LOVE THE HAIR YOURE IN
Let it Grow
Two female friends walk through the heat of a sweltering mid-summer day, one in shorts and the other in long pants. The wavy, hot air blurs their eyes and summons sweat from their foreheads. "Good grief, how can you wear pants on a day like this?"
"If you hadn’t shaved in as long as I have, you’d wear long pants too."
Women across the country spend time and money keeping their legs and armpits bald. What is so horrible about female body hair? Why must the respectable, attractive woman never be seen in her natural state? What is it about male body hair that sanctions it fit to remain on the legs and underarms? A female’s hair smells no worse, feels none the nastier, and looks no uglier.
Men are never scorned for their body’s little habit of growing leg and underarm hair. Is it not an injustice then, that hairy legs and underarms on a female is a social gaffe? Women's legs deserve a little fur coating too, and all underarms have the right to grow a little shade!
According to Herbie McNinch, inventor and president of Quick Shave, Inc., the ritual of women shaving their legs and armpits began in 1915 because of a razor company’s marketing campaign. The campaign was designed to convince women that hairy underarms are unfeminine and unhygienic. Razor blade sales doubled within two years. Advertising worked, and the tradition was begun. Now, years later, people are so used to the smooth female legs and bare pits that they see anything otherwise as disgusting. Why are those soft, thin little hairs disgusting? Like a deer’s short bristles, wild grass in an untouched field, fuzz on a tan knitted sweater, a bunny’s whiskers, body hair is beautiful! It’s curly, fluffy, light, springy; it’s human. Are eyebrows disgusting? It used to be the style to shave those off. Now, with that style gone, do we miss it? Would we miss the shaving of legs and underarms if one day that style slips into history?
The Quick Shave timeline documents the 1940’s when women around the country used sand paper to remove their body hair because of the shortages of domestic materials during World War II. How absurd it seems to painfully rub sandpaper over one’s body for cosmetic reasons! How ridiculous it will seem in the future that women work so hard at being hairless. If female shaving served any utilitarian purpose what-so-ever, the effort could be creditable. Yet shaving does not make the armpits smell any nicer and it hardly makes the legs any cooler. A purely beautifying motivation pulls the razor.
A laser hair removal corporation took a survey regarding unwanted hair. According to them, "64 percent of men think a woman with excess body hair is less feminine." It seems that, if anything, the hairy woman would be more feminine! After all, leaving the hair on results in more parts to the body, thus more of a woman. What could be more feminine than an undisturbed female body? If a dog shaves and wears bows, it appears to be less dog-like and more human-like. In the same light, when a woman shaves, she is altering her natural female features.
One point must be made abundantly clear. Hair on a female’s legs does not make her masculine. It isn’t male hair on a woman's leg, it’s female hair! Body hair is not a masculine trait, it’s a human one. Some women are not trying to be manly when they let their underarm hair grow wild. Accepting their natural state of hair does not necessarily mean they are "lesbians" or "hippies" or "bums".
There have always been and perhaps always will be strange social customs. On the Quick Shave timeline, women were removing body hair in 4000 BC by making depilatory creams out of quicklime, arsenic, and starch! In 54 AD the depilatory ingredients evolved to ass’s fat, she-goat’s gall, bat’s blood, and powdered viper. Social customs change pretty often. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll bring back another style featured on the timeline: shaving the scalp bald to wear a wig! How funny we humans are. Will we ever find something more important to concern ourselves with than manipulating our appearances?
Still, females can rightfully choose to shave, without letting it become a do-or-die ordeal. If they like the smooth bareness, and don’t mind buying the equipment and spending the time, power to them. If they feel like they have to do it or they'll appear barbaric, then they shouldn't buy another razor! Like all social customs, if you step outside the lines, you’ll be shot at with labels, judgments, and names. But at least you’ll be free! Being free from conformity, even something as trivial as shaving, brings a sense of relief, an inner strength that can go a long way in building character.
Anyhow, if you're stuck on thinking female body hair is disgusting, whether you're male or female, maybe you could reconsider. It is not impossible to alter your view of what is beautiful, not if you try. In the Middle Ages, European women who plucked all hair from the eyelashes and temples and shaved their necks and eyebrows were seen as beautiful, according to the Quick-Shave timeline. That idea of beauty has changed, and it will continue changing. What you see as beauty all depends on the love you send from your heart to your eyes. A woman should never be expected to shave. No one, man or woman, should be expected to follow any of society’s gender roles. If a man picks up any so-called feminine traits, why does that determine him to be a wimp or less of a man? Perhaps he is trying to be himself. All our colorful personalities and delightful characteristics need not remain in two separate boxes marked Male and Female. They are open to the entire human race; even animals share them with us.
