Young teens, strings & pubic depilation

[tsunami]

My eldest daughter is just 14 and I've found a lacy string in her room and now a big wad of pubic hair in her shower: suspect we're talking a close shave, and I dread to think how much she's taken off. I don't think there's a (serious) boy in the picture or if this is just peer-pressurised body-angst, but - while I'm no saint and have been around the block myself in my time - I really hate this current pole-dancer/porn shaved pussy trend. Call me a square (and maybe a hypocrite as I do wax up to my bikini line - sorry; TMI but I'm hoping we're all girls together in here - or can at least tolerate girl talk) I think total pubic baldness is unreconstructed pandering to male fantasy... IMO even Brazilians and landing strips are inappropriate for young teens. Still trying to cope with the string (yes, this is my first daughter, and she's growing up, so maybe I have to get used to it. We've had the high heels conversation, the provocative dressing and the make-up one...is this just the next step?)

I find it gutting that such young girls fall for this kind of stuff. OK - once you're older then it's your business, but kids need boundaries and should we and can we draw the line? Given the images they can get access to online - which they can and do, no matter what precautions you try to put in place at home - I'm not surprised they feel under pressure. Yes, I have looked - half the porn girls are bald; most have breast implants. Call me old fashioned, but - yeeuch.

I would've died if my mum had ever discussed my depilation issues with me. I can just see it: 'Darling...about your pubes...' 'Yeah, Mum, whatever: bog off.' You can't! Maybe I just tell her I don't think she should leave big clods of pubic hair in the plughole from a hygiene and self-respect POV.

What do I do? Do I do nothing, and leave it? It's her body...AIBU even to think of getting involved?

As long as women are the ones to carry the child through pregnancy, give birth, experience the toll that pregnancy and birth take emotionally and physically and then be attached to the child because of breastfeeding. While men can technically impregnate a women and have no physical involvement from that point men and women will never be equal.

Which also raise the question that breastfeeding is something the patriarchy have pushed to further oppress women, but why is that never mentioned. Of thats right because the real oppression comes from hair removal.

Krumbum & AnyFucker have made the points far more eloquently than I could have done. Bravo.

I'm baffled as to why men & women will never be equal..?

And some posters would do well to look up the concept of hegemony.

My DH avoids shaving every day (does it more like just before a special event/blue moon) because it hurts

When I shave legs/pits - it hurts after with red spots and ingrowing hairs/hairs that get infected. It's bloody awful. Shaving minge is worse.

WHY DO WE DO THIS?

Waxing - tried it and it's FUCK OFF PAINFUL

WHY would a 14 year old girl do this?

I can only think back to a TV programme with a load of teenage girls and boys. They were presented with images of women with different sorts of breasts (some natural, others clearly enhanced). They were asked to select the breasts which corresponded to 'normal'. They all pointed at the ginormous knockers and the girls added that they wanted breasts just like them. What is wrong with the world, heh?

I thought all MNers were dead against sexualisation of youngsters. This thread has been an eye-opener

I don't need to look up hegemony, I'm not a total idiot.

But isn't (cultural) hegemony typically to do with economic groups though, yes we can take a sort of post-modern view and start saying all our social constructs are false and you know why is a woman a woman or a chair a chair. But that tends to be a completely circular discussion because if you remove all our presumed knowledge and what we currently take as society you end up in a state completely removed from reality.

What are you going to do kill all the men? Well then we're all going to die out, yes there are a lot of social rules which seem to suit certain groups, but I would say predominantly this is money orientated and a result general consensus among the public over certain choices. You can say right the idea of childhood is complete created so lets do away with that because that is a social construct in a way but people would be in uproar.

"Which also raise the question that breastfeeding is something the patriarchy have pushed to further oppress women, but why is that never mentioned."

It is mentioned

Almost always dismissed, but certainly mentioned.

so you are saying women will never be equal because they have babies ?

well, while we live in a male-dominated society of course that is true

if we question that (and other ways in which society is essentially man-pleasing) instead of distracting ourselves prettiily with waxes and sequins'n'shit then maybe we have a chance to put it

the current concept of female beauty=massively distracting, which suits a male dominated-society very well indeed

distract and divide, and pretend there is no agenda behind that

it's a great tactic

I don't think the point has been heard that - although you shavers individually might not have been pressurised by individual men or personal exposure to porn - fashions ^don't just pouff into the world fully formed. They always comes from bloody somewhere.

So the sudden adoption of the New Look silhouette in the Fifties was generated by the post-war economic need to get women out of their overalls and back into the home.

The opposite is true of 1920s flapper dresses post WW1.

