I am so shocked about that thread stating most women have no pubic hair

[roseability]

I don't know quite why it has disturbed me so much. Like most women I have plucked/shaved and groomed for many years of my life. However the thought of putting myself through that really upsets me for some reason. Not that I plan to. It is just that I have never, ever considered that pubic hair is undesirable. I can't help but relate it to women in porn with little or no pubic hair and it makes me sad to think girls and young women (I have a daughter) will no doubt feel insecure about their vagina and how it looks in this way.

I am by no means a good feminist. As I mentioned I do shave my legs and I wear make up. I have read Beauty and Misogyny by Sheila Jeffreys and I question why I even do this. However it makes me almost weep to think of my daughter being influenced in such a way.

I was just really upset by that thread and I m not sure why

I agree with everything that ISNT says.

It is a pile of tripe.

Ridiculous in the extreme. I do not get why anyone would listen to such rubbish or feel bad about un-smooth armpits because Dove says so.

Ignore it.

As for vaseline on the legs. Hideous!

I think you're being a bit unfair on Dove here. Isn't it the brand that is trying to make women feel comfortable in their skins, no matter what age/size/shape? The real beauty thing

nineyearolds I like you!

As for dove - I can ignore it, marsha, but I'm not 12. Dove are trying to flog products as much as any other company. Their "real women" campaigns are not there because of a corporate desire to change attitudes, they are there because the company thinks that they will make women buy their products. If those ads did not work, they would change the campaign. And I am absolutely sure that the vast vast majority of women gave no consideration to how soft their armpits were, before that ad. Before the ad, clean and hairless and obviously not peeling or raw was fine. So now women know there is a new "standard" - whether they choose to follow it or not. But if that standard gets taken up widely, it will be harder for women to ignore it. Ans women everywhere will be saying "I feel better about myself when my armpits are soft, it feels nicer" etc forgetting the fact that actually they were perfectly happy before they had ever even heard of this.

And it all starts somewhere - the fashion for removing all pubic hair started somewhere - it gains momentum, other companies pick it up, the magazines start talking about it, and bingo it's got to be a part of your beauty routine if you want to be acceptably groomed.

Unilever own Dove BTW.

A lot of that long post was in response to takingchances even though it looks directed at marsha, apols for that.

That's actually not really true about Dove. They work with over 1 million schoolchildren in America promoting self esteem through good body image and they also fund research into eating disorders. They work with Dr Susie Orbach and other experts in their field. It's not all corporate claptrap.

Of course they are just trying to flog products. Everyone is.

I'm more upset that men's razors have four blades. I mean where will it end??

Like I said I don't have a 12 year old girl. But if I did I would explain, normalise what I do, model and limit exposure to crap. Worked for me. Possibly could work, who knows?

And they also invent something for women to add to the list of things that they need to check pass muster about their bodies.

McDonalds do loads of charity work, it doesn't mean that they are a great ethical company. The reason they do these things is to improve their image. They want to have a good image so that people trust them and buy their products. Differentiation in markets like female grooming is really difficult, the real women thing is what Dove does to try and differentiate itself, to get people to buy it's products.

Should point out here that I buy into plenty of this stuff, and it doesn't bother me what individual adults do for their grooming. However it really does bother me immensely that it is now the norm for girls and young women to remove all of their pubic hair, while 30 years ago it was just not on the cards. It's just horrible. It is a dire "trend" and I wish it hadn't happened.

I agree with you on that. It is awful.

My mum tried to hold off the age at which I started shaving my legs marsha - I wasn't having any of it.

I've just remembered what terrible stubble rash I used to get...

Will I really have to struggle with my DDs, when they get to 11 or 12, or younger? Trying to persuade them to hold off shaving their genitals, and then find that they're done it anyway and made a really bad job of it How can anyone not find the idea of children shaving their genitals really grim?

I would hate it too.

Really and truly.

