Everything I do is judged: I mostly get it wrong. Oh well.
A while back, sarahetc posted on her blog about reactions to Nair's new depilatory cream aimed at ten to fifteen year-olds. For those of you who haven't seen the marketing for this, it's a special line of Nair cream with fruity scents, marketed directly to teenagers and their mothers. Sarah talked about the disgusted comments this campaign had prompted among some of her friends, and while she concurred with the general drift of many of these comments, she argued that the teenage desire to depilate is legitimate:
But to say that they shouldn't want to shave their legs, or that it's not significant for them to come up on the age where they start shaving their legs is wrong-headed. Is it significant for a young man the first time he shaves his face? Then why would it be any less significant for a girl the first time she shaves her legs.
The post set me to thinking, because on one level I agree. There's no denying that shaving one's legs is something of a rite of passage for many girls, and definitely no denying that teenage girls are depilating anyway, regardless of what products may or may not be on offer to them. That being the case, why shouldn't Nair have a special cream for teenagers, right? Better for girls to go out with their mothers and buy something that's meant for them than for it to be a clandestine thing (which it usually is - hands up who here didn't sneakily shave their legs when their parents were still insisting they were too young). And yet...
When Sarah first posted this discussion, I didn't comment, because I felt the knee-jerk reaction that had obviously been a feature of a lot of her friends' reactions, and I wanted to think some more about that. Well, I've thought, and I'm really, really uncomfortable with what this product represents. As Sarah says in her post, the advertising is fairly unambiguously distasteful to anyone who thinks about it. The name of the range is 'Pretty', and hairlessness is equated not only with beauty but also with being an empowered woman. I hope I don't even need to unpack the many ways in which that is odious. More than that, though, the very nature of the product offends me. Here it is, a hair removal product especially for teenagers. All these strange things are happening to their bodies, lumps and bumps appearing where none were before, bleeding and spots and hair sprouting out all over. It's frightening and exhilarating and frankly a little bit disgusting, when you're the one going through it. Suddenly your body isn't the same as it used to be, and while for most people those changes are intensely desired, they're also disorienting, to say the least. And in steps Nair, to say 'You know what, you're right. Your body was nicer before. But just slap these chemicals on your skin and you can have smooth, hairless legs, just like when you were a kid.' And so it starts.
It's fairly widely acknowledged that there is an ideal of feminine beauty in our society which does nothing good for our mental or physical well-being. Disturbingly, a lot of aspects of this ideal are related to aspects of our bodies which change at puberty. We aspire to a degree of thinness which is only natural in a pre-pubescent girl: stick-thin legs, no sign of fat anywhere (a handful of adult women are this shape naturally, but it's rare). Never mind that a lot of that fat - on our bellies, our hips, round our waists - is there in order to make sure we can reproduce effectively. It keeps essential organs warm and stores resources to supply us during menstruation and pregnancy. We're still allowed to have boobies, so long as we remember that they're primarily meant for looking pretty in lacy lingerie, not for anything so coarse as feeding babies (when's the last time you saw a billboard with a semi-clad model? And when did you last see a woman breastfeeding in a public place? U-huh). We shouldn't have hair on our legs, or under our arms, and it seems increasingly fashionable to eliminate hair anywhere else it appears. And the primary selling point of sanitary products is 'discretion', because god forbid anyone should have to be reminded that we bleed (except they do like to sell us all those disposable, bleached-white products... but that's a rant for another day). Cumulatively, the effect is that we're told our bodies are not okay, and just look how happy that makes us all.
I really try hard not to buy into the way our society treats female beauty, because I've seen first-hand how destructive it can be. My own mother is a slave to the beauty myth, and I've spent my life watching her loathe her own body. When I say that it sounds like she must have a terrible eating disorder, or something of the like, but the terrible thing is that from a societal point of view her constant obsessing over her weight, bags under her eyes, etc., are totally normal. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had with female friends about things we don't like about our bodies, where it's felt almost unacceptable not to express some sort of self-loathing.
Having said all this, I suppose it raises the question Sarah touches on in her post - how is female depilation any different to male shaving? Following the drift of my argument, surely it's equally oppressive for men to be required to shave. I don't think it's quite the same, though, for several reasons. First of all, male facial hair eventually becomes inconvenient if left completely unchecked. It needs to be groomed in some way to stay tidy and out of the way, and thus male shaving is more to cutting the hair on our heads. That said, there seems to be an increasing animus against facial hair from men, and the type of rhetoric associated with that is definitely equivalent to the way female body hair is referred to. I know I've been guilty myself of describing beards as 'gross', and while personal aesthetic tastes are legitimate, writing this post has made me examine what it actually means to say that. Still, the social attitude towards boys' facial hair is largely free of the disgust attached to female body hair, which means that a boy's first shave is much more positive in nature than the first time a girl shaves her legs. Girls have their own rite of passage - the first period. It would be nice if we could celebrate that a little more, what with it heralding the entry into womanhood, the ability to bring forth life, and all that.
I'm not suggesting Nair's advertising campaign is the agent of some apocalyptic anti-feminism. It barely registers in the grand scheme of things. But it does bother me, because it's one more thing that makes it hard for adult women to say to their children 'You're okay as you are.' It makes it harder to say 'You're too young - you should delay this decision until you're able to fully appreciate the ramifications.' Because it really is true what your granny said - once you start shaving, the hair really does grow in coarser. Once you've messed with your body's natural way of things, it's that much harder to stop. But not only that, getting into the habit of shaving is just one more little step into accepting this big lie: that we have to change ourselves in order to be beautiful.
