should I shave?

[TotHappy]

This has been niggling at me for a while.

I'm 31. Been with dh nearly 14 years. My shaving routine used to be:
Underarms - most days, might get a bit stubbly if I left it for a few. Probably take care to shave them before baring them to swim/sunbathe.
Legs - only really bothered for a night out, so maybe shaved once a month. More in summer, but def not every day - maybe for an 'event' or a beach day. An event might include a sexy night in, but they certainly weren't smooth at all times and I didn't care.
Vag - never. Or maybe once or twice as an experiment, never liked it, hate the feeling, find it uncomfortable plus too much faff.

Then when I got pregnant (daughter is nearly 2 now), stopped shaving pretty much everything. Initially, morning sickness and generally not leaving house, later size of bump. Sexy times were non existent anyway as dh stopped sexual activity once I was pregnant - which I was very upset about.
Shaving has never resumed post partum - I will still occasionally do it for a night out/special event but not always, and of course nights out are a lot rarer now with DD. My solitary baths when I could quickly do my underarms are long gone, DD baths with me so no razors in the bath, and when I do get the odd solitary bath I cba with how long it would take as underarms now a good inch long.
I just don't care any more, even as much as I used to, about what people think. If I go swimming or to the beach, I dont feel the need to de-hair first. I think this is a lot to do with giving birth in front of five strangers - personal things somehow seem a lot less personal!

My issue is dh has brought up me not shaving a few times and I feel very uncomfortable about him doing that. After an argument once he said, as part of a rang about how I dont care, 'you dont even shave your legs anymore', quickly followed up by 'not that that's important, but it just shows that you dont care', to which I was as I was never in the permanently-hairless-legs crew, ever, and in any case the reason I had reduced the number of leg shaves was because I had reduced the numbers of nights out, end of!

The other day, he was giving me a foot massage and commented 'whoa, how hairy are your legs?!' I think I responded with a and a 'quite hairy', and he followed up with 'what about your armpits? Have you shaved those lately?' Or similar.

He has also said several times in the past that he prefers a shaven vag. I've said I dont like the feel of it so dont plan to dp that regularly, but have on the very odd occasion got a bikini wax/Californian wax. Last time he didn't even notice as he wasn't up for sex for the whole 6 weeks it was evident, so that was a waste!

I feel really quite miffed that he thinks I should shave because he prefers it. I suppose I have two questions:
A) AIBU to manage my body hair in any way I want without reference to him and
B) what do most people here do? I know most of my friends do shave with some regularity. I know my mum never did. So possibly a generational thing, but as I grew up with my mum as a role model, I feel totally comfortable either way. I feel very uncomfortable with the comments I've sometimes seen on social media about not shaving being 'dirty' or 'unhygienic'.

Thoughts??

I keep my vagina area bearish

“Bearish” as in hairy as a bear? ;)

I’ve seen grown women discussing an asian child still in nappies- she had normal, dark body hair on her arms, small of her back etc.

Apparently obvious body hair on a small child is “nasty” and her mum needed to sort it before she went to school and got bullied...

All the language is judgemental. From the last few posts we’ve had “let myself slip” “cavelady” “neatish”.........

As someone who conforms to the expectation for women to shave and is apparently happy to conform, I don't really rate you as a good source on whether that expectation even bloody exists. You sound like a fish questioning the existence of water. There are people right on this thread saying how gross and lazy and unattractive it is. You even yourself said you considered it unattractive (in the same breath as saying you didn't care ). Why even ever state that? You are contributing to this very social pressure that you claim does not exist.

Maybe you wouldn't stare at someone in public or make a rude comment to someone's face but you just called a lot of women unattractive on a public forum for their choices regarding hair removal. That was a rude, negative comment. So now women can read that and know, "If I stop shaving, people will consider me unattractive". And your comment was not isolated and not even extreme compared to the others here. Women who don't shave or don't want to shave know how that will be perceived because we've been told. Repeatedly. Really, what's the difference between making 'negative comments on a stranger's weight' and writing that you "don't particularly think very hairy legs and pits is an attractive look on women" on a public forum? Are you representative of society (hint: yes you are)?

