Update 28 Sep 2023: To shave or not to shave
Women are embracing their power by refusing to remove body hair, turning it into a catalyst for revolution, activism, and social progress
Women around the world have expressed the benefits of not having to shave or wax during the pandemic. This task is often painful, expensive, uncomfortable, and time-consuming. However, societal pressures have led many women to believe that shaving is a choice they must make. In reality, these so-called choices have been influenced by decades of social expectations.
Although many women begin hair removal at a young age, only a few understand the origins and reasons behind this trend. Throughout history, body hair has played a significant role in shaping gender roles, delineating social classes, defining femininity, and exerting control over women through shame. However, these notions are now undergoing transformation.
This article, based on information from CNN, explores the origins of hair removal, its proliferation, and the challenges it faces today. It sheds light on how societal expectations have influenced women's grooming habits and the current movement towards questioning and challenging these norms.
Why women feel pressured to shave?
Type "When did women start..." into Google and one of the top autocomplete suggestions to pop up is, "When did women start shaving?" The answer goes back centuries. Hair removal -- or otherwise -- has long shaped gender dynamics, served as a signifier of class and defined notions of femininity and the "ideal body."
However, in its most recent evolution, body hair is being embraced by a growing number of young women who are turning a source of societal shame and turning it into a sign of personal strength. The rise of gender fluidity, the body-positivity movement and the beauty sector's growing inclusiveness have all contributed to the new wave of hirsuteness.
"It's been deeply stigmatized -- it still is -- and cast with shame," said Heather Widdows, professor of global ethics at the UK's University of Birmingham and author of "Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal," in a phone interview. "Its removal is one of the few aesthetic traditions that have gone from being a beauty routine to a hygienic one. "Today, most women feel like they have to shave. Like they have no other option. There's something deeply fraught about that -- though perceptions are slowly changing."
Hold your razor and go Au Naturale
We might not be used to seeing it, but armpit hair does have a purpose and many millennial women are down for letting it do its thing.
According to research agency Mintel, between 2013 and 2016, 18 per cent of women between the ages of 16 and 24 stopped removing their armpit hair and 7 per cent stopped shaving their legs.
And the proof is in the sales. Between 2015 and 2016, sales in the hair removal industry have dropped at least five per cent, The New York Times reports.
Preserve Your Aurat’s Honour
In the fight against domestic violence and gender inequality, Chinese feminists have opened up a new battlefront: Their armpits.
They ask, why should women have to shave their pits when men are never expected to? To subvert the double standard, feminist Xiao Meili, 25, started an armpit hair photo contest on Chinese social network Weibo.
Dozens of women have participated, including three of the five feminists briefly arrested in March over a protest for gender equality. The participants sent in selfies and glamor shots with their arms proudly raised, revealing natural hair underneath.
Nivea gets flak for stigmatising women with dark Armpits
Women’s rights group AWARE Singapore has slammed Nivea for its latest ad.
The three minute ad depicts the perils of a modern day woman who was caught in awkward social situations due to her dark underarms. The ad has been shared over 383 times since it was posted on 28 February on Facebook and caught the attention of AWARE yesterday following a number of consumers slamming the brand for the ad.
“Apparently having the ‘wrong’ colour of armpit makes you unfit to interact with other human beings. This is supposedly humour – but is promoting shame and insecurity about our bodies a laughing matter?” said AWARE in its Facebook page.
When did women start wearing pants?
In some cultures, pants have been common garments worn by women for centuries or millennia. This was not the case in much of Western society. In the United States, women typically wore long skirts, with the exception of some women who wore pantslike garments to perform work or engage in sports. While there were some women who championed pants in the 19th century, pants as an acceptable everyday clothing option for women didn’t truly catch on until the mid-20th century.
The adoption of pants as a popular item of dress for women in Western society traces its roots to the mid-19th-century dress-reform movement. Although there were women of this time who were already wearing pantslike clothing if they were engaged in physical exercise or household work, the garments were typically worn out of the public eye. Most women usually wore long skirts that felt heavy, looked bulky, and limited their range of motion. Some women, embracing the concept of “rational dress,” wanted the option to wear pants in public. Some wanted it for purely practical reasons, such as for comfort and ease of movement. For others, the freedom to wear pants was tied to the women’s rights movement, a radical and controversial crusade at the time.
In the United States, Elizabeth Smith Miller designed an early version of pants like clothing for women around 1851. It consisted of a skirt extending below the knees and loose “Turkish” trousers that gathered at the ankles, and it was worn with a short jacket on top. Known as “bloomers,” this garment took its name from an early advocate of Miller’s design, Amelia Jenks Bloomer. Other early supporters of pants for women were physician and reformer Mary Edwards Walker and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Despite enjoying popularity in some circles, bloomers generated much controversy. Their everyday use faded away after a few years, and pants for women were again relegated to a limited range of activities, such as exercise or chores, or were worn in private.
