Do you think if I identified as non binary I could not shave my legs/bits to take the kids swimming?

[ABitCrapper]

Or is non binary restricted to the under-40yos with blue hair?

Because I already genuinely always wear trousers, never wear make up, have a boy leg swimming costume, do DIY, have a stem degree, don't watch love island etc

I don't feel feminine
I am a woman who hates having periods and having social pressure to conform to female stereotypes.
However I enjoyed birthing, breastfeeding, and being the main carer for my children.

So I reckon I'm non binary?

But really, the only social pressure I bow to is hair removal. Not sure why?

I go swimming with hairy legs. I couldn't give a shit. Your legs are under water 🤷

It's like when you go to the beach on holiday. You might be self conscious (me when I was younger. Now, not so much), but seriously, nobody is looking at you because they are too busy thinking about themselves.

I've never noticed anyone looking at me when I'm going swimming. I honestly don't think anyone cares

They aren't looking and no one cares. I do think this is something feminists make a fuss about- the so called societal pressure to shave and the reality being no one really cares or notices.

I shave my legs below the knee if I will be wearing sheer tights. India was right to the extent that if a woman is aiming for a tailored, groomed look visible leg hair spoils that. I don't bother in the months I wear opaque tights. I only go swimming if I'm staying in a hotel which has a pool. I don't shave if that happens to be in opaque tights season. Frankly very few people look good in swimming costumes, men or women, shaving or not shaving legs makes no difference and who is looking anyway?

I do shave armpits about once a week, maybe less, as I think anti- perspirant works better.

have looked into burkinis but felt it might be seen as appropriation

Please tell me that is a joke.

It's like when you go to the beach on holiday. You might be self conscious (me when I was younger. Now, not so much), but seriously, nobody is looking at you because they are too busy thinking about themselves

Exactly. And 5 minutes looking round any beach will surely dispel the idea that anyone took "beach body ready" seriously.

India was right to the extent that if a woman is aiming for a tailored, groomed look visible leg hair spoils that

India said women's unshaven legs were dirty.

There is an ingrained shame with unshaved legs

There really, really isn't. As I said I think visible leg hair will spoil a well groomed, dressy look but at a swimming pool or a beach? No one cares.

I don't shave. As far as I know, nobody's ever noticed. Can't seem to muster a fuck if they do, though.

India was right to the extent that if a woman is aiming for a tailored, groomed look visible leg hair spoils that

India said women's unshaven legs were dirty

I said right to an extent- not that she was right about it being dirty, but only to the extent of it detracting from a groomed appearance. On a beach or a swimming pool it's a non - issue.

From memory, Jenni Murray suggested that young male waiting staff were considered smart in laundered white shorts (with hairy legs) and asked why their female counterparts had to shave legs/ wear tights etc in the summer.

It was nearly 18 months ago though so please don't quote me.

Regardless of any other point India may or may not have been making, the comment about women's unshaved legs being dirty really is the significant part.

There is an ingrained shame with unshaved legs

There really, really isn't

I think you’re really lucky to have avoided this particular pressure, Lass, which is great for you, but please don’t presume to speak for everyone and be so dismissive of other women saying that they feel a deep ingrained shame. I certainly do. I was bullied mercilessly from around the age of 10 about being hairy. Made to feel massive shame. Stole my Mum’s ladyshave and then got in trouble for that and told I wasn’t allowed to shave. More bullying through secondary school. This was from other girls, children, and they hadn’t come up with the idea that hairy legs are unacceptable all by themselves.

I still find it very hard to break free of that indoctrination, no matter how much I philosophically disagree, the inner shame runs deep from those formative experiences. And I don’t believe I am in any way unusual in that.

Agree, Cwenthryth - in fact for me it's even more shaming. It was many years before I realised people shaved their bikini lines. I just assumed I was a freak to have hair outside my bikini line, so never went swimming. I had no idea that it could be removed, or that that's what you were supposed to do. I just knew women weren't supposed to be hairy. (My DH had no problem with my hairiness.)

