such as cancer and scarring which is rather bizarre if too much hair is said to be needing treatment; it’s like treating one mild ‘disease’ while gaining another, much more harmful one. Also, Labre talks in her article of the new cult-like popularity of Brazilian bikini waxes accounting female experiences of visiting Brazilian wax salons as described in People weekly; screams within the salon indicate ‘satisfied customers’ (118). If a woman is screaming in agony, as the woman logically must have been as she was receiving the ‘treatment’ of removing the hair from her pubic region, how can that be considered ‘social enjoyment’? It seems a high cost to pay for maintaining the standards implied by the media for social adequacy. Another aspect of the ads that is not true is that hair is unclean. On the contrary; having the hair in the pubic region that women receive during the adolescent growth period prevents infection. When the hair is removed, hair follicles are open like little wounds on the surface of ones skin and it leads to easy access for infections and again it is used merely for personal preference (Labre 122 quoting the American Medical Association).
Even if it is not for cleanliness that women remove their hair, although some women in studies conducted by Tiggemann and Kenyon as an example do state that they feel cleaner when they remove ‘excess’ body hair, many woman are under this misconception that they indeed are more hygienic. That they feel cleaner could be the influence of the media, but that is only speculation based on personal experience. Studies conducted by the aforementioned as well as those conducted by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi do however show proof of a positive co-relation between women removing their body hair and doing so to feel more attractive, more feminine (as to distinguish themselves from men and/ or appease conceptions of male expectations) and to avoid social disapproval. For example, in the 1998 study of university students in Australia by Tiggemann and Kenyon, 76% reported feeling more feminine, 78% more attractive (although 84% claimed doing so to avoid funny looks), and 79% felt they did it to avoid social disapproval. In the study by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi they state that other studies have shown conclusive evidence that women accept the notion that ‘a hairy body is a sign of masculinity’(399). In a separate study, Tiggemann and Lewis discovered that men prefer women without body hair (383). A similar study conducted earlier in 1998 by Tiggemann and Kenyon confirms again the feelings of men towards women’s body hair.
There are many implications of this, however. Perhaps women do remove their hair to feel more attractive. However, that raises the questions of to whom is this attractive, men, and what is it about having unnaturally bald skin that makes a woman more attractive. For example, the idea that hair is dirty has been explored more by Merran Toerien and Sue Wilkinson in their article entitled ‘Gender and Body Hair’. Dirty, which could be interpreted as the opposite of attractive or impetus of disgust as examined by Tiggemen and Lewis which will be discussed more later, was a word used to describe women’s hair since hair removal became popular in Egypt and is still imposed on the interpretation of female body hair today. It is an example of being unkempt and being unkempt, of course, is commonly interpreted as unattractive according to norms and values today (Toerien and Wilkinson: 338). There are, according to Tiggemann and Lewis on page 382, differences in the concept of the hair and hygiene relation between men and woman: it is a double standard as the same concept when applied to men is reversed. The next point ties into the lines of woman’s body hair being unfeminine: as body hair is sign of aging and maturity because it starts to grow when a woman hits puberty and transcends between a girl and a woman, the removal of it could be seen as a step backward into childhood and the further disempowerment of women ensues. Youthfulness is encouraged, as opposed to the acknowledgement of benefits tied with aging. This was argued by many sources including Toerien and Wilkinson, Ladre, and Tiggemann and Lewis. The latter takes it one step further addressing it’s prominence in western culture specifically arguing that this body alteration further provides evidence that this culture does not accept a woman’s body the way it naturally is (381).
