i had this conversation with a couple of friends over dinner, about this woman who came in a massage parlor with extremely hairy legs. And my male friend said, "that's disgusting, did you have to wear gloves?" first of all, i was appalled with this reply. Did she have to wear gloves??? Why?! for what reason?? because she has hairy legs? And is it that disgusting to the point where you have to make sure that the physical contact that will take place has to be totally secured?!
And people tell me feminism is dead. If it is, then why do these comments still come around? The social stigma of women having hairy legs is so over rated i know, but why do people still think this way? and this friend of mine also said that "hairy arms/legs define a man" yeah. right. talk about equality right?
This is still an underlying issue that a lot of women refuse to talk about, they feel ashamed to tell others about their hairy body and that totally sucks. WE should ALL be happy with what we have. And always keep in mind that MEN and WOMEN are created the same. yes, WITH HAIR FOLLICLES. so get that straight. if a woman ever decides not to shave, its on her decision. and don't make her feel bad about it. Abolish this stigma on hairy women. I am hairy too, and so does a lot of women i know.
Let's wear our skin proudly, hairy or not. WEAR YOUR SKIN WITH PRIDE!
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: THE STIGMA ON HAIRY WOMEN.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16515
Isn't it odd that people think hair on women's legs or armpits is somehow dirty or gross but it's okay on men. I know that men get grief about back hair but when was the last time a man's hairy legs or pits garnered any negative attention?
I am surprised by all the response. Glad to know that I'm not alone.
Isn't this frustrating!? This past spring, just to see what would happen, I decided to stop shaving my legs (which really wasn't anything big, I shave them once a month....if that.), and by the time I got to summer camp, my legs were very hairy-- pretty comparable to a male's legs. I could just tell that some people on my staff were completely repulsed, simply because I had hairy legs. I did find it really interesting that it was generally the females that seemed to think it was gross. We talked about it a lot because one of the guys on staff is on the cycling team at his college and therefore shaves his legs during the spring, and his hair was just starting to grow back. It was a sort of role reversal- very interesting to see. I find it amusing that hair follicles can be objects of such fascination!
I like to point out that the average man is a lot hairier than the average woman. If body hair is inherently disgusting and women have x amount of it, then obviously men, with x + n amount of hair, are objectively disgusting. (Insert a snark about "hygiene" here.) I wonder, sometimes, whether the guys who are so uptight about women's body hair are just insecure in their masculinity? "Having more body hair than women" is a really arbitrary thing to define manhood by, but it's also a pretty easy standard to meet, especially if women are pressured into removing theirs. It certainly removes the need to do any soul-searching or to define yourself by your actions.
I obsess over my eyebrows a bit. If I don't pluck them regularly, they're really thick and I wear glasses, so that draws attention towards them. But I haven't really done any serious body hair removal since August. It's too time-consuming and expensive and ouchy for little-to-no reward.
When I was 16, I stopped shaving my legs for awhile just to see how other people at my school would react—I wore knee-length skirts fairly frequently in those days, so I was sure that someone was bound to notice. Practically nobody did, or at least if they did, they never talked about it around me. There were a few catty remarks from other girls, but as they weren't girls I got along with anyway, I felt free to ignore them. However, one guy did come up to me and say, "Shave. Your. Legs." and then he walked away.
Even then, several years before the feminism bug bit me, I thought it was pretty sad that a guy who didn't know me felt the need to try to make fun of me over something that couldn't have affected him in the least.