Remaining yourself, remaining natural : body image acceptance

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there are understanding and supportive men out there.

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Some of us are more than just supportive! I highly encourage the end of hair removal and make-up. Women always look their best in the clean simplicity of their natural state.

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Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:
[b]

Some of us are more than just supportive! I highly encourage the end of hair removal and make-up. Women always look their best in the clean simplicity of their natural state.[/b]

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If I don't shave my legs they are as hairy as the average guy. Still like them?

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Originally posted by Southlander:
[b]Men are getting more sensitive about hairy backs and necks, also thanks to TV.[/b]

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Yeah, that gets on my nerves too. I suppose some of us gals who shave out of a feeling of necessity for "looking presentable" might think turnabout is fair play (especially when some hairy guys hate the "natural look" on women), but I don't really think that's progress!

I'm not sure whether I shave because I feel I have to or because I like to. It's both, I guess. I don't shave as much in the winter (unless I'm planning to "get some" [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] ) but when I do, I like the result and the feel of smooth legs. So I don't know. Am I a fashion victim? Perhaps.

One thing I know - it's a lot less "acceptable" for a fat woman to buck beauty trends like shaving and make-up than for a thin woman to do so. Which probably also factors into my choices, much as I hate to admit it.

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e thing to be supportive of women who don't shave, but when we get into the realm of guys "highly encouraging" women to go one way or the other (shave or don't shave), isn't that kind of prescriptive?
What's the difference between a guy telling me that I should shave and wear make-up because "women look best" that way, and a guy telling me that I shouldn't shave or wear make-up because "women look best" that way? Either way, isn't that a man telling me what I should do with my body?

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Noteworthy words of democratic wisdom, Moderator . We all have our specifics about what to look like and what we think makes others look good; and of course there are the general or norms out there in terms of culture and society. But I think the important thing is that good ol fashioned concept of live and let live.

It’s obvious that people in general make a lot out of what your look like, how you dress, the way you present yourself, etc. But while I don’t think we can totally get rid of this thinking, I do believe we in general make way too much of it in terms of how we judge others.

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I appreciate the support, guys, but what about us women who actually like to wear make-up and have clean-shaven legs and/or underarms?

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Well, tolerance and diversity aside, I’m backing you all the way, for sure! (smirkola)

Actually, reading this thread makes me realize that even a common everyday activity like shaving has a long political and cultural history. I did some searching on the Internet (got me away from doing a report I didn’t want to work on any way).

There are literally hundreds of reports and studies on shaving and hair removal, especially for women—everything from how to do it right to why do it at all.

While some say that women shaving in the US (and Canada, I suppose) goes back to the First World War era, actually it dates all the way back to
[url=http://cosmeticmagazine.com/managearticle.asp?c=250&a=96]ancient Egypt, India, various places in Asia and Africa[/url] and throughout Europe in the [url=http://www.wnn.nu/UK/History/history.html]Greco-Roman era and in to the Middle Ages[/url].

While there are obviously [url=http://www.4to40.com/health/index.asp?id=19]social and economic factors,[/url] these reports I see say there is a powerful [url=http://webhome.idirect.com/~brucer/RAZ_WOM.html]biologically-influenced reason [/url]as well, in terms of women attracting mates.

Since in general most women, whether they shave or not, have far less body hair naturally than most men, and apparently that is a natural visual marker in what attracts a man to a woman.

So, obviously the more hairless skin a woman has, they claim, the more attractive she will be. That's historically a key motivator for women to shave their legs, etc.

Of course, on the social side, sadly the classism throughout history has also been a motivator, since upper class women had more time and resources to shave than poorer working class women. So, it was deemed that upper class women were superior and therefore more attractive. So shaving also became associated with status, wealth, education, culture, etc., and also hygiene and bathing.

In North America, shaving became big during the first major social liberalization trend of the 20th century, around 1910, when women began regularly showing more bare skin, especially the arms and legs in public (before then it was considered indecent and overly provocative for women, and even men, to show any skin beyond the hands, feet and face, even while in swim wear).

Of course, not long after, various capitalistic interests got involved and started turning it into [url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_012.html]a total fashion trend [/url]during WW1.

Interestingly enough, though, [url=http://beavershaver.com/pageview.asp?page=10]various studies [/url]began to show that many women were, in various ways, turned on by the feelings of hairless skin.

Apparently, while overall human skin is similar,[url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3235/is_200104/ai_n7921056]female skin has key differences [/url] than male skin, in that, where men have a layer of smooth muscle under the outer epidermis, supposedly for self-defense in combat, women have a layer of insular fat that contains millions of capillary nerve endings, making their skin much more sensitive (which is apparently also a factor in why women generally are less susceptible to skin cancer than men). The removal of hair, especially from highly sensitive areas like the legs, etc. increases sensuality in women. This is apparently one reason why shaving has remained so popular with most women.

Sadly, these same reports found that, as I'm sure many women here will know, the actual act of shaving has the horrid side effect of

[url=http://beauty.about.com/cs/shaving/a/shaving_history.htm]various forms of irritation[/url]and burning.

So cosmetologists went to work on an endless crusade to find [url=http://tinyurl.com/2h394h]less intrusive ways of hair removal.[/url]

Shaving for women really exploded in North America and Europe during the social liberalization that went on during the New Deal Reform era and during and right after WW 2, when many younger women started wearing shorter skirts and even shorter shorts--a trend that was supported by many famous actresses, models and musicians, like Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, and Betty Grable, with the infamous "million-dollar legs" (since she supposedly had them insured for a million dollars).

