Female body hair / husband- help?

[wishfulthinking1]

Since the birth of my son I've considered feminist issues much more deeply- particularly inspired by 'hair:not the musical', I've begun considering hair removal as a choice- and have chosen not to at the the moment.

My lovely husband (and he really is lovely) is struggling with this- says he doesn't find it attractive / is embarrassed when we go swimming etc- he doesn't mean to be ignorant, but he's really struggling with it.

I'm trying to find something for him to read that could help him get his head around it. Most internet searches come up with articles along the lines of 'eww, gross, if your partner loved you, she'd shave blah blah'.

Does anyone have any advice?
Thanks

Men in all walks of life wear beards and nothing is said- in fact many consider it attractive. Women are so seldom seen with body hair that when they are ( like Julia Roberts) a massive fuss is made. That's the difference. A man can turn up on a red carpet with a hairy face with no controversy but a woman with hairy legs would be the talk of the tabloids for days (with plenty of references to "disgusting" no doubt).

There are many environments, including many jobs, where facial hair is considered unacceptable. More, I daresay, than jobs where women are required to shave their body hair.

buffy you could collect it from puberty for future children. like your trousseau in your bottom drawer

Which bits upset you? I'm fastidious about underarm shaving as I just hate it. Appreciate hair can be clean but personally I hate a hairy pit. I'm careful about lower legs in summer but not nearly as much as underarms. I'm a bit "is it likely I'm going swimming this week?" about my bits. But more 1970's at home and current in a pool as I hate hair curling round clothes.

Thighs well depends on my outfit frankly.

Unsure if that's feminist. Amongst friends that's fairly normal though. I think there's levels. Fixated, half hearted, ambivalent, 'feminist' (in quotes as I'm a bit unclear how much much of that group cares about it but it gets a lot of press), those that ignores all of it. Irritates me mildly hair gets more interest than other aspects.

Are there? Do women working in those environments have to wear make up and heels, perchance?

"Op's son is pretty unlikely to find neck lengthening cropping up in his day to day life

No, that's the point, isn't it?"

Is it? The point sounded like "don't worth about leg hair because worse stuff is happening elsewhere"

If that wasn't the point, could you clarify? Thanks

Are there? Do women working in those environments have to wear make up and heels, perchance?

No, they don't. They'll probably do better if they do though.

In conservative work environments, men are much more explicitly constrained than women. Suits, ties, shaven, you name it.

Women are just told they have to 'look smart' and have to read between the lines to guess exactly what that entails. The interpretations vary considerably.

And in those jobs, if a woman had visible leg hair through nude tights, or visible armpit hair in a short sleeved blouse, would she be more judged or less than Ethan from marketing with a beard?

No, the point is that our ideas of beauty are set by our society and have no objective value whatsoever.

When we see women with extreme neck lengthening we do not find it attractive, even if we might consider a slightly longer than average neck attractive (or we might not).

Likewise, others looking from the outside at the things we consider to be 'attractive' or 'disgusting' might be equally puzzled, as often something that starts as an ideal of relative attractiveness (a long neck, small feet, smooth skin) leads to behaviour that can be ridiculous/damaging in its pursuit.

Hair removal is one example in our society the 'barbie' body type is another, more extreme one.

Depends on whether she was from marketing ;)

I merely pointed out that females in the animal kingdom also pluck their body hair and maybe subconciously women remove hair to look different from men. Why are you getting all het up and patronising me over my own opinion/thoughts on this? It doesn't need extensive backing up because...it's my own thought. Also, I didn't say women may pluck leg hairs to make nests, I said females in the animal kingdom do.

As for women not removing hair 50 years ago...isn't that a bit strange? Women had less rights back then and I would think it was more of a patriarchal society than it is now, yet women are removing body hair more now than back then. Why? I'd say it was because they have more power and more choices.

Hair on your head also serves a purpose, yet people go bald/shave it off and still survive. There are millions of people within different cultures who shave/remove pubic hair all their life and don't suffer for it. It's hair that is easily accessible for removing. Pubes aren't like eyelashes attached closely to sensitive membranes. Even in women they are around the outer lips which is normal skin.

Fakebook I have Hollywood waxes and I can assure you that a. it is not easily accessible, and b. it is attached closely to sensitive membranes. Hope that helps.

I can easily access my areas with a razor without hurting myself. I couldn't shave my eyelashes like that. I've never waxed my pubes but I agree they may be attached to more sensitive areas in some women depending on how much bodily hair you have.

Liara, so men are required and conditioned to remove facial hair but women are totally free to do as they please? Conditioning only works on men?