There are other implications of the removal of hair being associated with turning women back into children and denying the maturity of women. The sexualizing of girls, for one, as women who have reached the age of sexual maturity are expected to retain the traits of a child (Labre: 125). This juxtaposition has enormous implications on the role of children and the impact of association (Toerien and Wilkinson). Also, as Toerien and Wilkinson go further, the idea of passivity is transferred into traits of femininity with the feminizing of a hairless body indicating that females are supposed to behave as passive, the way children are often perceived. What is particularly bizarre about this, to tie it into previous arguments made about advertising, is that the rise of body hair removal for women in western cultures came along at a time when women were beginning to achieve more empowerment (for example, by showing more skin and accepting oneself as an equal with men) because again the removal of hair indicates a child-like, immature nature. This is not to disempower children; immaturity here is meant to indicate lack of biological maturity. A similar argument is made by Toerien and Wilkinson when they describe the shaping of a woman’s eyebrows in relation to the gaze of the woman and the gaze of the man (popular shapes indicate coy or flirtatious expressions, whereas since men are not encouraged to shape their eyebrows along side these cultural norms for women their gaze remains harsher, more powerful).
This brings me to another important aspect of this problem with women’s conceptions of body hair. There are some medical conditions that make women grow more hair than normal. This is attributed to the fact that they are not more ‘man’ than woman, contrary to some common misconceptions, but that they simply have a medical condition much like acne or rosacea but with hair. This issue is primarily addressed in an article entitled ‘Women living with facial hair: the psychological and behavioral burden’ by Lipton et al. It is a condition called ‘hirsute’. It is not a life- threatening illness, although it often occurs in transient with other more serious issues, however their study suggests a strong link between a woman’s psychological well being and having what is self-perceived as too much hair. It is not an issue that people are openly disgusted by it to these affected women, but it is an issue that affects people with this condition on a level that outsiders cannot fully ascertain. The most startling thing about the study they conducted on women who were diagnosed with hirsute was the amount of depression these women felt: one third showed signs of serious clinical depression, 74% showed signs of high anxiety. Only 24% did not show signs of some type of clinical psychological distress (165). Although the study did not consider the women’s wellbeing before the onset of the hirsute condition, this is alarming. All of the questions asked that were related to hair were related to the individuals feeling of self. Most of these women also engaged in activity to remove the hair that caused them these feelings. One woman was documented as going so far as to attempt to burn the hair off of herself.
Disgust of self to this level is the topic at hand in the 2004 article by Tiggemann and Lewis. They argue that women apply different standards to others than themselves in regards to why women discard of their hair. Women in their study feel that other women shave etc. as a normative thing, while feel for themselves that they do it for more attractive reasons. Whatever reason they decide to do it, however, does not change that they do. Perhaps it is the questions asked within the surveys that lead to this distinction of social norms and attractiveness being the leading reasons why women discard of their unwanted hair, but the trend has to come from somewhere.
According to Labre, this stride for women to perfect their bodies in a way that is complacent to males and the socially constructed way of defining what is or is not attractive has links to capitalist consumerism. Advertisers have for decades found a market for perfection: leading people to believe that something is not right with them how they are and therefore they must buy this product to change themselves so they can reach this higher state of being (123-124). Also, when she draws from the work of Orbach, Labre furthers this argument by discussing the objectification of women at an early age in the form of humanizing commodities, or to put more bluntly, being used in their physical form to sell products. Also, marketing other cultures through things like the Brazilian wax is also troubling: According to Labre’s article, the Brazilian wax was rarely used in Brazil until it became popular in America which demonstrates further comodification of socially constructed concepts of manufactured beauty in hairlessness.
Labre also addresses something that was sort of touched on by Tiggemann and Lewis when they discuss the issue of female application of these norms when she tackles the issue of women feeling pleasure out of being hairless and also further normalizing it with the concept that hairless is beautiful. She basically says that women lose the idea of true beauty and nature by furthering these ideals unquestioningly.
