to be a bit surprised at the misogyny described/displayed on mn at times?

[nickytwotimes]

Right, well, first off, I love it here. i especially love it because there are plenty of intelligent, witty posters.
However, I am frequently surprised at threads relating to pornography, exchanging sex for "gifts" and fanjo shaving, etc. Now, I know we've all got different ideas about what is acceptable, but sometimes it's like feminism never happened.

The waxing I've been doing since I was 17 (I'm late 30s now) so no male influence there as I did it because I'm so hairy and shaving was constant.

The stripping I suggested to and ex at uni one night whilst legless. It was stupidly unsexy as I could not get my Dr Martin boots off to save my life. But it did make me feel sexy and powerful. DH loves it and I love doing it. Nobody makes me feel I have to.

My husband is very attracted to clever, confident women. He doesn't actually care what my body looks like as long as I'm happy in it.

keeping it real Zip! Lets get to the heart of the matter!

ONebatmother, you're right just like the new botox is making it impossible to enjoy wrinkles and expecting all women to stay looking mid 20s. Kirsty Gallagher, a very attractive woman now can't talk properly for collagen or move her face for botox. The brazilian is a little paedo for me, had one once and felt quite yuk, dp thought it was vile too...

Zippi... you just gave me a lol moment whick I love on MN!!!

Christ, I have houseguests while this is going on. so unfair.

OBM, yes well I didn't really want to discuss my own sexual preferences. I just don't like being told I'm being brainwashed but just don't know it.
Thank you PP.

Sandy, you're right we would still be getting laid but maybe without so much vigour!! If waxing is condition on said laying then that's an issue if the laying is going on with or without bush like bikini area then what does it matter?

"Or have men somehow been brainwashed into finding a certain 'look' sexy? If this was 1970, none of us would be waxing unless we were south american to begin with... but presumably we'd still be getting laid"

Oh Brafreakin'vo SandyDenny. It's that simple.

well, i started waxing mostly because all you could see was hair and i didn't like it because i just didn't like it.

i was in dance, and i wanted to look down at my legs and NOT a carpet of hair poking through my tights.

i like the shape of my legs and my body's muscular structure as shaped by dance, but not with thick, long black hair and white skin underneath.

ditto my arms.

i personally don't like the way it looks and really didn't like it when young as i was vain and quite good-looking.

now i'm just vain. i like to put on makeup and creat a look with it, not have it obscured by a dark moustache or bushy brows.

i don't do it for a man to get turned on or for sex.

my own personal conceit and vanity has guided all the decisions i make about waxing, colouring my hair, hair length, nail varnish, etc.

i have been doing this for years. it's nothing new.

those are my principles, others have different ones. good for them.

all through human history, people, male and female have removed their body hair and use makeup. and depilating is not exclusive to Western cultures, either.

By which I mean, herd sexual preferences, as someone I like said much earlier, are as much subject to cultural pressure as anything.

okay, i am Latin American.

most of the people in these regions are mixed with Native American Indians or black.

they don't tend to be as hairy as Europeans - I get that from my mother's French side.

i'm sure my culture, hanging around a lot of Latin Americans in a hot climate, affected how i feel.

still does.

blokes who are really hairy turn me off, too.

Ok, I'll tell you a interesting secret which may fuel you lot, cause I'm all for honesty.

I quite often had it all waxed off, now I leave a good sized triangle. Why? Because since we had a daughter (2nd child) DH says it makes him slightly uncomfortable. He doesn't like the bare look since having a baby daughter. He never associated the two before ie no hair=childlike but since Lizzie was born, he doesn't like it.

ok expat, I see where you're coming from. But - just for a minute - imagine you lived in a culture which found hairy sexy. You'd look at yourself and love it.

You can extrapolate that fact to cover pretty much everything that's been discussed on this thread.

I agree, there's plenty of misogyny here and irl. It doesn't particularly surprise me though, twas ever thus, sadly.

I think people who think they're removing body hair for themselves ought to read The Beauty Myth. This is a relatively new thing - who ever said it didn't even occur to our mothers generation to do it is right. And I think we've been sold this as a society and as women and, even more sadly, have bought it because of raunch culture, lad mag/tabloid normalisaton of porn and a good dollop of misogyny.

Fuck me, Cushion, that's fantastically honest - brafreakin'vo again, to you this time. Really.

i did have this discussion about removing hair hollywood or brazilian stylee with bf

which as i posted on mn at the time included the possiblity of dressing him up as johnny depp to mdo it for me and ropes and stuff

in fact i went for a light t4rim instead

www - i almost bought that book in waterstones the other day - wish i had done now!

www good point re Beauty Myth.

WWW I couldn't give a shit who wrote a book about hair removal it is so that some women prefer it, to be more attractive or just to feel nice...it's not binding feet is it? It is the same as wanting our men clean shaven or beardy, wanting our men to be tall and strapping... hairy men have been associated with myths such as being more verile and therefore hair can be considered a masculine trait. In China and places where women are dainty and very 'feminine' they have hardly any body hair, could it not be plain geography and osmosis of acceptabilty that means we shave/wax.
CC, I can see that plain and clear...that's what I didn't like especially as after I had done it I was sitting semi naked on dps knee and felt plain shiver down my spine wrong.

Oh, God, Naomi-fucking-cried-Wolf again makes me want to spew. She always has.

No offense, but she's white, American and bourgois. As such, I can't relate to the world she lives in. It reflects zero of the culture in which I grew up in at all. Mine was more the setting of Ugly Betty - telenovelas in teh background, little girls getting their ears pierced as babies and a flair for the dramatic in most of everything (makeup, romance, hair, heels, etc.)

I read her stuff and just thought, 'Wow, I'm glad I didn't grow up her.'

She's also a world class moaner.

Like I said, the Brazilian flew under the radar of white, Western society for a looonng time. In fact, you used to have to find real Brazilian waxers to get it done.

When it first sort of came out, it was being offered in NYC by a salon run by 5 Brazilian sisters.

ssslllurrrp @ Johnny Depp.

my husband doesn't have much body hair.

i don't dig hairy guys.

Naomi Wolfe disempowers all women by saying that we play no part in the world in which we live.

Lol at the idea of Naomi Wolf having written a book about hair removal, ha ha ha ha.

Whatever Naomi Wolf's ethnic and class background I think she makes some valid points in the book about how we've been sold some ideas about beauty in such an insidious way that we think it's our own free choice.

well enjoyable as this is i must go and beautify myself as he may be here in the next 40 mins depending on who else ois leaving london on a friday night

hopefully he wont leave immediately when he finds the house full of plumbers and hence shagging delayed

I completely disagree that she disempowers women. How does she do that? Have you read the book? In what way.