Yeh, I know, what an idiot.
I still don't go swimming: I'm no longer slim.

I think you’re really lucky to have avoided this particular pressure, Lass, which is great for you, but please don’t presume to speak for everyone and be so dismissive of other women saying that they feel a deep ingrained shame. I certainly do

There are several posters on here saying no one cares or notices. Why are you so determined to hold on to this deep ingrained shame?

There is this odd version of feminist thoight which seems to be utterly focused on the many ways women are supposed to be oppressed but doing nothing practical about it.

I don’t know about anyone else but for me, the paranoia started when I had the hellish swimming lessons at school, when girls really would check out each other’s bodies and tease girls who were deemed not to be acceptable.
I think I’m quite fortunate in that I never fit in so I have spent a lot of years thinking ‘sod them’. I did my bit for a wee while but once you become an adult, people really don’t care. Or if they do, its only for a split second brfore they return to thinking about themselves.

Why do some people feel shame? Well I guess it comes down to the society they live in and the strength of their personal need to fit into that local society. Society isn’t uniform across the uk, it varies by region, socio ecominic status and age.

It is my suspicion for example that younger people or people with lower socio ecominic status have on average a greater need to fit in than some other groups. The strong sense of community that exists is typically cemented by common values which will have a physical aspect to show where you belong. . these people will notice they are judged by their appearance, and will be judged by their appearance by their peers, more than some other groups.

Teenagers are desperate to fit in, which is why a gaggle of girls will have common hair do, same clothes, these days often modelled on a specific social media hero.
It’s just a form of keeping up with the jones. In a rich group of people, having the right house car and holiday helps you fit in, but in a rich group you may be less dependent on your peers for support, and hence feel less need to show how you fit in

So some people feel the social pressure much more than others.

I. Was brought up in one group and have moved socially upwards

There are several posters on here saying no one cares or notices. Why are you so determined to hold on to this deep ingrained shame?

What an odd thing to say - like any ingrained habit, they're hard to change. The posters here that don't shave are being encouraging rather than berating the ones that are on the cusp of feeling that they could break what is a pretty big taboo.

Like another poster, I first went swimming hairy when I had a baby and a toddler and simply forgot. Since then, I've frequently gone swimming without shaving and no-one's said a thing.

As a child though, any hair on a girl was mercilessly ridiculed at swimming, and when we recently went to a hotel for a day just to use the pool, with a colleage and her child, my partner actually begged me to shave my legs so he wouldn't feel embarrassed (day to day he doesn't care) - there were no women there with unshaven bits. If it was such a pointless thing, and so easy to change, don't you think that at a hotel, among immensely privileged people, who have freedom of choice in so many things, that even one of the women would have had hairy legs if it was such a ridiculous thing for feminists to talk about?

It is a taboo and it is a big mental hurdle to overcome for those of us raised with the message that leg and armpit hair on a woman is absolutely unacceptable.

It's likely there are generational and possibly class variations in how strong this message was for us when we were growing up. I am in my early 30s and whilst I saw women without makeup, women with undyed grey hair, women in comfortable, practical clothes/shoes, etc etc, showing me that all these feminine beauty rituals were optional, I never ever saw a woman in public with leg or armpit hair until I was 13 and I remember that really vividly. We were on holiday in Canada and I was horrified, and then I didn't see another hairy woman until I was an adult. In my experience removal of body hair is the most rigidly upheld social norm of femininity. As I say, this may not be the experience of all women, but when I was a teenager it would have been social death to be hairy and all the adults I knew seemed to accept and agree with this too.

When you grow up with everyone talking about how shameful it would be to allow anyone else to see your body hair, how disgusting it is to be hairy and female - yeah it's actually quite hard to make the mental journey from there to being comfortable with your natural body. For those who are more impervious to social conditioning, or for those lucky enough to have received a milder version, imagine how it would feel to step out of the house onto the street naked. That is basically how I used to feel about going to the swimming pool with hairy armpits.