According to all of my sources, as mentioned above, an average of 90% of women in the various population samples remove their body hair on a regular basis. This further demonstrates the normalcy of removing the body hair in order to attain some other level of self that is not naturally attained. It seems an underlying theme in most of the articles, particularly in Toerien and Wilkinson’s article, that capitalism/ consumerist culture of the west (a key actor here being the media) has driven the idea of body hair being unwanted on a truly beautiful woman. Even in instances where there is not an abnormal amount of hair comparatively with other women it seems there is an excessive amount of hair removal occurring with many woman (up to 90% in the case of Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi) getting rid of their hair on a weekly basis. Although it was not discussed in any of the articles, the potential environmental impacts that this could create with known packaging and processing patterns in hair removal strategies is phenomenal when you consider the amount of western women removing their hair on a weekly, sometimes even daily, basis.
Strength, Toerien and Wilkinson mention, is a masculine trait. Masculinity is often thought of when one thinks of a person having more hair because biologically most men have more hair than most women. When a woman consciously removes her hair, then, it could be argued that she is removing part of her strength and, as previously mentioned, becoming more passive. They, Toerien and Wilkinson, also discuss the implications of making the ‘natural’ beauty of a woman as attempting to display that it took no time when in reality it took a lot of time. Labre says it best : ‘For women, the removal of body hair is a constant, repetitive, never ending practice demanding time, money and energy that could be channeled into other [more empowered] pursuits such as educational and career goals’(128).
The lack of acceptance for women’s body hair in western society is shameful. Not only does it serve to further the patriarchal norms associated with capitalism, consumption and control over one, it normalizes the paradox of habits of the unnatural in order to achieve a look that is perceived as more natural. Women’s perceptions of self, as well as men’s perception of women in this fashion should not be normalized yet because of the media and our mysterious drive to the unattainable, we continue to follow the norm and precedent set before us. Although it was rooted in history, removing the body hair of women is not something that is useful to society as a whole and is therefore not a norm that should be continued. Although, as demonstrated above, a woman often feels more attractive and better about herself when she is without hair, we must look at the reasons for this to determine whether or not they are truly valid in continuing this way of life. Every time a woman waxes, shaves or plucks no matter how she feels about it she is participating in a system that is, as empirical evidence discussed here that was provided by scholarly sources, clearly not looking out for her best interest; if it was, why would such a painful practice such as waxing to rid herself of something that is literally engrained in her skin be encouraged? Removing hair is not scientifically useful, except maybe in the case of childbirth as Labre suggests and it should therefore be further questioned to understand the meaning behind this activity that so many women partake in, simply filling in a cultural norm. Hair is a part of us; it is not just for the head. Something that occurs in such a fashion should be welcomed, not discarded. As Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi state: ‘…question the narrow definition of feminine embodiment which maintains…the message that a woman’s body is unacceptable if left unaltered’ (405).
References
Merran Toerien and Sue Wilkinson, “Gender and Body Hair: Constructing the Feminine
Woman,” Women’s Studies International Forum Vol. 26 No. 4 (USA: Elsevier,
2003) 333-344.
Magdala Peixoto Labre, ‘The Brazilian Wax: New Hairlessness Norm for Women?”
Journal of communication Inquiry Vol. 26 No.2 (Sage, 2002) 113-132.
Merran Toerien, Sue Wilkinson and Precilla Y. L. Choi, “Body Hair Removal; The
Mundane Production of Normative Femininity,” Sex Roles Vol. 52 No. 5/6
(Springer Science +Business Media Inc, 2005) 399-406.
Marika Tiggemann and Christine Lewis, “Attitudes Toward Women’s body Hair:
Relationship with Disgust Sensitivity,” Psychology of women Quarterly Vol. 28
(USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) 381-387.
Marika Tiggemann and Sarah J. Kenyon, “The Hairlessness Norm: the removal of body
hair in Women,” Sex Roles Vol. 39 No. 11/12 (Australia: Plenum publications
Corporation; 1998) 873-885.
Michelle G. Lipton, Lorraine Sherr, Jonathan Elford, Malcolm H. A. Rustin and William
J. Clayton, “Women Living with Facial Hair: The Psychological and behavioral
Burden” Journal of Psychosomatic Research Vol. 61 (London: Elsevier, 2006)
161-168.
