The Pressures and Politics of Female Body Hair

By Laura Kiely

The topic of female body hair is one that bares incongruously charged political statements. What I mean is that – the display of female body hair is often seen as political. War is political, presidential elections are political, hell even religion is political (see my pun?). But female body hair is eh… Strange, isn’t it? But what’s hair got to do with sex and dating? For countless women it’s everything. And yes, I’m aware that many men shave their pubes before you “call me out” – but women have to go through much, much more than that. Thank you for flagging.

Let me give you an illustrative example of this. My friend, let’s call her Maria, was preparing for a second date last week. He cancelled last minute. Maria messages me to inform me of her intense frustration – not at the guy per se – but at the fact that she just completed a fresh full-body shave. Now, what this means is that she had timed her shaving perfectly so that her body would be smooth and hairless in time for sex. If he wants to reschedule for 24 hours later, she will be “prickly” and “spiky” by then – and you certainly cannot bring a razor to your skin so soon after a shave – in fact, it’s not good at all to shave an area less than 2/3 weeks after the previous time. That’s where we get the relentless ingrown hairs, razor bumps, rashes and even scars. It’s also why we have to time these routines so meticulously. Summer can be an exhausting pain for this reason, Lol. So yeah, hair does take up a lot of space for women who are dating (and in relationships but that varies).

But how does this grooming practice evolve into such an invisible routine? Well, it’s called shame and it is the dominant factor.

The first time I experienced this ambiguous shame I was twelve. My friend was having her birthday at the beach which inevitably means swimsuits. Now, because women’s swimwear (God only knows why) requires us to be stripped down to the same fit as our underwear- it means that this pubic hair can become a “shameful” issue for girls as young as nine. For the cishet men reading who have never actually seen female pubic hair thanks to misleading pornography and well, the women who have shaved for you – you should know that pubic hair for women starts on the vulva and usually stops at the very upper-inner thighs. Hence, where the bikini wax gets its name as it removes the hair from this area exposed in a bikini. I have this feeling most straight men don’t know this, and yet I can very comfortably admit that it is not your fault.

Right now, as I am writing this, I am 24 years old, familiar enough with the trials and tribulations of dating and yet it has felt like an eternity of grooming my body in such strict timely manners. The thing about female pubic hair specifically, is that it has been either taboo or praised on and off depending on varying factors from country to culture to period in history. It is a long and complex discourse but what’s not complex is our relationship to it from the mid-20th century to the present day in the West. (Maybe not France…) The pubic bush has simply disappeared strand by strand. A 2010 study of Playboy spreads from 1953 to 2007 shows how the amount of pubic hair seen on the models dwindled before disappearing completely; a trajectory that Martin Scorsese felt necessary to endorse in his 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street:

Jordan Belfort: They’re bald. They’re bald from the eyebrows down.

Max Belfort: Wow!

Jordan: Nothing. Not a stitch. It’s like lasers.

Max: Wow. New World. See, I was born too – too early.

Ah yes! We just love being exposed to conversations as such between men in the “movies”. But what makes a more powerful educational tool than commercial films? Eh, advertising.

The world of advertising presents a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s useful and certainly showcases products and services that the public needs. On the other, it’s a wily form of indoctrination in disguise. As subtly explored in the TV show Mad Men, protagonist Don Draper encounters early 60s hippies at sundry points who question his morality for curating a career in “lies”. I mean, what would the cosmetic industry be without female body hair? In 1915, Gillette released their first lady shaver product: Milady Décolleté Gillette. One advert emphasised the following:

“A gift that is new, unique, much up to date.                                                                  

  A beautiful addition to Milady’s toilet table –

 and one that solves an embarrassing personal problem.”

Ah yes! There’s that ambiguous shame again. But would this “personal” embarrassment extend to men? Would you say that, perhaps, the notion of “unhygienic” applies to men as well? No? Strange, I wonder what the science is behind that.

Albeit, when it comes to selling female body hair removers – everything you thought you knew about advertising just went down the drain. Erase your pitches, sack that guy, did he actually think we were going to show the hair? Sack him! But call him back when we need to advertise mascara again… As long as advertising for female hair removal products has been around it refuses to show the product’s function, i.e., to remove the hair. At the complex risk of exposing TV watchers at 2 o’clock in the afternoon to the “nauseating” image of a woman with leg hair, they just don’t. In its place, we get an airbrushed image before and after she shaves – shaves her hairless skin…Interesting.

In a 2014 ad by Veet to upsell their waxing products they did a series of ads with the slogans: “I only shaved yesterday” and “Don’t risk dudeness”. Each ad from this series platforms a variation of the same obstacle – a woman with visible leg or armpit hair is automatically metamorphosed into an even hairier man through the eyes of the exposed victim. Essentially, the ad relies solely on Shame and ridicule to upsell their product – because Shame sells. In a 2015 ad by Venus, it catchphrased that smooth, hairless skin was something that “All Goddesses are entitled to” – entitled to what? Oh yes, Shame.

Of course, it should be registered that there have been ads since 2018 that have featured hair – a real function of the product. The razor brand Billie made history in 2018 by showing body hair in their ads – but let’s be real, have you ever seen this ad? Brands that endeavour to present women as real people are viewed as independent, smaller and not serious. They’re always up against the “big 5”, the ones that exercise their financial power to take up all the advertising slots. The ones that want to continue selling Shame. I’d love to see how the economy would cope if we all collectively stopped buying these products.

But the thing is – we won’t stop. Call me a hypocrite for writing this article while I continue being a woman guided by the effects of incorrigible socialisation. Full transparency: I have tried letting go. I have tried entering public spaces with my bare legs and armpits unshaven. It’s not easy, in fact, it’s extremely difficult. Time and time again, I change my outfit last minute because I know that the second I walk out that front door I won’t be able to cope with the fact that my leg hair is peeping out from under my skirt. I am aware that this is different for every person. The difficulty of the task varies, but for the most part, I know very, very few women who are comfortable in their unshaven skin. To go out unshaven is to feel naked, stripped, Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones paraded through the low streets of Kings Landing while the public hurled rotten fruit and faeces at her yelling shame, shame, shame. Okay – maybe this is an extreme comparison…

But what I truly mean to demonstrate in this article is how women consistently feel pressured to treat their bodies like malleable objects that can somehow adapt to moving trends. We are given our bodies once; told they are beautiful the way they are and then punished for believing that. From thigh gaps to invisible waists to cup sizes to glute exercises to brow lifts and lip filler to “anti-ageing” skin lotions to life-long diets to expensive makeup and to swallowing two painkillers before paying the beautician to wrench the hair out of our skin the minute it dares to present itself. We make it appear effortless and seamless, not time-consuming, costly and mentally draining. Because you’ll never find love without these fabrications to guide you.

(Okay you will find love but you get my point)

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