Sex ed - shaving legs in year 5

[Candycoco]

Have posted in education but posting here for traffic.

Dd came home from school today having had sex ed at school for the past 2 days.

I've always been very open with her and have answered questions as they've come up, so no big revelations this week.

However, she told me today that the boys were taught how to shave by male teacher, and girls were taught how to shave their legs. This just doesn't sit right with me. I know 99% of women do shave their legs and it's something I've already talked to dd about as she asked me last year about it and I told her she has to wait til end of year 6 before she starts secondary to do it.

I just feel it's a bit presumptuous and suggests all girls should. Maybe I'm being bit uptight about it but I don't like the message it sends. Is this normal to teach this as park of sex ed?

Thanks

Because you hang around the feminist boards a lot and you never actually agree with a single thing, which makes me wonder why you do it.

I am always surprised on these kinds of threads when women say "don't shave your legs, no big deal" as that hasn't been my experience at all.

But cailin just because you felt pressured to shave for others, rather than yourself doesn't mean it's the same for us all.

icebeing I think I would question where my dd got that idea at such a young age. At 11 it wouldn't enter my dds head her gender might limit her in anyway. She certainly hasn't had the exposure to feminist principles yours has andprobably thinks feminism is a brand of sanitary towel. So it wouldn't register that inequality would have any impact on her personally, she knows sexism exists but not for her thus she's not in any way living up to that possibility.

Because you hang around the feminist boards a lot and you never actually agree with a single thing, which makes me wonder why you do it.

That is a huge exaggeration. You pick on the points where I don't agree with the collective view.

Fair enough, I personally haven't ever seen you agree with anything said by a feminist on FWR.

Again we disagree on the pressures that there are around shaving Lass. It's my view that if shaving were a genuine choice then there would be a large proportion of women who didn't shave. But that's not the case. I personally have never seen a woman with bare, hairy legs either out and about or on tv.

Miley Cyrus. Very hairy recently. And good on her too.

Ah yes her armpit hair picture, the one that prompted thousands of responses saying she was disgusting. But no, there's no judgement on women who don't shave.

But why do you care so much what idiots say about you, cailindana? They're insecure people who can only make themselves feel better by trying to make other people feel as insecure as they do. They have the problem; your legs are not the problem.

Is the problem that people with high self esteem just find it hard to understand the perspective of people with lower self esteem? I don't see the problem with talking about leg shaving in school because I, personally, wouldn't have felt pressured into shaving my legs as a result. I would just have felt pleased that I wasn't being patronised by not being trusted with information.

I don't consider my mother and aunts to be idiots rabbit.

Ah - I didn't read the bit where you said they were the ones putting the pressure on you! Why are you still bothered by what your mother and aunts said, all these years later? Parents and aunts are capable of being wrong, insecure and putting unfair pressure on their children. Or, if they still go on about it now, why listen to them? Couldn't you just shave your legs when you see them if it makes them feel so sad to see you hairy, and do what you want the rest of the time? Would talking about it at school and learning that it is nothing more than a cosmetic decision have helped you? Why were your mother and aunts so bothered about it???

Or do you agree with them that you look nicer with shaved legs? In which case, you only have to shave them when you are making a particular effort to look nice, surely (which in my case isn't that often! )? Do you wear skirts most of the time? (I prefer trousers, so don't often have to consider what my legs look like in terms of their public appearance). I just view leg shaving as a practical thing I sometimes do, I don't invest it with emotional importance, and I find that helps make it seem a relative non-event which doesn't, therefore, upset me.

I don't see why I should reframe my feelings so I can fit in with what's expected. I would rather not shave but I am self conscious about my very hairy legs (as are many women/girls mentioned on this thread). I am self conscious not because they look bad but because the expectation is that as a woman I will have smooth legs. I don't think that's particularly abnormal.

So you would rather be unhappy and self-conscious? That just seems an odd choice to make to me. I would want to do something about feeling unhappy and self-conscious, rather than accept it as a normal female state of mind. So, I would either stop shaving my legs or would embrace my smooth legs. What makes you think having hairy legs would make you even unhappier than having smooth legs? Or are you over-inflating your sense of unhappiness at having smooth legs? Why do you invest so much importance in your external appearance when plenty of other women don't?

My happiness is not tied up in how my legs look. My response to the whole thing has been to examine why I feel the way I do.

And then carrying on feeling unhappy and self-conscious?

Nope so I can challenge the societal norms that made me and other girls feel that way.

Do you think life is possible without any norms whatsoever, cailindana?

No.

But you are not challenging any societal norms or changing anything are you? Hence my comment about how is the casual observer going to know there is any difference between you or Rabbit and me?

Yes I am, Lass, right here among my fellow women. And I discuss it with friends and will do with my children.

I don't mind if casual observers know or not.

cailin but you can't use your experience to assume the same factors are at work on everyone else. Most of my life, especially in my teens I've had people tell me I should take more advantage of my figure and take more interest in my clothes. And yet I never have, within the boundaries of appropriate taste I wear what I like. I know for a fact if I wore strappy shoes and a floaty summer dress right now, the general consensus would be that I looked better than in my current clothing. But I don't actually care. Sometimes I do make an effort to look more attractive, but I still don't assume that those who make an effort all the time must have succumbed to the same pressure I had. Some maybe but others will be dressing that way because they just prefer it

I don't assume anything. I know how I feel, I know how other people I've spoken to, here and in real life, feel. They don't feel the same as you do.

As you say, everyone has different reasons - some feel pressurised, others don't.