However, I did get to stay up all night to finish. I get a secret high when it is I up alone all night, writing, pondering...procrastinating for somereason. I get t osee the cycle of the world and mmm...It feels good. A nice 2am stroll, a 4am wakeup shower..A 6:30 completion. I like the world this time of day. i do. I like lsitening to cars fade away, and then the city come back to life again like it's on it's own path to somewhere.
It's the last day of Nanowrimo and I have two classes and 15thousand more words to write. I can do it. I don't mind if I finish tomorow; it would be close enough for me. I didn't write for a week, so one extra day isn't going ot be bad.
Anyway, for your pain and my enjoyment, I thought I would post my essay I just wrote. I don't know. I like essays. I mean, when I put in the effort i'm known for doign okay on them. I find them fulfilling because I really like learning and doing research to apply, sort of or vaguely, what I have learned in the classroom. I like giving my brain a break when my friends take courses hat I care about deeply but don't take. The class this essay was for is Culture: normally, I don't take it because it is laced wit hstereotypes in teh context of deconstructing stereotypes. But I thought the topic of choice for this en was particularly entertaining.
Enjoy! It may lack complete coherency....but....you know...
Hair is as much a fact of life as eating or breathing. It is everywhere; covering our entire bodies. It would seem bizarre, then, if there were to be some kind of stigma attached to the act of growing and hair. Leave it to the practices and norms of Western culture to be bizarre, then; hair is definitely not stigma-free. A brief look at research done by people such as Tiggemann and Kenyon, who in 1998 did a study on ‘the Removal of Body Hair in Women’, will show exactly the opposite; that hair today is seemingly demonized and unaccepted. Not just hair in general, but more specifically body hair on women. Women consistently pluck, shave, wax and perform various other forms of body hair manipulation to rid themselves of it. It is with this research, and others, in hand that this essay will examine this discourse of western cultural norms that frowns upon women’s body hair. What makes it so unappealing? Why is there so much effort put into getting rid of something that happens to almost everyone? Where did these beliefs come from? These questions will be looked at in order to examine the relationship between women in today’s western world and their body hair in order to address the possibility that conforming to this ideal of a woman’s hairless body (save for the scalp) is unnecessary and only really works to further the patriarchal tendencies of our culture.
Although hair removal for women is not originally western and is also not a new concept with roots mainly in ancient areas of Africa, Greece and South America (Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi; 399), the popularity and widespread use of body hair removal techniques by woman today has occurred primarily in North America, the UK and Australia (Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi: 400; Tiggemann and Kenyon: 873). Tiggemann and Kenyon along with Labre attribute this trend to the rise of popular media in the early nineteen hundreds and new more revealing clothing fashions. Just prior to this, Labre discusses, was the newly created medical field in hypertrichosis (the condition of excess body hair on Caucasian women) in 1877 that implied that having too much hair was a call for measures of ‘treatment’(114) to get rid of this hair. The media, when less conservative fashions came to be popular, promoted being hairless as being more feminine and attractive, as well as cleaner (114-115). Labre proved this with ads from that time such as one in Dunsworth Laboratories of Indianapolis that said: ‘Freedom from Unwanted hair opens gates to social enjoyments that are forever closed to those so afflicted’(115). These trends and values have continued to be entrenched in our society’s views of women’s body hair today as noted by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi on page 400 of their study when they quote Tiggemann & Kenyon and Whelehan as noticingthe female body …depilated, with smooth unwrinkled . . . skin, is part of the current, dominant, mass media image of ideal femininity’ (399-400).
