Resisting femininity experiment - who's in?

[sethstarkaddersmackerel]

I was thought-provoked by the 'I'm a feminist but....' thread, particularly Dittany's posts, in which she talked about women who choose not to 'perform femininity'.

I posted on the other thread that I hugely object to all that bikini-line business but do still shave my legs. Am not sure why I do this, so I think I'm going to stop and see how it feels. It felt like a major issue when I was 20 or so but I actually suspect not shaving them now would make me feel more, rather than less, confident.

So I wondered if anyone else was thinking about giving up any beauty practices or other elements of compulsory femininity and would like to do it together and see how it feels.

this is not a competition - if you decide after a day you hate it and can't live without it, fine, but it would be really interesting to hear about, and I think it could advance our understanding of how this all works.

anyone else in?

btw, I am in a vile mood today so if anyone wants to come along to the thread and tell us we are just falling into the trap of thinking all feminists have to have hairy legs, or that actually they wax everything and are a still better feminist than meeeee, I will tell them to fuck off because if you don't 'get' this I can't be bothered explaining, either you get it or you don't

Sorry, I didn't mean to be cryptic. I chose 'alea jacta est' because I thought it was a very well known Latin phrase. It means 'the die is cast'. I should think dh would be too busy laughing if I used any of these phrases, though, so perhaps it is an effective contraceptive!

Ok, I am quite a vain shallow "groomed" woman. After being enlightened by this thread I just did this;

-Showered (leaving my hair wet and down and unbrushed-where it normally goes curly) oh, and unstraightened.

-Wearing flip flops and an old t-shirt (I usually wear "feminine" clothes)

• With tinted moisturiser instead of foundation.

All was going well until I went into Tesco, stubbed my bastarding toe on the trolley and tripped over my flip flops.

Gosh I made feminism look cool, calm and collected.

LRD - now you mention it, I don't think classical statues do have public hair! Interesting observation.

oops! pubic hair, of course. they definitely have public hair on their heads.

homo classes

lesson 1: how to fend off attacks from BNP supporters

Swallowed- MY school also had a latin quote on our blazers;

"Through understand and truth we prosper".

The (private) school was shut down due to tax evasion.

the Romans certainly were into depilation - it's a Latin word after all.
I don't think oil and strigils would scrape the hair off but they did a lot of tweezing.
What I'm not sure about is how much the women did it; men definitely used to go to see the depilator, at the baths I think.

I've just had a spam email from Space NK entitled 'Six ways to smoother skin'

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Gynecology is a Greek word but I don't think the Greeks were massively into cervical smears.

(Sorry, no idea why I wanted to say that except that an awful lot of Latin words are later coinages aren't they?)

I guess if both Roman men and women shaved then it's not really relevant.

Btw, seth, that email wasn't spam - it was the patriarchy Out To Get You. They've seen the thread ...

I have often heard Classicists observing that there are plenty of similarities between the Ancient Greeks and the modern Middle East, specially re the position of women.

Engelbert - I was more thinking about people looking back to Classical art and seeing it as a standard of beauty, if that makes sense? Women at one stage used to pluck their head-hair back and to the sides so their foreheads looked very wide, as this was thought to be appealing - we'd now think it looked as if they were going bald and associate it with a masculine look.

I did a Classics degree and then a sort of semi-Classics PhD.
hence there were Classicists all over the place.

My DH is an ancient historian; his university mates are classicists. A strange breed ...

Actually, thinking of all this, seth, I think that in Bacchae, Dionysus is told he looks all effeminate and Middle Eastern, and I can't remember if he is hairy or not but he certainly perfumes his hair with oils.

I'm not just going off-topic here - it seems odd/naive when people try to make out that hair removal is just better, more hygenic or more attractive, when it's so incredibly obviously social conditioning.

Seth - I wasn't talking from a female heterosexual point of view - if you look on my profile, that ain't me -

I'm not ready to embark on Velcro and DMs just yet.

I have a rather snazzy pair of Birkenstocks.

God Engelbert that is a depressing thought......

That is depressing but probably true, Engelbert.

Something I find quite disturbing (and I'm 26 so not looking back over a massive swathe of time here) is that when I started reading glossy mags, plastic surgery was the exception. Now it's pretty common for Vogue to run an article recommending the best places to get yourself done, and it's presented in the same way as, say, permanent hair dye.