The little secrets you don't know about women's private hair

Many people have misunderstandings about women's private body hair. In this day and age, with the advent of an open era, many women who love beauty shave their body hair, but many people cannot stand it and make irresponsible remarks.

What I want to say is that women have the freedom to deal with their own private body hair, and we have no reason to say anything to them. In order to prove this to female friends, I will interpret the secret of women's private body hair.

Whether you shave your hair or not, the stigma against body hair is doing more harm than good. Here’s why:

1. It sets a narrow precedent for our daughters

I am now the mother of an 8-year-old daughter, and I worry that some of my behaviors may affect her. So I tried to downplay my leg shaving and told her how beautiful her legs were. Just like every other health lesson I gave her, I told her that some people shave and some don't, that some people have a lot of hair (including on their faces) and some people have very little.

My cousin Heather gave her more guidance in this area. Like most of us, she was teased as a child, simply because she had armpit hair in junior high school. But in order to prevent her daughter from suffering the same fate, she chose to stop shaving rather than giving her a razor at the first sign of hair growth.

She said: "I used to debate whether to shave or not, but when I saw the little hair in my 8-year-old daughter's armpits (early stage hair), I knew she was too young to shave. I wanted her to know that hair is natural and should be accepted. In general, body image is determined by the views of others, so I want to be a role model for living harmoniously with body hair. This is a message she believes cannot be promoted by women alone. "This is not, and should not be, just a conversation between mother and daughter. My husband has taken the initiative to discuss body image with his daughter. ”

2. It promotes gender polarization (and the gender-based violence that comes with it)

Today, body hair is an overt form of gender identification, even in places you wouldn't expect. Men who are supposed to be hairy but are less hairy may be seen as too feminine (and vice versa for women). In fact, the absence of body hair is often seen as a sign of heterosexual womanhood.

Although all women are scrutinized in this matter, for those who transition from male to female, the presence of body hair is not only anxiety-provoking but also very dangerous because it may be "evidence" that the transition is incomplete. As Tori writes in her blog, “Successes and Failures on the Road to Heaven,” “My stubble and my voice…have led people who don’t know me to define me as transgender, and that’s scary. Those strangers are polite or try to hide their surprise, but there are still people who see me as a heretic who subverts their perception of the world.”

For many people, women who do not conform to feminine norms (such as straight women who do not shave or trans women who do) are not doing so by choice but are seen as failing to meet public expectations of image and, if they do not, as making a hostile voice.

3. Not just lesbians

It’s no surprise that lesbian and bisexual women have slightly different bodily experiences with body hair than straight or trans women, and while many queer women shave, they’re more likely to be more hair-free than straight women.

Jenny, a queer woman in her 30s, feels that not taking care of her body hair has been the most natural thing to do for the past 15 years. She said: "I think I shaved my head in high school, but stopped shaving after I got involved in feminism in college. At that time, I thought not shaving was a way to resist patriarchal culture, but later it gradually became a habit. Another advantage of not shaving is that at least you can tell from the outside that I am queer, because my other physical features are no different from those of heterosexuals. Strangely, the only person who has commented on my body hair is my 7-year-old niece. She lifted my arm and said, 'You have armpit hair, that's so cool.'" But Jenny also knows that her experience is inconsistent with social norms. “I realized how lucky I am to live in a queer-friendly community,” she said.

4. Body hair creates the “other”

Not surprisingly, in this society, female body hair is seen as something unforgivable. Hair removal has gradually become a mark of class division, just like "straight teeth, clean skin, and decent clothing." Working-class women and women of color who do not remove their hair also reinforce their status as "other."

This phenomenon attracted the attention of Breanne, a professor at the University of Arizona.

Fahs was concerned, so she asked the female students in her class to do an experiment by not shaving their legs and armpits for ten weeks. The result was unexpected. Many women said they hated their bodies, a significant number used the word "dirty", and many participants also experienced homophobia and anger from their families and partners. But what’s most notable is that some women experienced stronger reactions than others.

As Fahs wrote in a June 2014 article in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, "Responses to body hair are loaded with race and class factors, with women of color and working-class women experiencing more family norms and penalties for not shaving than white or upper-class women, and women of color often see body hair as reinforcing their 'otherness.'"

Humans have been removing body hair since before they evolved into humans, but hair removal didn't become popular until a 1915 Harper's Bazaar ad featuring women's hairless armpits appeared. Clean armpits have become one of the standards of beauty in the United States in recent years, and have even become a ubiquitous requirement.

Many people subconsciously express disgust at women's body hair, and it's time to change that.

Here are some ways to do it:

1. Changing the way we talk about growth

When we talk about physical changes during puberty, it is important to mention that both boys and girls will start to grow a lot of body hair on their legs, arms, stomach, chest, and around their genitals. There is no need to distinguish between different parts of the body where boys and girls grow hair. Also, tell young girls that shaving is their choice, not a requirement. Mothers who shave their hair should also think carefully about the message they are sending to their daughters. This doesn't mean you need to change your own aesthetic, you just need to find an appropriate way to talk to your daughter about this issue.

2. Questioning popular culture

If popular culture insists that women's hair can only be ridiculed or disgusted, then of course there will be a lot of malicious jokes about women's body hair. So, even at the risk of being labeled as "funny feminists", we have to speak out about this. What's so funny about these jokes?

3. Try not shaving

If you've always shaved your hair, take up Professor Fahs' challenge and let your hair grow freely and see what happens.

4. Educate yourself

There are countless reasons why women don't shave. Many women live in communities where hairless women are not considered the most attractive, while medical conditions in some places prevent women from shaving their hair. Other reasons for not shaving are related to cultural or religious factors. Some women don't shave simply because this standard is too simple and they don't want to follow it. Understanding why some women don't shave can help you better understand why the stigma against female body hair is unfair.

Start with me

If you are in the habit of shaving now, this article is not asking you to throw away your depilatory cream or razor, but if you have ever stared at a girl's leg hair, armpit hair, or hair in other parts of her body, you should reflect on whether it is impolite. Or, why does this hair make you uncomfortable? Why is it unattractive? This isn’t an “us vs. them” thing, the fact is that women who shave their hair are inadvertently contributing to the stigma against women who don’t shave, and that’s something we can change.