Many things these ads were implying, however, were not true. For example, to further use Labre as an example, women of early hair ‘treatment’ options such as radiation, suffered illnesses associated with the use of radiation such as cancer and scarring which is rather bizarre if too much hair is said to be needing treatment; it’s like treating one mild ‘disease’ while gaining another, much more harmful one. Also, Labre talks in her article of the new cult-like popularity of Brazilian bikini waxes accounting female experiences of visiting Brazilian wax salons as described in People weekly; screams within the salon indicate ‘satisfied customers’ (118). If a woman is screaming in agony, as the woman logically must have been as she was receiving the ‘treatment’ of removing the hair from her pubic region, how can that be considered ‘social enjoyment’? It seems a high cost to pay for maintaining the standards implied by the media for social adequacy. Another aspect of the ads that is not true is that hair is unclean. On the contrary; having the hair in the pubic region that women receive during the adolescent growth period prevents infection. When the hair is removed, hair follicles are open like little wounds on the surface of ones skin and it leads to easy access for infections and again it is used merely for personal preference (Labre 122 quoting the American Medical Association).
Even if it is not for cleanliness that women remove their hair, although some women in studies conducted by Tiggemann and Kenyon as an example do state that they feel cleaner when they remove ‘excess’ body hair, many woman are under this misconception that they indeed are more hygienic. That they feel cleaner could be the influence of the media, but that is only speculation based on personal experience. Studies conducted by the aforementioned as well as those conducted by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi do however show proof of a positive co-relation between women removing their body hair and doing so to feel more attractive, more feminine (as to distinguish themselves from men and/ or appease conceptions of male expectations) and to avoid social disapproval. For example, in the 1998 study of university students in Australia by Tiggemann and Kenyon, 76% reported feeling more feminine, 78% more attractive (although 84% claimed doing so to avoid funny looks), and 79% felt they did it to avoid social disapproval. In the study by Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi they state that other studies have shown conclusive evidence that women accept the notion that ‘a hairy body is a sign of masculinity’(399). In a separate study, Tiggemann and Lewis discovered that men prefer women without body hair (383). A similar study conducted earlier in 1998 by Tiggemann and Kenyon confirms again the feelings of men towards women’s body hair.
There are many implications of this, however. Perhaps women do remove their hair to feel more attractive. However, that raises the questions of to whom is this attractive, men, and what is it about having unnaturally bald skin that makes a woman more attractive. For example, the idea that hair is dirty has been explored more by Merran Toerien and Sue Wilkinson in their article entitled ‘Gender and Body Hair’. Dirty, which could be interpreted as the opposite of attractive or impetus of disgust as examined by Tiggemen and Lewis which will be discussed more later, was a word used to describe women’s hair since hair removal became popular in Egypt and is still imposed on the interpretation of female body hair today. It is an example of being unkempt and being unkempt, of course, is commonly interpreted as unattractive according to norms and values today (Toerien and Wilkinson: 338). There are, according to Tiggemann and Lewis on page 382, differences in the concept of the hair and hygiene relation between men and woman: it is a double standard as the same concept when applied to men is reversed. The next point ties into the lines of woman’s body hair being unfeminine: as body hair is sign of aging and maturity because it starts to grow when a woman hits puberty and transcends between a girl and a woman, the removal of it could be seen as a step backward into childhood and the further disempowerment of women ensues. Youthfulness is encouraged, as opposed to the acknowledgement of benefits tied with aging. This was argued by many sources including Toerien and Wilkinson, Ladre, and Tiggemann and Lewis. The latter takes it one step further addressing it’s prominence in western culture specifically arguing that this body alteration further provides evidence that this culture does not accept a woman’s body the way it naturally is (381).
