Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 ··· 13 14 15 ··· 21 22

Original poster

To be annoyed at this feminist

530 replies

PlayOnWurtz · 05/09/2017 08:01

I happily call myself a feminist and will enter into discussions about it freely in real life and online. I got into one conversation about appearance and politics and how you rationalise body hair removal with feminism. I said I simply feel unclean, it's nothing to do with politics or being oppressed if I don't remove armpit and leg hair I feel like I need a wash.

Cue me being told that I clearly missed the memo on western socialization and oppression and that me removing body hair to feel clean wouldn't happen if I hadn't been socialised to feel this way erm no love I feel like I need a ruddy good wash if I don't shave I'm not oppressed....

AIBU to be annoyed and more than a bit

OP posts:

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:19

'you can't argue with stupid' and 'stupid is as stupid does'

I remove hair, but I am intelligent enough to know the reasons why.

RaincloudOfDoom · 05/09/2017 20:22

Well, the woman you spoke to was right wasn't she? You are socialized to be repulsed by your body hair. It's not "just you", it's a direct result of being brought up in this society as a girl/woman.

Just as your male partner will be socialized to be proud of his body hair, and to be treated like a weirdo if he felt it made him unclean and he needed to shave it.

Is it not possible women simply like the feel of being smooth down below or elsewhere?

Of course! But you are far more likely to enjoy that feeling now...

I grew up in the 70s. I remember at school a teenage girl being a laughing stock because it was discovered she'd shaved her pubes off when we were in the showers. A rumour went round that she had to shave it off because she caught crabs. Because at that time it was seen almost as a perverted thing to do for "beauty" reasons. But the beauty industry quickly caught on to the "Look ladies, you must correct this thing that is wrong with you!! Only £11.99 for silky appealing skin!!" racket, and now perfectly normal non-perverted women regularly go to a salon and stick their bare arses up in the air so someone can ensure every little bit is gone.

(And it's a far too lucrative industry for us to ever go back the other way. However I'm sure they would flog designer merkins to adorn the bald pudenda's if they thought they could get away with it. Watch this space...)

maxthemartian · 05/09/2017 20:23

Of course the removal of body hair relates to social conditioning.
I do it - sometimes, and I don't take all my pubes off, but I know very well it's not a choice made in a vacuum.
I don't understand why people get so defensive at this. Pretty much every generated bit of grooming and behaviour we display is as a result of our cultural environment.
I'm honestly baffled that anyone would think otherwise.

maxthemartian · 05/09/2017 20:23

That should read gendered grooming and behaviour.

Walkingdead11 · 05/09/2017 20:29

I don't think younger women like to think they have been conditioned, they have grown up with such more freedom than my generation did. Perhaps they genuinely believe they have free choices?

VestalVirgin · 05/09/2017 20:29

Some people are remarkably dense.

Even my not very feminist mother who is very in favour of shaving legs acknowledges that it is a socially constructed fashion.

She knows because when she was a child, no one fucking shaved. And one would have to be very stupid indeed to assume that a new generation just so happened to be born with an innate desire to shave off all their body hair.
(And the older generation just magically evolved to hate their own body hair at the same time).

Walkingtowork · 05/09/2017 20:31

I think people sometimes take it as a personal criticism because we're not encouraged - at school or beyond - to look at influences/norms on a group level.

So it's taken as an individual criticism, when it's not that at all.

I suspect this "feminazi" bollocks is strongly encouraged by those who benefit from the status quo.

Walkingdead11 · 05/09/2017 20:36

Walkingtowork

Are you still on the wine? You're doing very well and still completely logical...I applaud you!!

Walkingtowork · 05/09/2017 20:38

Thanks Walking! I sobered up

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:41

Urrgh. I said I was hiding this thread, but it has made me so angry at people's disingenuity, if that is even a word.

In the 70s everybody had a hairy muff. It is the stuff of ridicule and comedy now . My mum didn't shave her legs or privates because she came from a culture where that wasn't done. So I didn't shave as a teenager. My first boyfriend expressed surprise at my hair and said he expected his women to be shaven. I eventually succomed and yes I do prefer it shaven, but it never would have occurred to me to remove my hair if I didn't have the external pressure.

So women in the 70s all independently decided they liked hairy muffs, then a while later they decided independently but together to shave it all off? Wow, fascinating!

I am being rude now, but I really think that people are thick if they think that the reason they remove their hair is because they came up with it themselves, Honestly, I think the people thinking this are extremely dense. I find it mind-boggling and unusual. I would actually like to examine them in a lab .

Manclife · 05/09/2017 20:42

There's a difference between removing body hair because your affected by what ever is fashionably social at the time and people being 'conditioned' to do something they don't want too by the 'patriarchy'.

Shaving chests and genitals is becoming more and more popular with men. So hardly a man/woman issue. But those saying 'it's not natural' well I'm guessing you don't cut your head hair, you walk about naked and lick yourself clean.

WashingMatilda · 05/09/2017 20:43

Fist bumps wishful

ponderingprobably · 05/09/2017 20:50

Man, I don't cut my head hair very much actually. When I do, I do it myself with the help of DH for the back. I don't like the beauty industry much. I wear makeup but apply it and choose it myself. I would manicure my own nails - don't do much apart from cut and rub oil into them. If I remove hair I do it myself. Just since being diagnosed with cancer, I have found growing hairy doesn't bother me that much and why should it? I don't like the inference being hairy is unhygienic and somehow obscene. When I swam a lot I bought a costume that had legs like shorts, so I did not have to deal with a bikini line. I didn't think it was the most flattering costume but I liked not having to remove hair on the bikini line.

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:50

The 'patriarchy' thing is a red herring. It's societal pressure, whatever the reasons for that are.

maxthemartian · 05/09/2017 20:51

To be honest I think it's capitalism ad much as anything. The higher the grooming standards, the more money to be made.
The fact that woman bear the brunt of it is patriarchy in action though.

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:52

I think it is a feminist issue, but if feminism makes bile rise to your throat then ignore that part and at least admit that you weren't born wanting to remove your hair .

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:53

Thank you, Washing

Walkingtowork · 05/09/2017 20:54

Thank god Man is here! I was getting so confused and probably hysterical about this feminist issue I've been debating and reading about, among others, for 25 years!

YouAreMySunshine1 · 05/09/2017 20:56

I would presume it wasn't just a "70s" thing to have full pubic hair. I imagine it was what women had for centuries before that!

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:56

Yes, thank god man is here
I love this site!

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 20:58

Amazing though, sunshine that just women collectively decided to shave it all off, isn't it?! Maybe the hive mind theory is correct?! I need to do a PhD, me!

Manclife · 05/09/2017 21:04

Hmm, love the way a feminist see the letter MAN in a name and starts shouting 'mansplaining'. It's Manc Life but then that'll be your feminist angst working over time.

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 21:06

Why do men expect their women to be shaven while unshaven themselves? I will not accept 'my boyfriend/ex/17 year old boy likes to be shaven', because we know that it is not a 'thing' for men and that shaven legs on men is a thing of ridicule. Only cyclists can 'justify' it in our age.

Why the hell is this thread still going? We know that the hair removal thing is extremely heavily weighted towards women.And a few decades ago women did not do this. Unless our brains have suddenly been hardwired by some alien-induced mutation (because you know that evolution doesn't work like that, right?)to want that then there is no way that any person with a single brain cell in their head can argue that it is not due to societal pressure.

WishfulThanking · 05/09/2017 21:07

I really care, manclife

Walkingtowork · 05/09/2017 21:10

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Flip

1 2 ··· 13 14 15 ··· 21 22