And even though I know the OP is tongue-in-cheek, I think it's definitely true that some women are calling themselves NB as a more socially acceptable / fashionable way to opt out of femininity.

It's basically an extreme version of 'I'm not like the other girls', which just throws all other women under the bus. Women and girls distancing themselves from other women and girls as a desperate attempt to be seen as real people is very very common. Shitting on the rest of your sex to save yourself is a very ineffective strategy, though.

Yes. I agree with Micke and Magic.

What an odd thing to say - like any ingrained habit, they're hard to change.
Exactly. I was teased for years at school for having hairy legs. Yes, on a rational level I knew there was nothing wrong with me but when you are told multiple times by different people that you are a freak/a man/just plain ugly it rubs off and I always notice if other women have hairy legs even now! However, on the back of this thread I went swimming without shaving my legs this morning!

Oo! Well done @Derrinbraun! Good for you! Took me ages to throw caution (and pubes) to the wind. I always used to think 'imagine what I could do in the time it takes me to prune everything'. My DH was/is brilliant. Thought I was mad to be going through with the pain of it all. I now have hairier armpits than him!

Totally agree with the 'throwing other women under the bus' thing @Magic. I'm early 40's (so probably more comfortable in my body than I've ever been) and am definitely a female woman who just happens to not give stuff about what people think of my body hair. Took me a long time to get here.

I don't like body hair on myself or my partner, I guess it's ingrained but I've thought about it and I think it's the patchyness that squicks me. I think unhairy men look odd and I can't stand those patchy beards that don't join up. So it might be just my upbringing (my mum also told me a: I was too young to shave my legs and b: never start) but I'm a middle aged lesbian now and I still spend ages on hair removal.
I take a leaf out of the men's book though, they are getting into wet shaving etc (the ones that don't have beards) and there are some lovely shaving foams/gels/creams out there. I also treat myself to really nice razors. I'm not running around after kids so I can take my time and enjoy getting smooth. Bikini gets done occasionally but most often is clippered
Each to her own I guess.

I'm not having a go Scott, not really, I just think you're looking at the concern women have about having hairy legs from the point of view of being a man and assuming women are primarily concerned with how good they are at being a sexual object for men? And maybe if you want to sympathise with women on this issue you need to rethink your analogies? I just think it is interesting how you are looking at it.

To be fair, I think it probably also depends on the age of the individual. I'd imagine young women are probably a lot more conscious of it and that seems borne out by all the accounts of girls bullying each other about it.

I'd imagine that there's a point in life where many people stop giving a shit about what random strangers think - certainly the case with me as I get older.

I rarely shave my legs or pubes and go swimming /aqua fit. I'm in my early 30s if it's relevant. I do my pits because I do find I smell less. I'm not sure anyone notices my legs in the 30 second walk to the pool from the changing room. I've got way more to be self conscious of! And I think so do other people.

I really dislike the word "grooming" in relation to personal appearance, I'm not a Pomeranian.

I haven't shaved for about 7 years now. I did feel incredibly self-conscious at first but I don't even notice now. I've very rarely had any comments - one from my sister who was horrified, one from a preschool age child at the swimming pool who was just interested as she didn't know women could grow hair under their arms and a couple of giggly stares from teenage girls. That's not bad for 7 years!

I always notice if other women have hairy legs even now

I don't. I would probably notice if someone had visible leg hair poking through very sheer tights in the same way I'd notice a ladder. But that is because it would be odd to go for a well groomed look and fail in such an obvious way. But at a swimming pool? No, I'd never notice there. As Aaahfuck said I've got way more to be self conscious of! And I think so do other people.

"Well groomed" well-dressed and scrupulously neat nothing to do with Pomeranians.

blue

I agree, i got my bikini line lasered

A friend of mine kept saying she didn't understand why i felt i needed to do it

But when i asked her if she had hair at the top of her thighs she said no....she didnt have an issue so thought no one else did

Which was weird as she was a gyny nurse and must have seen her fair share of vulva