The other day, I overheard a couple of girls in school discussing whether they were going to wax or shave their legs when the time came.  I wondered if the question of whether to remove it all (in whatever manner) or let it grow was something that they felt was genuinely their choice.  It seems highly unlikely, given that an advertisement for razors was recently deemed newsworthy for showing real female body hair being shaved off, rather than the usual fare of razors gliding across already hairless skin (Billie razors: ‘First razor ad with hairy women’ wins praise online, BBC, 30^th June 2018).  The issue of body hair goes further than the legs, armpits, eyebrows and toes that an advertisement can show.  Last year, a teacher (Girls go along with sex acts, says teacher, BBC, 5^th October 2017) wrote of pubic hair “It’s the accepted norm amongst the girls that you shave it all off – a totally unspoken rule”.

You might be surprised to find me writing about such a topic:  I know I am.  However, it is intimately related to something I have been meaning to write about for almost as long as this blog has been going.  I’ll come back to this point later, but for now I’ll return to the topic of female body hair and some of the questions that arise around it.   Why does society seem to be so disgusted by female body hair as to have these unspoken rules about removing it?  Shouldn’t we be content with the way we were all created?  Isn’t body positivity all the rage these days?  Does the idea of natural beauty not extend to natural body hair?

Like any fashion, body hair fashion has changed over the years.  In closing his podcast (The Why Factor: Female Body Hair, BBC World Service, 2^nd September 2013), presenter Mike Williams stated that “Female pubic hair once signified sexual appetite, but now it seems removing it does.”  In the preceding discussion, reflecting on classical female nudes, art historian Frances Borzello had commented that:

“It was always thought that bodily hair made a woman too sexual.  It made a woman look as if she had her own sexual desires, that she herself was sexy (not just that a man saw her as sexy but she herself might have desires of her own) and that was another reason why the ideal nude didn’t have pubic hair.”

In contrast, reflecting on modern trends, sociologist Roger Friedland went on to say:

“Shaving off your pubic hair is a statement to yourself and to the world that you’re ready for sex, that you are heat seeking yourself just like a man, that you demand your pleasures, that you’re not ashamed of your sexual desire.  However, you have to look at, well, where did this marker come from?  This marker came from male-dominated pornography.  I think it’s a symptom of an erotic world where sex has been cut away from reproduction and increasingly severed from love and intimacy.  It strips your body and it strips sex of the indicators of that life giving possibility.  So what you are as a pubeless being is a body that’s ready for sex and sex alone.”

Having written previously (Abortion: A matter of life and choice), that “…the world has chosen to tell a lie about contraception:  that it gives us the power to completely separate sexual intercourse from pregnancy”, this idea of body hair removal being linked to the separation of sex from reproduction makes a lot of sense to me.  It is an idea that crops up elsewhere.  Lisa Miller (Why are we grossed out by women with armpit hair?, The Cut, 26^th June 2014) suggests that female armpit hair, growing as it does in puberty, signals maturity and fertility:

“It triggers disgust because it reminds humans how dangerous sex can be.  And that’s why we shave it off.  Because armpit hair betrays the western fantasy about sex, which is that sex is fun, pleasurable, innocent, and inconsequential, a fantasy that elides the evolutionary truth.  The revulsion at armpit hair might be evolution’s way of saying “proceed with caution”, and its removal one less barrier to cross.”

The logic of this line of thinking is sometimes taken further.  In discussing the removal of pubic hair, Louisa Saunders (The politics of pubic hair: why is a generation choosing to go bare down there?, The Independent, 18^th March 2013) remarks:

“Nevertheless, the fashion for it makes me uncomfortable. Hairless female genitalia have an obvious association, and that is with pre-pubescent girls. Where there are hairless genitalia, surely the unwelcome suggestion of the childish body is never far away.”

Although I can follow her logic, I don’t see the issue in quite such a sinister light.  However, as well as separating sex from reproduction, I would suggest that the removal of female body hair is also about separating men from women.  I have been pondering questions about identity for almost as long as I’ve been writing this blog.  More recently and more specifically, I have found myself pondering questions about gender identity and the ways in which we artificially magnify the differences between men and women.  Back in April (Homosexuality: One Christian’s Perspective) I wrote, “The view of the sexes as binary opposites is, I believe, incredibly damaging, but that is another topic for another day.”  It’s a topic that is still waiting for another day, but the issue of female body hair is intimately related to it (which is why I have found myself writing about this rather unlikely subject).

In conclusion, I would like to suggest that if we want to engage in mature, adult sexual relationships then both men and women should be open to the truth about the mature, adult female body and, perhaps, learn to love nature’s hairy reminders of the responsibilities that come with the pleasures of sex.  In order to tick the alliteration box on my grammar-features check-list, I’m also tempted to suggest that women should shake of the shackles of shaving.  However, ladies, I have no more right to say that to you than society does to demand – through its unspoken rules – the removal of your body hair.  But I do believe that since it’s your body, it should be something that you feel is genuinely your choice.