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

It's like when men do leg waxing for charity, and have to make a big deal of how painful it is. But yet no-one stops and thinks that this is the pain women are feeling every time. It's some big joke.

I thought everyone thought women had a higher pain threshold than men.
You mean it's not true?

(though of course the reason given is always that we are biologically designed that way for childbirth, rather than, we are trained into it by beauty practices)

Would those big old coarse men hairs hurt more?

Could ask someone who removes pubes whether they hurt more than leg hair as they are bigger and coarser (or is that just me )

But then you would think we would also be doing the physical work too, as our muscles would feel less pain.

I was thinking thickness of hair

yes, of course pubes hurt more than leg hair.

Ah yes Alice leg v bikini, true. Can't remember...

but it might be to do with sensitivity of area from which is it removed?

I think it may hurt more... We need expert hair person.

well of course in some cultures women do the backbreaking work like carrying water.
and housework traditionally was pretty hard work. The high pain threshold must have come in jolly useful for Victorian housemaids too!

Now we need a scientist to conduct an experiment...

it's a philosophical issue though isn't it - you never know whether my headache is actually worse than your headache or whether what I describe as a bad headache is really worse than what you call a mild one.

or are there objective ways of measuring how much pain someone is suffering?

It would need to be on the same person. We would need to create a person who has one leg with male hair, one with female hair. I'm not sure whether we'll get it past the ethics committee though.

I'm sure scientists will have invented some 'objective' way. As is their way.

Google tells me red heads have a higher pain threshold. But jury seems to be out on men vs. women, seen things both ways. (And this is of course an utterly reliable way of finding the answer)

and PAYS for the privilege. And calls it 'pampering'!

Wait, is that chair really there?!?

I'd say learned for the icy water thing. Always learned.