Let’s talk body hair.
For women especially it seems like just part of our normal routine to shave when we shower, to wax when we are going on a beach vacation, to thread her eyebrows every month. But why is it that we are taught to feel ashamed for looking how we naturally look meanwhile men get to walk around like fucking wolf men.
And let me just say this is coming from someone that does wax from the front all the way back to my ass crack.
I’ve done this for as long as I can remember in my adult life, I just always thought I didn’t like body hair- but the older I get, the more I start to wonder if that’s really the case or have I been programmed to feel this way? And how long has this female programming been going on??
Apparently a lot longer than you or I could have imagined in my head I figure this obsession with hairless female body started somewhere in the postwar-era of like the 50s.
Just seems like some thing that would have been dreamed up then – but this has been a thing for much much longer than I figured.
Even back as far as 3000 BC women and Egyptian, Roman, and Indian cultures were practicing hair removal!
In these ancient cultures things like seashells and shark teeth were used as razors and tweezers.
Can you imagine trying to shave or pluck your vagina with fucking seashells??
At least the Egyptian’s were using pumice stones or sugar-based wax that's very similar to today’s waxing practices.
Queen Elizabeth I started the trend of messing with our eyebrow shape, apparently they wanted a larger forehead back then so to create this illusian women would actually remove all of their eyebrows, and even sometimes their hairline.
All of this history just to say the concept that women should be perfect hairless creatures has been around for centuries. Even goddesses were depicted as hairless in Renaissance art and actually in the Roman empire women with pubic hair were considered "uncivilized".
The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli
Even in 2 BC Roman poet Ovid urged women to groom and not to have “bristling hair” on their legs.
In 1910 commercial x-ray salons popped up. That's right... x-rays.
Exposing areas to four minutes of x-rays multiple times a month- a very dangerous attempt to remain hairless. The marketing for the salons were directed towards women naturally, promoting that looking hairless would help them get jobs. Eyeroll.
Women’s hair removal really boomed as I assumed in the 40s and 50s with the influence of hairless playboy models and bikini swimsuits; And has risen ever since.
Marilyn Monroe for Playboy
(Not including the brief moment of the 70s with some excepting and pushing freedom and self love.)
During this time feminists also showed their rebellion with hairy body parents, a sort of badge for women fighting for gender equality.
So look I am not saying we should all throw out our razors and go "granola"- But we should be aware of our choices and the extremely sexist history we carry as women. We need to work on and fight against the stigma of hairy legs on a woman, or in between weeks of a bikini wax.
These things shouldn’t be embarrassing and we should be aware of why that feeling creeps up.
Sorry to tell you but your feminine self-care routine is deeply rooted in body shaming and is painfully sexist.
Commercials and ads showing already smooth models shaving their legs in some tropical garden. As if it was a vacation and thrill to do, and not something most of us see as a nuisance.
In fact I can’t recall seeing one hair being shaved in any shaving commercial.
I myself am still shaving my under arms and Brazilian waxing – but I care less about keeping it perfectly slightly at all times. I shave my legs maybe once a month, and have been out on a boat at sea for a week so I have a few days worth of underarm hair going on right now lol. (Hey, a pirates life right?)
This is my body.
I am a woman.
I have hair.
I sweat.
I am real.
I am not some plastic femme-bot.
And if anyone has an issue with it, they can get lost. I don’t want someone that fears a little body hair- it’s not even attractive to me for someone to be so afraid or turned off by natural things.
Partners should be attracted to each other in their purest forms, anything else is cake.
Just saying ladies, a little word of advice- If your partner is giving you shit for natural things, it's not you. It's them, and maybe you should stop dating little bitches. :)
And if I, or you, want to pick up the razor that’s OUR choice, NOT a necessity as we have been told from every advertisement, from men, other women, our own mothers.
Also I leave you with this:
Our sexiness as women should have no correlation with how much hair is left on our bodies. How much make up we have on, how "proper" we are.
It is an essence. An attitude. And knowledge of female power and origin.
Even one of the most glamorous woman alive wore natural armpit hair proudly.
Sophia Loren (by the way- before it was cool to do; actually in the 50s when It was totally out)
Way to be a boss ass bitch- a leader of the club "IDGAF I’m sexy anyway".
Thank you Sophia. <3
Now the choice is your ladies- maybe skip your shaving day and tell everyone to suck it.
xoxo- Vox the Fox
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