I took a marketing course once and it was all about how corporations create a need
ONe girl stuck her hand up and said, "But you can't create a need
The lecturer retorted: "Do you have a mobile phone?"
"Yes" she murmured
"Do you need a mobile phone?" he asked/
And then we all realised that 5 years earlier, literally nobody we knew had a mobile phone, but today you actually need one if you want to make the simplest of arrangements.
Companies absolutely do create needs that don't exist and they do it by tapping into our human emotions and vulnerabilities: the need to belong, to look cool, be part of the in-group, to hold onto a relationship
But it's more worse for women, because there's the added aspect of misogyny. I keep referring to the obscenity of a hairy woman on the beach. Society ridicules women for not carrying out these various beauty practices

Dove/Unilever are not there to make women feel better about their bodies; Unilever have realised that there is more mileage in exploiting the ageing demographic who are wealthier than other age cohorts (comparatively) and who prefer specific forms of marketing 'address' (ie not to be patronised quite so much). So their 'we tell it like it REALLY is' type of marketing is really just an attempt at gaining market share from older women. That isn't to say that the Campaign for Real Beauty won't do some collateral good, but don't be disillusioned.

The collateral 'bad' that their campaigns generate is a double jeopardy for older women: not only facing generic ageism, they now also face market-driven pressure to age 'well' (ie beautifully: all the women in their campaigns are models of 'successful' age, in which tyrannical standards of beauty still apply)

at fulfilling ageing profile for demographic but not wealth.

yy, Sakura. Who'd have thought we "needed" a soap dispenser you don't touch? (Although I am very much hoping that's died a death).

Those are the needs they don't create, Sakura, 'the need to belong, to look cool, be part of the in-group, to hold onto a relationship'

They create new (and false) pathways though. This is a very interesting discussion.

There are "needs" that are created by capitalists in the hope of profits, but then they're enthusiastically taken up by the public, like mobile phones. Do we really need the damn things? No, but do we all want them? Apparently most of us do! Once upon a time, did anyone need to travel to London at some dizzying speed like 20 miles an hour, pulled by a tea kettle, when there was a perfectly good stagecoach available? Apparently people did need to do that. Eventually there were no more stagecoaches. And then a different bunch of capitalists started selling people cars, and then there weren't as many trains, either.

Shaving your crotch is also an option, but it doesn't fulfill any practical kind of purpose, unlike a train or a mobile phone. But nobody advertised it looking for a profit; it just kind of took over quietly by word of mouth or incidents like Britney Spears flashing her bald bits at the paparazzi. She did a bad day's work that time.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about Britney Spears. Celeb endorsements, eh? Who cares - the kids aren't fussed about slebs.

Tei you're right, we may not need these things - but when lots of people have them society changes so that it's difficult if you don't. Do you have any public phones near you, for example? They are certainly hard to find round here. As we individualise our consumption more and more, the impetus to provide socially available "commons" decreases.

I lived in a wood for a few years - no hot running water (no running water for a bit - eek), all solid fuel, compost loo: but we didn't HS and I had a job - a very "normal" job too - for some of it. I still think it's doable: but the hardest thing is managing the difference between that "fallen off the edge of society" existence and "normal" society.

A person called Jerry Mander wrote a book called "Four Arguments for the Abolition of Television" which is dated now but made some interesting points. He said it didn't necessarily protect you from the negative effects of tv just to not watch if everyone else was still watching - you just ensured your own separation from the rest of society rather than helping to rid society of its negative effects. Hence the arguement for its abolition.

argument

And I see that I sound as if I am making a different point when I am, in fact, simply agreeing with you. Sorry - tired.

I don't find the fake real women ads offensive. They glide over me, background noise. I can dismiss a lot.

Again, I feel comfortable these days, not harangued, not harassed, not like in my twenties. If I had girls I might find that surge of defensive crossness coming back quite handily, who knows?

I don't actually want to be confronted with images of real real people I see enough of those living in London every day! The sanitised version is ok for me. Also I am sceptical of all branding / advertising. Nothing is there except to sell. Even the ads that say they don't want to sell you stuff! It's just an angle and doesn't surprise me.

Anyway the adverts I really despise are the ones that don't disappear. The ones that try and grab my attention. The hideous violent, or shocking ones depicting unappealing images. I don't want to see them, and I don't want my children to either.

yes wukter, those needs are innate, in humans, the "human condition" if you like- what makes us human.
THey tap into those human needs and use our vulnerabilities to sell shit to us, things we certainly don't need in reality

obviously some people are more susceptible to marketing than others: the young, people going through a hard time, even people who have a weak sense of self due to a hard childhood. They buy stuff to fill the void and marketeers know how to exploit this perfectly, they keep re-opening the wounds, make the person feel having those things will make them more valuable people