The History of Removing Women's Body Hair

In case you couldn't have guessed, the practice of removing female body hair in Western culture and especially North America started with advertising.



When sleeveless dresses became popular shortly after the invention of the razor with disposable blades (planned obsolescence anyone?), it was an obvious step for advertisers to try to sell the razors to women. What better way than making them think their armpit hair was unsanitary and needed to be removed?

The above image from 1915 was the first in a widespread campaign which increasingly suggested to women that their hair was dirty and distasteful. Now, this particular advertising trend had to do specifically with underarm hair. The disgust for leg hair and need for razors to shave it off was encouraged later, after hemlines began to rise. Women had to be self-conscious about their newly visible body parts in order to convince them to pay to alter them.

It's a little harder to pinpoint exactly when women started shaving their legs. There seems to be a consensus that it happened in the 1940s when skirts got shorter and sheer pantyhose became available. Some speculate that it had something to do with pinup model Betty Grable showing off her hairless legs and inspiring others to do the same.

Complete removal of pubic hair is a different story, actually. This was less driven by the advertising industry than by the porn industry. If you're a pornie, you've probably seen some of those old 1970s pornos where the women still sported the full bush. Pubic hair got shorter and shorter as porn became more and more accessible via VHS, DVD, and then finally the internet. As it became viable for more people to get into porn, it also became useful to remove their hair, the only visual obstacle to intense closeups of pink vulvas.

So, ladies, the fact that you're socially pressured in a huge way to remove all the hair on your body (except the long locks on your head) comes almost exclusively from industry and advertising. It has nothing really to do with hygiene or femininity, it's just about profits and products. I mean, that's no different than other staples of beauty standards like makeup and anti-aging products, etc. It's just equally depressing.

Mother's Day

Okay, I know that everyone ever is writing something about their mother today, but I'm just going to go ahead and jump on the bandwagon.

In the last year or so, it's been truly wonderful to get to interact with my mom on more of an adult level. I've found out a lot about her that I'd never known before, like that she never practiced monogamy until she started with my dad at 26, and that she used to have an erotic lit collection in college that she'd lend out, and that she watches porn sometimes today. Turns out I come by all of it honestly!

I've had my share of gripes with my mom, as everyone does when they grow up. I think mothers get a really bum rap, having at least most of the responsibility for child care placed on them and then being held accountable and labeled flawed if they're not perfect moms. The expectations are too high, and the emotional punishments for imperfection are too ridiculous.

Whatever arguments I've had with her, I love my mother very much. I'm so much like her, in mannerisms and personality, and then also as it turns out in my passions and tendencies. This doesn't bother me at all; I may make different choices than she did, but I'm glad I've got this legacy from her.

I owe her for the amazing quality of my sex education growing up, and for answering all my questions about everything ever (including but not limited to sex) with as little discomfort as she could manage. I'm thankful that she learned about feminism and taught it to me as I was growing up, that she had the insight to learn from her daughters and then pass that knowledge to us.

So yeah, happy mother's day, everyone. I can't share this post with her, as she doesn't know about this blog, but I will definitely be sharing the sentiments. I hope you all can find a way to thank the mothers in your lives, even if they're not the biological ones you expected or are supposed to be grateful to. I know it's a Hallmark holiday, but an incentive for appreciation never hurts.

Essentialism and Why It Sucks

Excellent point about sex and gender and the way we study them in a post on this article at Sex in the Public Square:

My frustration comes from the fact that researchers like Chivers insist on trying to pull apart the cultural from. What is it that drives the notion that our biology is where the "truth" about us would be found if only we could clear away the confusing layers of socialization and culture? I would much prefer to see research examine the intersection of the biological and the cultural giving equal "truth value" to both. This is a theme that comes up over and over, especially in relation to the discussion of Chivers's work. In fact if we could get past our desire for biologically essentialist answers we could see the variations in human experience that would allow us to start breaking down the false binary of male/female = boy/girl = man/woman.

I think she's absolutely right, that the nature vs. nurture argument is just kind of silly. When we get down to it, almost everyone agrees that it's actually some combination of the two, but the whole basis of the argument is really polarizing. It's like we're pushed into picking a side, and then everyone ends up ignoring compelling or interesting information that would favor the "other side."

I'm taking a class on gender and sexuality right now, and we've been talking about how our concept of two natural sexes each with a corresponding gender role is a fairly new one. Up until the Enlightenment with its emphasis on physical "truth" and the imperfection of anything metaphysical, the body wasn't that important in conceptions of sex and gender.

Philosophers like Aristotle and Galen, who both talked about sex and gender extensively, thought that "man" and "woman" were essentially gradients of one physical sex. Of course, under this model men were "more perfect" and women an incomplete or flawed version of the perfect male. Because women were metaphysically less perfect than men, their bodies came out differently. The spiritual essence of the person, made up of what we could now consider their transient gender characteristics, was actually their essential being. The body was only its physical manifestation.

