Feminism, women shaving & the Western Harem

by m

Feminism: Feminist = hairy legs is potentially boring. Ah, just gender stereotypes, you say. But let's look beyond the feminist cliche as our intrepid miss M throws her shaving kit in the bin...

Summer has finally come to the chilly corner of the world I inhabit – oh, summer, lovely and warm! It's so pleasing to finally wear t-shirts and shorts and swimsuits. I'll admit that I've been trying to eat more veg and less cake in preparation for this season of skin. But I refuse to shave my legs.

I've done it once or twice, with poor results. The feeling of sliding silky smooth skin into soft sheets is lovely – for the one evening that it lasts. Then I wake up with irksome stubble and, really, I don't have the time to shave my legs every single day just to keep my legs perfectly bare. Anyway, at least it turns out that hair does not grow back thicker. That's proven myth.

The origins of this leg-shaving phenomenon are rather fuzzy (no pun intended; I swear). Some sources say that women have been shaving their legs for ages and ages; other historians claim that it only really kicked in during the mid-1900s (when hemlines began to rise) or during the Second World War (when nylon stockings became scarce).

It is, however, widely accepted that underarm shaving became commonplace during the first couple of decades of the 1900s.

"Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removable of objectionable hair"

Click here to see the advert in all its glory

So reads an ad for depilatory powder published in 1915. The running theory is that the razor companies, pressured by over-production to find new markets, decided to cash in on the other half of the population. But it's not the removal of 'objectionable hair' which is necessary (unless one prescribes to certain tenets of the Islamic faith); keeping underarm hair is entirely necessary. It acts as a natural deodorant by keeping moisture away from the skin, it prevents the colonization of odor-causing bacteria and traps pheromones – the chemicals which create attraction on a hormonal level. So underarm hair can be sexy. Who knew? Well, subscribers to certain niche interest magazines which we shan't speak of here, certainly.

Women in India don't make a habit of shaving their hair, apparently, as well as those in China, Japan and other East Asian countries. As well as Ms. Amanda Palmer, as evidenced at this year's Golden Globes awards ceremony. Of course, with the advent of Westernization come Western standards of beauty, so the percentage of the shaving population of those countries has risen in recent years. But women shaving, particularly the legs, remains a largely Western phenomenon.

Writer Fetema Mernissi makes an eloquently argument in her feminist essay Size Six: The Western Woman's Harem that, while physical restraints are placed on women in the Middle East through harems, Western society imposes intangible restraints.

The Western aesthetic ideal is the youthful woman with the child-like innocence, the tiny waist, the smooth skin. The girl.

I am not a girl.

I might not be fully an adult yet, either, but I menstruate and I have hair on my legs. To try to pretend otherwise seems dangerously diminishing. Perhaps it is a feminist stereotype to state that not shaving my legs is a social and political act not just an aesthetic one. Yet... if I accept the notion that I must look like a child to be 'beautiful', how long before I also accept acting as a child, as a minor, as a subordinate person?

There's the political justification. This article, thus far, has been largely anti-shaving. But one's body is personal and, personally, I'm not going to try to pretend that I don't think marble statue-smooth legs are sexy. Is that because of everything the Patriarchal Society has conditioned me to believe? Probably. And if you want to shave, power to you. It's a personal choice. But there's no reason why body hair should be considered so taboo.

Maybe I'm biased, but I think I look just lovely with hair on my legs. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the eyes of the majority.

Mookychick loves teenage Feminism:

• Feminism, women shaving and the Western Harem
• Feminist sites online
• Child pageantry - the darkly dreaming world of little girls dressed as women
• Modern women and the Vote
• Mookychick. Teenage feminism?
• Girl guides, third wave feminism and beyond
• How to call yourself a feminist without biting your own tongue off

More Grrl Opinion and Blogs

• Babe's Bible | Riot Grrl | Music Minx | Wicca | Politics | Girl Geek | Kitsch Bitch

Mission statement

Mookychick believes that climbing trees and riding giant turtles is more fun and girly than worrying about make-up. But if you want to worry about make-up instead of turtles? Fine by us. Be you feminist, kitten, punk, emo, indie, goth, witch, vegan, horror junky, intellectual, christian goth, corset queen, geek, unicorn, sea monkey... be you into alternative style, alternative health, spirituality, comics, manga, j-pop, harajuku or jock culture... we will always love you.