There are other implications of the removal of hair being associated with turning women back into children and denying the maturity of women. The sexualizing of girls, for one, as women who have reached the age of sexual maturity are expected to retain the traits of a child (Labre: 125). This juxtaposition has enormous implications on the role of children and the impact of association (Toerien and Wilkinson). Also, as Toerien and Wilkinson go further, the idea of passivity is transferred into traits of femininity with the feminizing of a hairless body indicating that females are supposed to behave as passive, the way children are often perceived. What is particularly bizarre about this, to tie it into previous arguments made about advertising, is that the rise of body hair removal for women in western cultures came along at a time when women were beginning to achieve more empowerment (for example, by showing more skin and accepting oneself as an equal with men) because again the removal of hair indicates a child-like, immature nature. This is not to disempower children; immaturity here is meant to indicate lack of biological maturity. A similar argument is made by Toerien and Wilkinson when they describe the shaping of a woman’s eyebrows in relation to the gaze of the woman and the gaze of the man (popular shapes indicate coy or flirtatious expressions, whereas since men are not encouraged to shape their eyebrows along side these cultural norms for women their gaze remains harsher, more powerful).
This brings me to another important aspect of this problem with women’s conceptions of body hair. There are some medical conditions that make women grow more hair than normal. This is attributed to the fact that they are not more ‘man’ than woman, contrary to some common misconceptions, but that they simply have a medical condition much like acne or rosacea but with hair. This issue is primarily addressed in an article entitled ‘Women living with facial hair: the psychological and behavioral burden’ by Lipton et al. It is a condition called ‘hirsute’. It is not a life- threatening illness, although it often occurs in transient with other more serious issues, however their study suggests a strong link between a woman’s psychological well being and having what is self-perceived as too much hair. It is not an issue that people are openly disgusted by it to these affected women, but it is an issue that affects people with this condition on a level that outsiders cannot fully ascertain. The most startling thing about the study they conducted on women who were diagnosed with hirsute was the amount of depression these women felt: one third showed signs of serious clinical depression, 74% showed signs of high anxiety. Only 24% did not show signs of some type of clinical psychological distress (165). Although the study did not consider the women’s wellbeing before the onset of the hirsute condition, this is alarming. All of the questions asked that were related to hair were related to the individuals feeling of self. Most of these women also engaged in activity to remove the hair that caused them these feelings. One woman was documented as going so far as to attempt to burn the hair off of herself.
Disgust of self to this level is the topic at hand in the 2004 article by Tiggemann and Lewis. They argue that women apply different standards to others than themselves in regards to why women discard of their hair. Women in their study feel that other women shave etc. as a normative thing, while feel for themselves that they do it for more attractive reasons. Whatever reason they decide to do it, however, does not change that they do. Perhaps it is the questions asked within the surveys that lead to this distinction of social norms and attractiveness being the leading reasons why women discard of their unwanted hair, but the trend has to come from somewhere.
According to Labre, this stride for women to perfect their bodies in a way that is complacent to males and the socially constructed way of defining what is or is not attractive has links to capitalist consumerism. Advertisers have for decades found a market for perfection: leading people to believe that something is not right with them how they are and therefore they must buy this product to change themselves so they can reach this higher state of being (123-124). Also, when she draws from the work of Orbach, Labre furthers this argument by discussing the objectification of women at an early age in the form of humanizing commodities, or to put more bluntly, being used in their physical form to sell products. Also, marketing other cultures through things like the Brazilian wax is also troubling: According to Labre’s article, the Brazilian wax was rarely used in Brazil until it became popular in America which demonstrates further comodification of socially constructed concepts of manufactured beauty in hairlessness.
Labre also addresses something that was sort of touched on by Tiggemann and Lewis when they discuss the issue of female application of these norms when she tackles the issue of women feeling pleasure out of being hairless and also further normalizing it with the concept that hairless is beautiful. She basically says that women lose the idea of true beauty and nature by furthering these ideals unquestioningly.
According to all of my sources, as mentioned above, an average of 90% of women in the various population samples remove their body hair on a regular basis. This further demonstrates the normalcy of removing the body hair in order to attain some other level of self that is not naturally attained. It seems an underlying theme in most of the articles, particularly in Toerien and Wilkinson’s article, that capitalism/ consumerist culture of the west (a key actor here being the media) has driven the idea of body hair being unwanted on a truly beautiful woman. Even in instances where there is not an abnormal amount of hair comparatively with other women it seems there is an excessive amount of hair removal occurring with many woman (up to 90% in the case of Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi) getting rid of their hair on a weekly basis. Although it was not discussed in any of the articles, the potential environmental impacts that this could create with known packaging and processing patterns in hair removal strategies is phenomenal when you consider the amount of western women removing their hair on a weekly, sometimes even daily, basis.