This is precisely the opposite of how we measure things today. What I think Elizabeth Wood gets at very well in her post is the silliness of both ways of seeing things. There is no truth without both biology AND culture, the physical AND the metaphysical. Nature is informed by nurture to create who we are. There can be no studying one without admitting and looking at the other. Trying to isolate either is always going to present a skewed picture.

Dan Savage on The Colbert Report

Alright, I have mixed feelings about Dan Savage. In case you don't know, he's an openly gay and partnered sex columnist for Seattle paper The Stranger.

On the one hand, he is hilarious as fuck. I've read his column frequently and he's really funny. He's great on some issues, like gay marriage and being understanding of people's kinks. He even gives some good advice sometimes.

On the other hand, I think he often strong arms issues that need a more sensitive treatment. I don't want to be a mushy female feminist (sigh, stupid stereotypes), but in his quest to always be funny, he sometimes becomes a bit misogynistic. He makes no secret of his distaste for women. I mean, "he's gay so whatever," but I think it does affect the quality of his advice.

That said, I absolutely LOVE his recent appearance on The Colbert Report. He is delightfully funny and I think he even made Colbert a little speechless. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that he says something similar to what I did about the old folks who voted for Prop 8. (He's not as nice.) Makes me feel kind of vindicated.



Go you, Dan Savage.

Election

I just don't know what to say or feel about the election.

I'm so so so so so so so so so so so excited that Barack Obama won. I'm just speechless about it. He's the first black president and the first Democratic president I can remember taking office. I was alive when Clinton made it, but I was small and I don't remember it that well. I'm a young person; the only elections I remember well were ones where George W. Bush won. This has been such an experience for me, and I'm so happy he's our new president.

I just can't even express it. It's huge.

And then there's Proposition 8.

As of right now, it looks like it's going to pass in California, adding discrimination against gay people to our state constitution.

Which is just devastating. Devastating.

I can't even convey how awful it is. It feels like the state which I count on to take care of me, to be a home when so many other places will reject me for my sexual orientation and my "lifestyle," is rejecting me, too. I really did think that we'd be better, that we'd be more accepting, more fair than the rest of the country. It's so sad that it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

I have no idea what's next, where we go in fighting for the rights of queer people. It's so important. We are PEOPLE, we do not choose our orientation, it is a part of who we are and doesn't affect other people AT ALL. It is simple hatred and homophobia that lead to this kind of legislation.

I have so much more to say about this, about how sexism ties into homophobia and how ballot initiatives in California are problematic. Right now, though, I'm going to celebrate for Obama and cry for California and go to bed.

There's time for our next move in the morning.

P. S. Proposition K probably won't pass either, and I'm sad but not surprised. I saw the way the rhetoric was going, and it wasn't in favor of sex workers' rights. Also more on this soon.

Porn vs. Erotica

I refuse to make a distinction between "erotica" and "porn."

If I see material that depicts something that could be sexy, I call it porn. I don't care whether or not its intent is to get people off. It could be "purely for artistic purposes." If it shows anything that's sexually explicit, I consider it porn.

I don't think we need to differentiate between what's sexy art and what's sexy but doesn't count as art. This creates a system where we value the art more and the non-art less. It's another way of saying that eroticism for its own sake is negative, and I think that's a big pile of hooey. I think something that's purely intended to cause orgasms can be beautiful, and something intended just for aesthetic beauty can be erotically titillating. I jill off to "erotic art" all the time.

The difference between the two terms is also heavily tied in with censorship. Material can be deemed obscene and banned if the government decides that it has no artistic merit. Creating a linguistic distinction between porn and erotica opens us up to this kind of censorship. If we've already labeled some things as "less than artistic," it's a small step for the government to label them obscene.

Now, I know that the word "pornography" comes from inauspicious roots. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as the following:

The explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings; printed or visual material containing this.

So it's true that the very definition of the word creates a distinction between aesthetically arousing and erotically arousing material.

You could argue that we should apply the term "erotica" to all sexually explicit material. This new word doesn't have the connotation of artlessness and baseness. Why not apply it without discrimination? That's a valid point. I just like the word "porn" better.

Porn came first. Before we started calling things "erotica" instead of "pornography," we didn't have a word for sexually explicit art that (supposedly) wasn't erotically thrilling. It's the creation of the new word that's given us a hierarchy. Now we're trying to decide which sex acts we can depict: which ones are "artistic," and which ones aren't. It's just another form of sexual elitism.

So let's just cut the bullshit and call it all porn. Just like there shouldn't be a scale of kink, we don't need a scale for the "artiness" of our sexual materials.

Naming a Movement

I recently reread Manifesta by Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner. In it, the authors try to define third wave feminism in order to give it credit as a movement and inspire young women to continue their activism.