And the reason that, in the space of ten years, women went from tidying to full (painful) depilation of their pubes was the explosion of the porn industry, which required full visibility of penetration, and which gave porn users a new 'normality', which they passed on osmotically to their groups.

These things seep through culture. There's no government order or campaign, but the tide turns, and grows, and becomes impossible to resist.

This might make you people who shave feel like sheep. I'm sorry.

But to deny that social pressures exist is to go against literally everything we know about how societies work; knowledge which is not disputed at any point in the political spectrum.

Other messages were also attached to that new, porn-borne normality - messages which many women, when they look them in the eye, think are pretty disempowering. That's why the OP is right to - at the very least - gently question her child's (note) choices, and let her know that fashion always has a meaning.

Kill all the men?

Where on earth did that come from

a chance to challenge it

The only sheep seem to be the radfems but shouldn't you all be in your new pen instead of still hijacking every thread you can on every board?

Ah 19.38 - 20.21 = lots more fem posts.
Still.

Dismay at the idea of girls just past puberty feeling they need to remove all their pubic hair to conform is a fairly normal reaction I'd have thought. Nothing radical about it.

that's a nice line in insults you have there, Novack

enjoying yourself are you ?

all the shit on FWR board must have had you creaming your keks

and here you have another chance to cream them again

what a gift for you (how I wish everyone could see that)

I agree.
It also assumes that - like legs have long been - their vulvas are now public property to be judged and ogled, if only in theory.

Girls pass these messages amongst themselves, as handmaidens.

"their vulvas are now public property to be judged and ogled, if only in theory. "

Not always just in theory though.
just remembered that in one of my old jobs the blokes would try to guess whether a female colleague took it all off or not based on the outline of her clothing.
not to their faces obviously.

OK Sardine sorry if its mentioned but (bearing in mind I don't frequent the feminist boards) I have never ever seen it mentioned when people post about BF. I've never seen anyone say that they are succumbing to the patriarchy or anything remotely related to feminism.

The thing about killing the men is an extreme point but I'm just trying to say there are always going to be differences between men and women and this radicalised view of feminism to me doesn't seem to have any real solutions to these problems. You can't take away the men.

Anyfucker a male dominated society is irrelevant in regards to our reproductive system. We procreate the way we do. Men and women will never be the same until men have to be pregnant and give birth and experience the physical and emotional toll that takes. I don't think thats a ridiculous or extreme point at all, its a very obvious one.

Also Lindsay I've never said there isn't social pressure, that was effectively my original post, that the pressure on my DD1 to look a certain way comes from her friends and that while the aesthetics may be distantly related to porn, for her the pressure comes from her friends. My main issue has been with the idea that if you remove your pubic hair you are against women, encouraging porn, not making your own choices, disturbed etc etc I believe its my right to choose because I personally wasn't influenced by porn, I am much too old.

There was a thing about it in france a year or so ago, ruby, and president sarkozy said of his new baby that his wife wasn't BF as it was oppressive (or something). There was also a book with it in, again in france.
Sarkozy's comments made some of the papers over here.

Ok I'm just saying its not something I've ever encountered in the press it was just something I was thinking about in regards to pregnancy and how that is seen in relation to feminism. As i think you may have gauged I'm not exactly up to date on the latest feminist reading.

Ruby, youmiss my point

the contribution of women as being the ones able to bear children, and nurture them isn't seen as equal

but it could be

couldn't it ?

if we weren't bending over backwards doing stupid stuff, we could better work on it

instead, we spend time mutilating ourselves to conform to a male-led society's idea of what we should like

stupid ain't it

and yet some women will defend their "right" to do that to the death

Ruby - if you know that both you and your daughter are subject to invidious social pressure, why don't you challenge?

Yes but I would say that is a result of us living in a capitalist society where a contribution is measured by the wealth it garners. That is is unfortunate that women are the ones who have to have the children (I certainly would have preferred DH to do this) but it is simply the fact that childrearing is not financially productive that it is not valued because that is the primary value of our society.

Also I don't know why you have to be so personally insulting about everything, trying to trivialise my opinions. I don't sit here and say that because I don't agree with your points you don't know what you are talking about because you spent too long plaiting your unshaven fanny hair.

Hmmm I wonder how many , hand on heart would not be slightly 'Eurgh' at a growler emerging from a high leg swimsuit?

That was in case you were interested ruby! There is lots on google and there were some threads on here too I think. About the BF idea.

An also I noticed this being mentioned about rising sexual assaults now, forget the poster.

I would be very suspect if that was actually true as 'back in the day' SA was seen as very normal and 'you should be flattered' 'whats wrong are you a lesbian?'

at least today people actually know its wrong.

Patriarchy and capitalism work as one. Divide and rule.