Strength, Toerien and Wilkinson mention, is a masculine trait. Masculinity is often thought of when one thinks of a person having more hair because biologically most men have more hair than most women. When a woman consciously removes her hair, then, it could be argued that she is removing part of her strength and, as previously mentioned, becoming more passive. They, Toerien and Wilkinson, also discuss the implications of making the ‘natural’ beauty of a woman as attempting to display that it took no time when in reality it took a lot of time. Labre says it best : ‘For women, the removal of body hair is a constant, repetitive, never ending practice demanding time, money and energy that could be channeled into other [more empowered] pursuits such as educational and career goals’(128).
The lack of acceptance for women’s body hair in western society is shameful. Not only does it serve to further the patriarchal norms associated with capitalism, consumption and control over one, it normalizes the paradox of habits of the unnatural in order to achieve a look that is perceived as more natural. Women’s perceptions of self, as well as men’s perception of women in this fashion should not be normalized yet because of the media and our mysterious drive to the unattainable, we continue to follow the norm and precedent set before us. Although it was rooted in history, removing the body hair of women is not something that is useful to society as a whole and is therefore not a norm that should be continued. Although, as demonstrated above, a woman often feels more attractive and better about herself when she is without hair, we must look at the reasons for this to determine whether or not they are truly valid in continuing this way of life. Every time a woman waxes, shaves or plucks no matter how she feels about it she is participating in a system that is, as empirical evidence discussed here that was provided by scholarly sources, clearly not looking out for her best interest; if it was, why would such a painful practice such as waxing to rid herself of something that is literally engrained in her skin be encouraged? Removing hair is not scientifically useful, except maybe in the case of childbirth as Labre suggests and it should therefore be further questioned to understand the meaning behind this activity that so many women partake in, simply filling in a cultural norm. Hair is a part of us; it is not just for the head. Something that occurs in such a fashion should be welcomed, not discarded. As Toerien, Wilkinson and Choi state: ‘…question the narrow definition of feminine embodiment which maintains…the message that a woman’s body is unacceptable if left unaltered’ (405).
References
Merran Toerien and Sue Wilkinson, “Gender and Body Hair: Constructing the Feminine
Woman,” Women’s Studies International Forum Vol. 26 No. 4 (USA: Elsevier,
2003) 333-344.
Magdala Peixoto Labre, ‘The Brazilian Wax: New Hairlessness Norm for Women?”
Journal of communication Inquiry Vol. 26 No.2 (Sage, 2002) 113-132.
Merran Toerien, Sue Wilkinson and Precilla Y. L. Choi, “Body Hair Removal; The
Mundane Production of Normative Femininity,” Sex Roles Vol. 52 No. 5/6
(Springer Science +Business Media Inc, 2005) 399-406.
Marika Tiggemann and Christine Lewis, “Attitudes Toward Women’s body Hair:
Relationship with Disgust Sensitivity,” Psychology of women Quarterly Vol. 28
(USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) 381-387.
Marika Tiggemann and Sarah J. Kenyon, “The Hairlessness Norm: the removal of body
hair in Women,” Sex Roles Vol. 39 No. 11/12 (Australia: Plenum publications
Corporation; 1998) 873-885.
Michelle G. Lipton, Lorraine Sherr, Jonathan Elford, Malcolm H. A. Rustin and William
J. Clayton, “Women Living with Facial Hair: The Psychological and behavioral
Burden” Journal of Psychosomatic Research Vol. 61 (London: Elsevier, 2006)
161-168.