The Rise of the Hairy Lady: is it time to ditch the razor and embrace body hair?
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s your hair rule.
ule 1: You should keep your hair on your head, preferably long.
Rule 2: You should draw eyebrows (defined, do not meet in the middle) and eyelashes (thick).
Rule 3: You shouldn’t have hair under your arms.
Rule 4: You should not have hair on your legs.
Rule 5: Your pubic hair should like a perpendicular or nonexistent pencil mustache.
Rule 6: Apart from eyebrows and eyelashes, there should be no other hair on your face.
These rules do not apply to men, who can leave their hair anywhere they like. While waxing – waxing/shaving the stretchy back and/or chest and shoulders – has been more popular than a generation ago, it’s still a personal choice. From smooth like Ronaldo to hairy like Fozzie Bear, men can choose.
When a woman decides to let her body hair grow naturally, the results are seen as unnatural and inappropriate, and often enough to cause comment – either directly or indirectly. Go furry for a while and see for yourself.
Catalan writer, Bel Olid, decided to stop shaving body hair a few years ago after a long period of shaving or hiding in his pants. Now 44, Olid – who has been identified as non-binary – says that sometimes they shave, sometimes they don’t, depending on where they are that day on the masculine and feminine spectrum, it’s substance liquid. And once they get over their fear of being judged or ridiculed, it becomes easier and more normal.
“I don’t identify as a woman anymore. And now that I identify as homosexual or non-binary or whatever, I feel more comfortable mixing the feminine and the masculine,” they said. “The hair on my legs is just the tip of the iceberg.”
What started out as a personal choice – exploring the boundaries of society’s expectations around female body hair – ended up being a short but thought-provoking book. No hairexamines women’s hirsutism and how breaking with fixed ideas about gender can lead to more emancipation for all.
Chatting on Zoom from Badalona, just north of Barcelona, Olid and I started with a candid conversation about the pros and cons of pubic hair versus no pubic hair. We both agree that we both prefer the latter, which surprises me since I assume Olid would be an advocate. It’s about personal choice, they say: “I want to be honest about how I feel when I stop shaving. It’s not always comfortable on many levels.”
Author Bel Olid, who wrote the book No Hair
The incorporation of erotic aesthetics has had a significant impact on how we perceive female body hair. Before the internet, porn of the 1970s and 1980s was all about men’s bushy breasts and women’s bushy hair. Since then, in tandem with digital technology and hair removal, both male and female pornographic actresses have waxed their bodies. Hairless porn – today’s untamed 1970s bushland is very unusual and considered fanatical.
“We are making women look more and more like children, and we are making children look more and more like women,” says Olid. “This is a way to make women lose confidence, by covering up their bodies and making them look young and vulnerable.”
However, Olid fully admits that thanks to the lifelong condition of living as a woman, “I can’t get away with it – I also feel more beautiful without my hair.”
Me too – not exactly prettier, but more feminine, despite reasonably acknowledging that body hair is a natural aspect of being a human mammal.
My Gen Z daughter, a 21-year-old woman, has no such condition. Like Olid, she only waxes when she feels like and comfortable with having body hair. She said: “You are too old to be hanged. “Me and my friends couldn’t have been more concerned. It’s just hair.”
This view is supported by a 2018 study by Mintel, which confirmed that young women tolerate more body hair – 25pc of 18 to 34 year olds consider armpit hair to be acceptable, compared 5pc of people over 55 years old.
Olid’s two oldest children, aged 20 and 18, are both boys – one transgender and one transgender.
They say, “My children are much freer than our generation. “They are more open and experimental in their gender. I’m optimistic that this generation is having more space to experiment with bodies and identities and not get stuck.
“They use a lot of labels and a lot of names that can be difficult to navigate, and they don’t mind changes so we have to keep checking with them because they allow them more traffic. Each generation is giving way to the next – our struggles will give way to theirs. “
Maybe it’s an era thing. When I asked my Gen X (male) partner if he would care if I stopped shaving and waxing everything below my neck, he made a face. In contrast, when a friend shaved her head recently, her (male) partner was appalled. People asked her if she was on chemotherapy.
Regarding men’s attitudes towards women’s hair, Olid said: “It seems that what makes men uncomfortable about their partner’s hair is not their own hair, but what other men have. They may think they’re ‘less than a man’ when dating a woman ‘less of a woman’. “A proper woman, according to the rules of hair, would have a luxuriant head and no/very little hair anywhere else.
Olid refers to a 2019 study published in Journal of Sexual Medicine, which reveals how while men are happier in sex when their partners meet their expectations for body hair removal, women are more satisfied when they meet expectations of the partner. The bottom line is, says Olid, that “while a person relies on their own satisfaction to get what they want, other bases [their satisfaction] being desired. ”
They continued: “We might think that lesbians could easily get out of this trap…however, building lust starts from the same base. A desirable woman (for anyone) is a shaven woman. You just have to watch the iconic series The letter I to notice it. ”
What Olid finds particularly illogical is that instead of celebrating the first appearances of body hair as it marks the intersection of girls with women during puberty, it is instead a time when where young girls are given pink razors.
The American company Wax Candy says that more than 10pc of its customers are girls under the age of 13. Olid says that girls as young as eight ask for their legs to be shaved because they are mocked at school: “Girls are easier to take off. hair than to fight against the social machinery that drives her to do so. Girls are put under pressure about not having body hair along with their having to endure more and more intense sex.
“It would make sense for body hair, which separates girls from women, to be seen as intrinsically feminine (or even sexy). However, we have reached the opposite point.”
It is considered the opposite of celebration. They say: “There is no logic to our distaste for hair.
Olid references an article in Business Insider. Yes, stockings have fur.
“They showed up in 2013 in response to the many sexual assaults that occurred on public transport,” explains Olid. “Although these tights didn’t become popular, it’s still a bit of an oddity, but it’s interesting to analyze the reasons that led to their creation: instead of growing hair and that’s it, you go for it. Adding it to some situations where you think you look ‘less feminine’ can help you be less prone to violence.”
In other words, hirsutism can ‘save’ you from sexual assault from some men, as long as it’s not real hair, which will make you less attractive to other men. This is rape culture in action, says Olid.
They said: “I can see the whole sexist system at work there, and how the pressure on a woman’s body is suffocating.
Olid’s argument is not only hairy and hairless on a woman’s body. They say that instant visual sex determination allows for immediate discrimination.
As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949 in Second sex: “One is not born, but becomes a woman.” Or as RuPaul puts it: “We are all born naked, and the rest is drag.” Olid says blurring the gender markers, so people can less clearly categorize others, gives people a little more freedom and respect. They call this “conscious positioning against the binary system of gender expression”.
“We can now look at someone and put them in a box – man or woman – and because of that box we can discriminate against them,” they said. “You will treat them differently depending on how you identify with them.
“But the more we mess with this system and the harder it is to put ourselves in these boxes, the freer we will be. It’s even harder to discriminate against someone you can’t easily categorize.
“At the moment, the number of people who are not easily identifiable by gender is still very small, but I think the number will continue to grow. The real revolution in gender will come from the gay community.”
Meanwhile – do you want to buy your razor (the kind that cost twice as much as men pay for them), your hair removal cream, your hair removal pads?
The jury is still out.
No hair by Bel Olid (€11.30) published by Polity Books
https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/health-features/the-rise-of-the-hairy-lady-is-it-time-to-ditch-the-razor-and-embrace-body-hair-41411412.html The Rise of the Hairy Lady: is it time to ditch the razor and embrace body hair?