And you know, I actually like having smooth legs from time to time, and I think they do look pretty. I like pretty clothes, and fancy lingerie, and make-up. But I'd appreciate it if society would stop trying to feed me the line that I can only be beautiful if I have these things.
But to say that they shouldn't want to shave their legs, or that it's not significant for them to come up on the age where they start shaving their legs is wrong-headed. Is it significant for a young man the first time he shaves his face? Then why would it be any less significant for a girl the first time she shaves her legs.
The post set me to thinking, because on one level I agree. There's no denying that shaving one's legs is something of a rite of passage for many girls, and definitely no denying that teenage girls are depilating anyway, regardless of what products may or may not be on offer to them. That being the case, why shouldn't Nair have a special cream for teenagers, right? Better for girls to go out with their mothers and buy something that's meant for them than for it to be a clandestine thing (which it usually is - hands up who here didn't sneakily shave their legs when their parents were still insisting they were too young). And yet...
When Sarah first posted this discussion, I didn't comment, because I felt the knee-jerk reaction that had obviously been a feature of a lot of her friends' reactions, and I wanted to think some more about that. Well, I've thought, and I'm really, really uncomfortable with what this product represents. As Sarah says in her post, the advertising is fairly unambiguously distasteful to anyone who thinks about it. The name of the range is 'Pretty', and hairlessness is equated not only with beauty but also with being an empowered woman. I hope I don't even need to unpack the many ways in which that is odious. More than that, though, the very nature of the product offends me. Here it is, a hair removal product especially for teenagers. All these strange things are happening to their bodies, lumps and bumps appearing where none were before, bleeding and spots and hair sprouting out all over. It's frightening and exhilarating and frankly a little bit disgusting, when you're the one going through it. Suddenly your body isn't the same as it used to be, and while for most people those changes are intensely desired, they're also disorienting, to say the least. And in steps Nair, to say 'You know what, you're right. Your body was nicer before. But just slap these chemicals on your skin and you can have smooth, hairless legs, just like when you were a kid.' And so it starts.
It's fairly widely acknowledged that there is an ideal of feminine beauty in our society which does nothing good for our mental or physical well-being. Disturbingly, a lot of aspects of this ideal are related to aspects of our bodies which change at puberty. We aspire to a degree of thinness which is only natural in a pre-pubescent girl: stick-thin legs, no sign of fat anywhere (a handful of adult women are this shape naturally, but it's rare). Never mind that a lot of that fat - on our bellies, our hips, round our waists - is there in order to make sure we can reproduce effectively. It keeps essential organs warm and stores resources to supply us during menstruation and pregnancy. We're still allowed to have boobies, so long as we remember that they're primarily meant for looking pretty in lacy lingerie, not for anything so coarse as feeding babies (when's the last time you saw a billboard with a semi-clad model? And when did you last see a woman breastfeeding in a public place? U-huh). We shouldn't have hair on our legs, or under our arms, and it seems increasingly fashionable to eliminate hair anywhere else it appears. And the primary selling point of sanitary products is 'discretion', because god forbid anyone should have to be reminded that we bleed (except they do like to sell us all those disposable, bleached-white products... but that's a rant for another day). Cumulatively, the effect is that we're told our bodies are not okay, and just look how happy that makes us all.
I really try hard not to buy into the way our society treats female beauty, because I've seen first-hand how destructive it can be. My own mother is a slave to the beauty myth, and I've spent my life watching her loathe her own body. When I say that it sounds like she must have a terrible eating disorder, or something of the like, but the terrible thing is that from a societal point of view her constant obsessing over her weight, bags under her eyes, etc., are totally normal. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had with female friends about things we don't like about our bodies, where it's felt almost unacceptable not to express some sort of self-loathing.
Having said all this, I suppose it raises the question Sarah touches on in her post - how is female depilation any different to male shaving? Following the drift of my argument, surely it's equally oppressive for men to be required to shave. I don't think it's quite the same, though, for several reasons. First of all, male facial hair eventually becomes inconvenient if left completely unchecked. It needs to be groomed in some way to stay tidy and out of the way, and thus male shaving is more to cutting the hair on our heads. That said, there seems to be an increasing animus against facial hair from men, and the type of rhetoric associated with that is definitely equivalent to the way female body hair is referred to. I know I've been guilty myself of describing beards as 'gross', and while personal aesthetic tastes are legitimate, writing this post has made me examine what it actually means to say that. Still, the social attitude towards boys' facial hair is largely free of the disgust attached to female body hair, which means that a boy's first shave is much more positive in nature than the first time a girl shaves her legs. Girls have their own rite of passage - the first period. It would be nice if we could celebrate that a little more, what with it heralding the entry into womanhood, the ability to bring forth life, and all that.
I'm not suggesting Nair's advertising campaign is the agent of some apocalyptic anti-feminism. It barely registers in the grand scheme of things. But it does bother me, because it's one more thing that makes it hard for adult women to say to their children 'You're okay as you are.' It makes it harder to say 'You're too young - you should delay this decision until you're able to fully appreciate the ramifications.' Because it really is true what your granny said - once you start shaving, the hair really does grow in coarser. Once you've messed with your body's natural way of things, it's that much harder to stop. But not only that, getting into the habit of shaving is just one more little step into accepting this big lie: that we have to change ourselves in order to be beautiful.
And you know, I actually like having smooth legs from time to time, and I think they do look pretty. I like pretty clothes, and fancy lingerie, and make-up. But I'd appreciate it if society would stop trying to feed me the line that I can only be beautiful if I have these things.