I've never heard a woman say that a) she doesn't shave and b) is completely unaware of any expectation that she should. I have heard women say that they overcame that expectation, learnt not to care about it or never did care about it. Never ever that women are not under pressure to shave. No, the 'it's a completely free choice, nobody cares, it's all in your head' brigade are always people who have conveniently made the choice to conform.

The world according to some. One day in the late 90s/noughties most women in the U.K. woke up and decided they just like the idea of being completely hair free on their bodies, it felt nice and soft for at least a day and it was arbitrarily decided that this was more hygienic despite evidence to the contrary. At the same time a multimillion £ industry sprang up to service this need, luckily. Some women never had the epiphany but they did it anyway and then sort of started to imagine that there was some kind of societal pressure to do it, and that people did infact notice if world famous actresses sported hairy pits at an awards ceremony, or you had a mysterious feeling that you might get some looks if you wore shorts with hairy legs. But it was all in their head of course.

Yabu. Legs and bikini line it doesn't matter, but arm pits... Surely it's a hygiene issue? I rarely sweat but I know if I had arm pit hair I would struggle keeping fresh.

"So while I agree trends and expectations are valid"

Oh-when did you change your mind?

We can certainly agree that not everyone chooses to conform. That is self-evident.

We can agree that it is a free choice insofar as obviously nothing too awful will happen to women who don't shave - it is not a dangerous choice to make in terms of personal safety.

I can agree that, theoretically, it is possible for women to want to shave purely as a personal preference although I think that is almost impossible to unpack in a culture where this preference is strongly, strongly encouraged and validated by 99% of the people and media around you.

Haha and after 22 pages posters are still chiming in to let us know that women with underarm hair are unhygienic. Men with underarm hair, i.e. the vast majority of men, are probably fine, though. Right?

‘Trends’ are societal pressure, what else could they possibly be? The difference with this ‘trend’ is its become a lot less about what individual women actually want to do to their bodies and spend their time and money on and more about what is expected of them and, let’s be honest, what many men expect of them.

The only pressure I put on myself is pressure to stop shaving. I am a bit disappointed in myself every time I do. The expectations and pressure to keep shaving are purely external, cf. every single comment here about unhygienic, lazy, gross, dirty, let yourself go, not making an effort, unattractive etc etc. I never say, write or think this shit (though I have thought it in the past, when I was a child). On a desert island I would let my body hair grow out without a second thought. I'm trying to work up the courage to say an internal fuck you to everyone who comes out with this nonsense but the desire to be accepted, to not repulse others, is strong.

It’s part of a much wider picture in society at large and in the media, that women’s bodies and faces are somehow just not quite right. Wrinkles, spots, cellulite, body hair, body odours, and even saggy fannies and discoloured anuses (!) etc. We look and smell pretty disgusting in our natural state, apparently, but that’s all right because- as another poster noted upthread- luckily there is a multi-million pound industry just waiting in the wings to sell us endless products to use on our bodies to make them acceptable.

The idea that society is not particularly accepting of hairy women is not always going to be evident on an individual level, eg people making comments to strangers (although some in this thread have said this has happened to them); it will not always be as obvious as that. The point is that the message we are given from a young age is that body hair on women is gross, and many of us internalise that without question, because advertising and media is telling us so. We might well be able to go swimming with hairy legs with not one comment or glance. But we’ll know damn well what people will be thinking!

The message is so internalised that it doesn’t matter if no-one else judges me for having hairy legs; I am doing that all by myself.

People asked if anyone had experienced comments from strangers. I gave an example from my own experience, and now people are all 'oh how odd'.