Why might women remove more body hair now than 50 years ago?

Ooooooh, at a guess, I'd say that it's to do with the huge difference in the availability of porn. The easy access young men and boys have to porn making the image of completely hairless women seem normal and then placing explicit or implicit pressure on their female partners to emulate it. 50 years ago it was generally servicemen and dirty old men who watched porn, so not mainstream society, and even then the women weren't expected to look like hairless children.

Or, maybe you are supposed to save it. I'm sure you could make a lovely fireside rug out of it all. Call Axminster!

I have a problem with the notion that removing pubic hair makes women look like children. It just doesn't. There's no way an adult woman is going to look prepubescent, wax or no wax.

There are plenty of reasons to question why one does it, or not to do it, but that isn't one as far as I'm concerned. That really is like saying men shave their faces in order to look like little boys, or that women shave their legs in order to look like eight-year-olds.

Of course.

If men decide not to remove their facial hair, does society deem that disgusting in some way?

There was a time, in my childhood, when men who did not respect the expectation of military short hair and clean shaven face were treated with prejudice. My cousin wore a beard to cover facial scarring from a firework that exploded in his face, he was explicitly told he would have been called back for further interviews except for his beard. He showed up clean shaven, got into med school, and regrew the beard now that everyone knew why. It continued to be somewhat of a problem with patients while he was a resident, but bt the time he was a doctor, beards were in, though many people still didnt like them. If he had been 5 or 10 years older, his beard would have continued to be a problem throughout the early part of his career.

There are numerous religious sects in the workd that require men to grow a beard, and a few that forbid them cutting their hair. Which made life difficult if they immigrated west, or interacted much outside ethnic enclaves for groups like Amish or Orthodox Jews in the US.

Through history, westerners have had various body expectations. Womens body hair didnt used to matter (no one would ever see it except her maid or spouse) but at various points, the hairline had to be plucked to form a high forehead.

The shaving legs and pits thing started about a hundred years ago, and wasnt even universal in the West before serious pushback began about 50 years ago. Weird that the shaving requirements go further and further, to the paint of expecting women to be smooth as children all over. I really find that weird.

I do agree with you, Amethyst. AFAIK, the reason it's removed in porn is to give, err, a clearer view rather than anything to do with pre pubesence.

As far as I know, the fashion for removal of pubic hair went more or less in tandem with the increasing flimsiness of swimwear until recently. In the 1950s swimsuits were cut much more generously, so they'd cover all pubic hair unless you were very hairy. By the 1980s high-cut legs had became a fashion, so women started having bikini waxes. In the 1990s IIRC Brazilian waxes became a thing, because thong-backed costumes were more popular.

I totally agree that the all-off wax is because of porn - there's no doubt about that. I know I'm coming across as an apologist for waxing, and I don't mean to. I do it myself for a number of reasons, but I know there's socialisation underlying them all. From a feminist and political point of view I don't feel good about it; for other reasons I do.

But I do dispute that it's to do with looking like a child.

I do not believe porn is causing women to remove their body hair. I removed mine when I was 13 for the first time. I didn't even know what porn was until I was about 16/17 and I was a virgin until my early 20's. In countless threads like this, many women always say they removed their hair way before ever watching porn.

I also disagree with the view that shaving pubic hair makes women look like children. Childbirth makes that impossible for me (2 second degree tears and countless cuts and grazes that took a long time to heal).

amethyst: the crotch of a hair free woman looks like the hair free crotch of a girl to me. Maybe it is a matter of exposure: if a hairless adult female (even just yourself) is something you regularly see, it is an appearance you no longer associate with children. But for me, i have only seen a hairless woman once or twice, as opposed to hairless girl cousins, friends in my childhood, my daughters, girls I babysat. I found the hairless women (one in person, one a photo) to be creepily childlike.

Momagain, to be honest I don't see anyone's crotch except my own and DP's pretty much ever. I don't have children and my friends and I aren't in the habit of getting our kit off in front of one another. And I don't watch porn.

But I can kind of see that if you were looking at the crotch only of a woman standing with her legs closed, and that of a prepubescent girl, they might look similar. But that's as far as it goes, isn't it? An adult woman's vulva looks (look? Plural or not? Grammar fail) completely different from a child's, in the same way that a man's penis doesn't look like a little boy's.

Just to through a spanner in the works; my grandmother was virtually hairless. She had very fine head hair and eye lashes but very sparse eyebrows, no leg, arm, arm pit or pubic hair. To a lesser degree my daughter and I have inherited her 'fluff' (as we like to call it) traits. So where does that leave us? Lesser females?