One of the things the women bring up is the fact that the American media perennially asks whether or not feminism is dead. This frames feminism in terms of a movement that is defunct. We are continually trying to defend it, instead of proactively working towards our goals. We don't receive credit or even attention for the things we are doing to continue the fight for equality between the sexes.

Now, I agree with the authors of Manifesta that a lot of the reason for this is the mainstream media's bias against feminism. I also wonder, though, if our own definitions of feminism as a term and a movement contribute to the idea that it has died.

When the first wave "ended," there was a lull between the liberalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the radicalism of the 1960s and '70s. Women were still doing things, of course; Alice Paul was fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, Margaret Sanger was promoting reproductive rights, and so many other women were continuing to strive for equality.

At that point, though, the term "feminism" had not yet become popular. The stated purpose of the women's rights movement up to that point had been to gain legal rights for women. The women who worked towards this goal were called "suffragists" not "feminists." There was no concretely defined Movement for the Rights of Women to vilify, backlash against, or declare dead. It was just a group of activists doing their thang.

These days, we each are still working for our individual causes. Some work for pay equality, others for the end of violence against women, still more for freedom of gender expression. Men and women are working to promote sexual freedom and expression, while others are fighting to make pornography illegal for objectifying women. There are people everywhere trying to end sexual harassment, break through the glass ceiling, or be allowed to stay at home and take care of the kids without stigma. They are all called feminists.

We are so obsessed with this definition, with calling ourselves something. We want so badly to be a cohesive movement. We want to be a community. It's an understandable desire; lots of people working together for a common goal can accomplish more than a few working for different things. We can feel supported, surrounded by brothers and sisters. We feel like we're getting somewhere.

The problem, though, is that while we are all working towards a similar ultimate goal, feminists argue with each other all the time. Over almost everything. By trying to slap the same label on every person who wants equality between men and women, no matter what that looks like to them, we are limiting our ability to disagree. We are giving our opponents an easy way to attack us. Because being a feminist means so many things at once, it's easy for people who want to discredit those in the movement, to pick and choose unflattering parts of feminism to publicize. If a feminist anywhere does something unpopular or unreasonable, even if it's something most of us disagree with, we all suffer the consequences to our image.

We also don't allow ourselves time for a lull. So what if the movement is fragmented? So what if there is no Movement right now? We are still getting stuff done, just like the activists between 1920 and 1960. Why do we have to be called a wave? Maybe we should be saving that term (if we have to apply it at all) for the next time we all manage to rally around a specific cause, the next time we make a lot of progress in a short period of time. I think we should give ourselves time in between waves to just put our heads down and work.

I have my own issues with the word "feminist," which I can get into later, but I do accept the label for myself. It is the easiest way to describe what I do and what drives me. I care very deeply about equality between men and women, and at its very core that's what feminism stands for. I hope, though, that we can see greater acceptance of the diversity and complexity of what the word means to diverse and complex people. Perhaps that will mean embracing some other name for ourselves. Perhaps it means living without labels. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

The Next Generation

In my work this summer at a queer youth center in San Francisco, I had my first experience with working among some older members of the queer community. Granted, most of them were still in their twenties and happily working for very little pay at a small nonprofit youth center, but still. I was hanging out with older queers for really the first time.

One of the things that came up a lot over the three months that I was working there was the gap between queer youth and the adult queer community. The youth center was in a house in the Castro (San Francisco's queer neighborhood), and nobody was allowed to hang out on the porch or in the back yard. According to the neighbors, the kids were too noisy and troublesome. One of the employees of the center complained to me that if there was any kind of problem in the neighborhood, the youth center always seemed to take the blame.

Now, of course sometimes teenagers are loud. But this center was a place of real productivity for a lot of these youth. It was a place where queer teens who might otherwise be at a true disadvantage (there were many homeless youth who came to the drop-in hours) could find a job for decent pay or be involved in an educational project. We played sports in the local parks, arranged field trips, and had some really intense group discussions in which I know all of us learned a lot.

And yet, to the older gay and lesbian families living around the center, we were a threat to the neighborhood. We were a pain in the ass. We were causing trouble, invading their Castro queer haven. The neighborhood association made countless restrictions on what, where, and when the youth center could do anything.

It made me wonder if the lack of continuity in the queer community isn't just the fault of disinterested youth. I have had a really hard time learning about queer history. I don't really know much about the queer activists who came before me. As the leader of a queer student group, I usually feel like the blind leading the blind. I'm really hungry for a sense of the past of our movement and the support of our predecessors.

But it's really not there. Of course I know a few older activists who have been truly supportive and helped me and my fellow youngsters learn a thing or two, but mostly it's radio silence from the older generation of gays. It's really quite disappointing.

I'd love to connect with older people, learn from their stories, soak up my history as part of a civil rights movement for people of varying sexual orientations. I really want a sense of that continuity. Maybe that's something I'll be able to work on: building a place, a group, where young and old people can connect over being somehow queer and working together for equality and respect.