Two female friends walk through the heat of a sweltering mid-summer day, one in shorts and the other in long pants. The wavy, hot air blurs their eyes and summons sweat from their foreheads. "Good grief, how can you wear pants on a day like this?"
"If you hadn’t shaved in as long as I have, you’d wear long pants too."
Women across the country spend time and money keeping their legs and armpits bald. What is so horrible about female body hair? Why must the respectable, attractive woman never be seen in her natural state? What is it about male body hair that sanctions it fit to remain on the legs and underarms? A female’s hair smells no worse, feels none the nastier, and looks no uglier.
Men are never scorned for their body’s little habit of growing leg and underarm hair. Is it not an injustice then, that hairy legs and underarms on a female is a social gaffe? Women's legs deserve a little fur coating too, and all underarms have the right to grow a little shade!
According to Herbie McNinch, inventor and president of Quick Shave, Inc., the ritual of women shaving their legs and armpits began in 1915 because of a razor company’s marketing campaign. The campaign was designed to convince women that hairy underarms are unfeminine and unhygienic. Razor blade sales doubled within two years. Advertising worked, and the tradition was begun. Now, years later, people are so used to the smooth female legs and bare pits that they see anything otherwise as disgusting. Why are those soft, thin little hairs disgusting? Like a deer’s short bristles, wild grass in an untouched field, fuzz on a tan knitted sweater, a bunny’s whiskers, body hair is beautiful! It’s curly, fluffy, light, springy; it’s human. Are eyebrows disgusting? It used to be the style to shave those off. Now, with that style gone, do we miss it? Would we miss the shaving of legs and underarms if one day that style slips into history?
The Quick Shave timeline documents the 1940’s when women around the country used sand paper to remove their body hair because of the shortages of domestic materials during World War II. How absurd it seems to painfully rub sandpaper over one’s body for cosmetic reasons! How ridiculous it will seem in the future that women work so hard at being hairless. If female shaving served any utilitarian purpose what-so-ever, the effort could be creditable. Yet shaving does not make the armpits smell any nicer and it hardly makes the legs any cooler. A purely beautifying motivation pulls the razor.
A laser hair removal corporation took a survey regarding unwanted hair. According to them, "64 percent of men think a woman with excess body hair is less feminine." It seems that, if anything, the hairy woman would be more feminine! After all, leaving the hair on results in more parts to the body, thus more of a woman. What could be more feminine than an undisturbed female body? If a dog shaves and wears bows, it appears to be less dog-like and more human-like. In the same light, when a woman shaves, she is altering her natural female features.
One point must be made abundantly clear. Hair on a female’s legs does not make her masculine. It isn’t male hair on a woman's leg, it’s female hair! Body hair is not a masculine trait, it’s a human one. Some women are not trying to be manly when they let their underarm hair grow wild. Accepting their natural state of hair does not necessarily mean they are "lesbians" or "hippies" or "bums".
There have always been and perhaps always will be strange social customs. On the Quick Shave timeline, women were removing body hair in 4000 BC by making depilatory creams out of quicklime, arsenic, and starch! In 54 AD the depilatory ingredients evolved to ass’s fat, she-goat’s gall, bat’s blood, and powdered viper. Social customs change pretty often. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll bring back another style featured on the timeline: shaving the scalp bald to wear a wig! How funny we humans are. Will we ever find something more important to concern ourselves with than manipulating our appearances?
Still, females can rightfully choose to shave, without letting it become a do-or-die ordeal. If they like the smooth bareness, and don’t mind buying the equipment and spending the time, power to them. If they feel like they have to do it or they'll appear barbaric, then they shouldn't buy another razor! Like all social customs, if you step outside the lines, you’ll be shot at with labels, judgments, and names. But at least you’ll be free! Being free from conformity, even something as trivial as shaving, brings a sense of relief, an inner strength that can go a long way in building character.
Anyhow, if you're stuck on thinking female body hair is disgusting, whether you're male or female, maybe you could reconsider. It is not impossible to alter your view of what is beautiful, not if you try. In the Middle Ages, European women who plucked all hair from the eyelashes and temples and shaved their necks and eyebrows were seen as beautiful, according to the Quick-Shave timeline. That idea of beauty has changed, and it will continue changing. What you see as beauty all depends on the love you send from your heart to your eyes. A woman should never be expected to shave. No one, man or woman, should be expected to follow any of society’s gender roles. If a man picks up any so-called feminine traits, why does that determine him to be a wimp or less of a man? Perhaps he is trying to be himself. All our colorful personalities and delightful characteristics need not remain in two separate boxes marked Male and Female. They are open to the entire human race; even animals share them with us.