Armpits 4 August

[sunshineandfreedom]

This is technically activism but I wanted to make sure as many people as possible who might be interested saw it!

www.armpitsforaugust.com/

Me and a friend have already decided to do this; we were going to stop shaving our pits anyway but now have a cause to do it for

Good luck to everyone taking part.. wish I could do it...just don't like body hair (on men or women).

I'm always accidentally in, but this is great. Cheers

(I have inadvertently been doing it since last week!)

Oo I'm gonna do it! I shall see if anyone sponsors me though :(

i'm male (for those who diddnt know) i'm a total hypocrit, hairy armpits wouldnt bother me in the slightest, but hairy legs would.
no philosophy there, just gut reactions.

anyway, good luck, think of nina and her 99 red baloons!

well, those of you who are old enough to.

I am technically not but still love that song

Bump for the morning!

I'm gonna give this one last bump for prosperity's sake

I dunno about this.

The body hair growing for sponsorship/awareness thing is established (for men) with Movember. But the thing about Movember is that it is supposed to be a joke ? we are supposed to laugh at all the dudes with their funny moustaches ? the ?joke? is that it is time-limited, at the end of the month they will ? phew! ? shave that nasty hair off and return to a decent, proper, normal clean-shaven appearance.

If the aim of Armpits 4 August is to encourage women to seriously evaluate the politics behind the removal of their body hair, I think that re-treading the route of Movember will actually have the opposite effect as it actually reinforces the idea that body hair is gross ? that you have to be sponsored to not shave it off, it takes actual money and a ?good cause?, and even then it?s only for thirty short days.

I would also have concerns that women with PCOS (not a sufferer myself, but do know some women who are) would feel that they are the butt of this joke. ?Excess? body hair can be the cause very real distress and embarrassment, and making a joke out of it ? even with the best of intentions - may well exacerbate this.

Also ? hasn?t this already been done with Vajanuary (albeit pubic rather than armpit hair)? There is also Febru-hairy which claims the "Movemeber for the ladies" gimmick. I know that's about getting head hair cut etc, but... I dunno, is the market a bit saturated with this sort of idea?

I am really confused about the campaign conflating two actually quite different issues. Is it trying to question societal norms around the removal of female body hair or is it trying to raise funds/awareness for PCOS? Because I?m really not sure that the one campaign can adequately cover both. I would say that the campaign lends itself more readily to the former, to be honest. The PCOS/armit hair link just seems too gimmicky.

I am increasingly moving away from the idea that to get a message heard you need a media friendly gimmick, tbh. I think that often it actually works against the message that you are trying to get heard.

For instance, I thought that the Muff March was totally counter-productive because while it did get some media attention, none of it was focused on FGM, really. It was all 'hahaha, look at the comedy pube wigs".

I admire the concept of raising money for people with pcos, well no actually I don't, what good would money do them .

Would I sponsor someone to grow hair, no. I don't really get it, the whole body hair thing is I think 80% in the mind of the beholder. Nobody actually gives a shiny shite about your armpits, I felt the same about that daft Cherry Healy thing I saw where she daringly left her pits to grow. NOBODY WITH HALF A FUCKING BRAIN CARES.

Unless you are really really hairy, in which case I sympathise, nobody is going to even notice, I honestly think this hair removal thing is mostly driven by women.

Mrsjohnmurphy. The point if this is that women with pcos grow excess hair. So by other women growing their body hair it normalises female body hair and could hopefully help these women with pcos feel better about their bodies.
This actually makes sense unlike doing a sponsered fun run or something stupid which does nothing.
And you say no one cares, they do. Women get told every day that hairy legs, armpits and vulva make them dirty and unattractive; by the media, advertisements and men! Maybe you dont know anyone. Have you even tried not hair removing? Because how can you know the reaction if you have never done it? The pressure to remove hair is very intense and makes people feel bad about their bodies and waste hours removing hair and huge amounts of pain waxing it, just to be seen as 'normal'. I don't think that's right.

"So by other women growing their body hair it normalises female body hair and could hopefully help these women with pcos feel better about their bodies. "

But does it? If it's something you have to be sponsored to do and which only lasts a month how is that normalising?

Anyway, as a PCOS sufferer I think I'd rather other women grew facial hair to make me feel like less of a freak

No I don't think it will radically change how people view women and body hair, but it's a start. And that fact that its sponsored will encourage more women to try it. It's a positive concept and will definately do nothing bad.

Here are some of my thoughts (as the OP!):

• My friend and I both wanted to let our armpit hair grow naturally. We both felt that the only reason we shaved it was to feel 'socially acceptable'; neither of us wanted to. We decided to be 'armpit buddies' for the summer so that by doing it together we'd have the added strength of 'numbers' to battle any negativity or stigma we experienced. We have added the element of charity to a personal choice/feminist statement we were doing anyway.

• Upon deciding to do this she stumbled upon Armpits 4 August. We decided to see if we could raise some money into the bargain because we were going to do it anyway.

• We are not planning to shave it off again once August is over. This, for us at least, is just part of the beginning of life as hairy-armpitted-women. I can see the concerns if, as some might, we were treating it as a gimicky 'let's be weird for a month then shave it off' thing, but we're not. So we will continue in the world as hairy ladydudes which fits in with A4A's aim of making it more 'normal' and hopefully socially acceptable. Obviously we know we two won't make much fo a difference but it's better than nothing, surely? And hopefully we're not the only ones treating it like this.

• For MrsJohnMurphy, I googled it for you. Here are 2 links to 2 PCOS charities saying what they use their money for. HTH

www.verity-pcos.org.uk/about_us/about_verity
www.pcosupport.org/about.php

I'm glad this has turned into a bit of a discussion though, it's good

And the links in clickable form:
www.verity-pcos.org.uk/about_us/about_verity
www.pcosupport.org/about.php