Body Hair? Don’t care…
We’re all spending thousands of pounds every year obliterating body hair in a fury of waxing, threading, epilating, lasering…
Because it’s something we think we have to do, to be attractive as a female.
I found myself apologising to a lover recently. “Sorry, I’m so hairy”. He didn’t seem to care and I shouldn’t have either. But here’s the irritating truth: I did.
Why do we care about body hair?
I’m a proud feminist: I’ve vehemently argued for womens rights and for equality in any and every sphere of life. I truly believe it is a woman’s right to keep her private parts hairy, hairless, or coloured a glorious magenta pink if she so chooses. So why then, at my most vulnerable, did I secretly fear a bit of hair?
Because everything around me, from ads telling me to be ‘beach-body-ready’, photo-shopped celebrity bodies peeking out of bikinis in glossy magazines & even a nurse’s obvious disgust at my hairy bits during a PAP smear tells me that hairless is the “normal” way to be.
Hollywood and porn
Some say porn is responsible, that decades of watching hairless vaginas have normalised it. But regular Hollywood movies & TV shows do it too. All those bronzed bodies don’t seem to have single sneaking pubic hair emerging from those perfect bikinis.
If you’re watching an old movie from the 60s or 70s, a luxurious bush on a woman looks strange, deviant somehow. That’s because our brains have been bombarded over the last decade with thousands of images of women sans body hair. And we’ve been brainwashed by the media, magazines and each other into thinking hair is unnatural.
So let’s get this straight: body hair that grows naturally is abnormal. And a hairless body, which demands hot wax & pain, is the norm.
Sounds strange? It does to me…
Body hair in the Kamasutra
Open a book on the Kamasutra and you’ll be surrounded by pubic hair.
Women with lush mounds and girls with luxurious bushes. All flushed, lost in the throes of passion. From the look of them, they’re definitely not thinking “Hell, I missed my waxing appointment.”
It’s important to note that none of the pictures in the Kamasutra books one reads are actually from the time of the Kamasutra. They were created much later than 300 BC, when my favourite erotic manual was penned.
But that is not the point. Those pictures of women with glorious pubic hair captures the aesthetic of the time. Where a woman with hair on her private parts was a full-grown woman. A sexually desirable woman…
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