Well yes, obviously its 'odd'. I go swimming almost every week with hair as it comes on my body. I have had 3 comments in the 7 years since deciding not to shave. So its very 'odd' but it does happen. The staring at leg hair thing has happened once in 7 years...so even more 'odd'.

I've just posted my real life experience of nearly dying as a result of having my ears pierced on the current piercing thread, because posters were claiming there is never a long term consequence of pierced ears...no doubt ill go back to whole load of 'oh how odd', faux bewilderment over there too...rather than the 'oh shit really? I had no idea..I'll rethink my assumption that there isn't a problem' that you might hope for.

grandma proper lol at the million pound industry turning up as a stroke of luck. I'm just pathetically relieved there are actually other people out there that properly understand that women's perceptions of what is good, clean, normal, attractive etc. are massively influenced by companies that want to make money out of those perceptions.

Amount of money I have spent in the last 7 years since deciding my body was fine as it came:

razors = £0
shaving foams = £0
dilapidators =£0
weird hair desolving creams = £0
visits to any sort spa, salon, waxing emporium = £0

also,
make up = £1.50 (I use an eyebrow pencil to improve my ability to convey sarcasm at work)

But I am of course sure that cosmetics companies only have my best interests at heart with their super airbrushed, hairless, plastered in make up super models chanting 'because I'm worth it'. They definitely just want me to fell better about myself...they aren't aiming to undermine my body confidence in order to sell me shit AT ALL.

They are always looking for something new to keep women wrong footed and insecure about their bodies. And to trash the environment as a sideline.Panty liner-to do the job previously done by panties. Then scented panty liners-because women's bodies are so untrustworthy and smelly that just washing isn't enough.......

Hakarl, waterlego and Morphene you’ve all hit the nail on the head. Despite being happy to be hairy in front of my dh I buy a boy leg swimming costume because I’m just not brave enough to parade my untamed ‘bikini line’ and I’d love to ditch makeup once and for all. But it does take a lot of confidence to break with those norms. I can recall being conditioned that underarm hair on a girl was unhygienic waaaay back in a childhood dance class, and can recount many times since then that it’s been reiterated that although many women find hair removal a pain in the arse it’s just something we have to put up with because that’s normal.

How do men who don't like your body hair cope with you having a mastectomy?

Janey - what are you on about? How close do you think someone has to get to be able to see their leg hair? I can see people's leg hair when they sit opposite me in our coffee room, if they stop for a chat in the corridor, if I walk past them in the street. I would guess its visible from anywhere closer than 5 meters, further if its particularly dark.

So yes, standing in a queue at the supermarket it is entirely possible to see leg hair on other people. Knock yourself out and try it some day!

millicentF do NOT mention the scented panty liners. They are for me the absolute pinnacle of cynicism in the cosmetics industry. Not only do healthy women not smell bad or need to smell like chemical airfreshener, but the one thing that will actually cause a bad smell is putting chemicals in such close proximity to your most sensitive skin and provoking a reaction.

I'm personally planning to attempt to top this stupidity by launching soap for eyeballs, because the natural cleaning ability of the eye is not to be trusted...and who the hell doesn't want fresh smelling eye balls? only lazy women who've let themselves go...that's who!

It will come with a range of sister products including make up for eyeballs...some sort of eyeball whitener that fixes the bloodshot mess the soap causes...

What do you think? Would anyone like to invest? I'm sure it would make money, particularly from smell conscious teenage girls!

It’s just reminded me of this brilliant sketch

m.youtube.com/watch?v=85HT4Om6JT4

fab!

This thread has been eye opening for me.

I am baffled by posters arguing that there is no societal pressure on women to look/behave a certain way. That if an individual’s friends or family judge them, then they just have unluckily bad friends and family rather than it being symptomatic of wider views.

“Little princess” v “Tough Guy” - it starts early and never, ever stops. I honestly believe that if you can’t see that, it’s because you’ve been completely conditioned to accept it.