Hi all, this is Pierre from Belgium, I'm feminist, in my forties. First of all, I'm French-speaking so my English is not very good. As bermarchtum, I'm one of ecologielibidinale's member.
The post of Steppenwolf Allende (SA) is interesting but misses some critical points that I will explain.
I'm very involved by female body hair (FBH) because my wife does not shave her armpits for several reasons and when we go to the beach or the pool, people look disgusting to her, some say "monkey", "go shave it". This is relatively recent (1995) and is really a sexist discrimination as I also have body hair but nobody bashes me. I was curious to know why FBH suddenly became a problem for a lot of people. I've made some researchs on the Internet and I've found that FBH was taboo for centuries, it was forbidden to display it on statues and on pictures, it's only since ±1850 that a painter has showed a woman with pubic hair visible. Then, movie industry began circa 1896 and the MPAA, a puritan censor group from Hollywood, explicitly mentions it was forbidden to show FBH in movies, surely because it was too erotic and a woman should be equal to a man if she sports hairy armpits, as Aristophanes already described 400 years BC in "Lysistrata". This is the reason why there are almost no movies showing FBH. Even "historical" movies, supposed to describe human life in the Middle Age show shaved women, which is as anachronistic as if they had a cellular phone ! During centuries, only rich people shave, while 95% of the population was starving.
What SA says about what happened from ± 1910 is correct but the ads from razor's companies were absolutely disgusting to make women feel guilty. Here are 3 ads coming from a link given by SA (but I had already found this)
two from 1915 and one from 1924

[i]1) Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair

2) The Woman of Fashion says the underarm must be as smooth as the face

3) Perhaps, because of an old-fashioned scruple, you have hesitated to rid yourself of the disfigurement of underarm hair. Are your arms constantly pinned to your sides? Or do you scorn to wear the filmy or sleeveless frocks that the vogue of the day decrees? In either case, He is apt to think you lifeless and behind the times. He will notice you holding yourself aloof from the swing of convention[/i]

Such advertisements raised women’s anxiety, shame and self-consciousness, sending them scurrying to stores to purchase fashionable contraptions that scrape away hair, flesh and blood.
Disfigurement of underarm hair (for a woman of course, no problem for a man), WTH is this ? We all know that marketing uses every possible means but this was really a shame. Nowadays, ads say to women "shave and you will be attractive and feminine". But FBH is a sign of sexual maturity and thus, a sign of femininity, as breast. So women remove an obvious sign of womanliness to be more feminine ? Am I missing something ?

Susan Basow, a feminist and teacher at the university said in 1991

[i]In my research, I found that in the U.S., prior to 1915, very few women removed underarm or leg hair. Then Gillette began "The Great Underarm Campaign" to get women to shave with their new safety razor. The ads emphasized "smoothing" the underarms and had a racist tone (to make skin "white" and "fashionable" at a time when waves of "dirty" "old-fashioned" immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy and Ireland were flooding the U.S.). In the 1920s, the female "look" was a boyish and youthful one (the flapper), but this is also when women had won the vote and were leaving the domestic sphere for the public one. Ads emphasized the importance for women to manage their appearance in order to be sexually attractive to men.
Ads emphasized attractiveness, neatness, cleanliness, and modernity. Given that women were behaving more like men (in terms of jobs and education), the gender lines became drawn on women's bodies: men are hairy, therefore women must be hairless. Legs, leading as they do to the crotch, also have a sexual association. Shaving them can be viewed as a means to socially control (modify) women's untamed sexuality. [/i]

I don't shave, but I feel like a bit of a hypocrite even mentioning it: I am one of those "lucky" women with so little underarm or leg hair that shaving would barely make a difference. If I had more hair, I confess that I'd probably shave, out of social pressure if nothing else.

It is worth reminding ourselves that men, too, are pressured to shave, in particular, the natural hair that grows on their faces. Yes, beards are somewhat socially acceptable, but I'd like to make three points: (1) A beard must be "well kept", which means that even a bearded man must shave much of his neck at least once every three or four days -- a point that a bearded friend of mine has emphasized to me on many an occasion, and he finds it especially difficult since he has a big Adam's apple and often cuts himself there; (2) bearded men do much worse on job interviews, etc., than clean-shaven men, so the social acceptability of beardedness is limited (unless you're a sea captain or something like that); and (3) most clean-shaven men in the workforce are expected to shave every day, which (I am told) is a major inconvenience if nothing else: you don't want to show up at the office with a day's stubble.

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Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):
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It is worth reminding ourselves that men, too, are pressured to shave, in particular, the natural hair that grows on their faces. [/b]

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Thank you Martha. I grew a mustache in 1970 at the suggestion of my wife who got tired of looking at my bleeding upper lip as I nicked it almost every morning. My adult son went further and grew a full beard.

But hair is hair and how we wear it, male or female, is mostly a matter of fashion.

Indeed, regular shaving of any body hair is a relatively recent practice. It is less than 100 years ago that King Gillette introduced the first practical safety razor. Until then, most men would visit a barber as few men could master the art of using a straight razor on their beards. Women, simply, just didn't shave although there was use of depilatory ointments.

Britney Spears releases unretouched photos to help highlight body image issues

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Britney Spears has allowed the pre-airbrushed images from a shoot she took part in for fashion firm Candie’s to be used ALONGSIDE the digitally-altered ones, so people can see the difference. The 29-year-old singer made the extraordinary move in order to highlight the pressure exerted on women to look perfect.