Finally, the sun has decided to come back to Delft. Most of the guys have been looking forward to this for some time now; warmer weather means shorter skirts, and shorter skirts means..
.well it means women have to start shaving again, for one thing. A friend of mine has been carefully growing her body hair since January first. She’s quite proud of the healthy crop, now fully grown out, not to mention the money she’s saved on razors. But now, with the return of sleeveless shirts and the retreat of wool leggings, she’s begun to doubt the aesthetics of this lovingly cultivated forest of soft dark hairs.
Springing from her armpits, running down her legs in a downy fuzz that reminds one of high school gym class, her body hair doesn’t look bad. It’s just…so unexpected!
But then again, should she bow to the bullwhips of beauty standards? Women are expected to be almost completely bald — everywhere except for the tops of their heads, of course. And if, in a moment of frenzied liberation, a woman decides to shave that, then even today she is subject to furtive glances and the annoying repetition of the question, ‘but why?’
Historically, the removal of hair has been used as punishment (several women might mutter that it still is). In France, after WW II, women who were suspected of collaborating with Nazis had their heads shaved to intensify their humiliation. Hippies in the 1960s occasionally had to suffer the abusive shavings of angry conservatives. But the removal of hair isn’t always understood as punishment: in 19th century art, totally hairless female nudes with luxuriant tresses were painted as a popular theme, if not an implied ideal. Today, we can thank porn stars and Hollywood for our apparent aversion to ladies ‘au natural‘.
When men go out of their way to wax or depilate their bodies, we call it ‘manscaping’ and chuckle about it. Oh of course we wave it off and deem it a requirement of the sport if the guy is a serious cyclist or swimmer. And we may, actually, be thankful to those heavily-furred types that have their backs waxed while holding their girlfriend’s hand in an act of sweet martyrdom. But for the most part women profess to love that wild tangle of male chest hair, or the thatches of unruly armpit hairs that show up in the thousands on every beach in Europe. Men can get away with bikinis and butt hair, for crying out loud! On the train, (where, admittedly, one has to sit uncomfortably close to various examples of manhood in all its glory) the subtle observer can spot hairs sprouting from the most incongruous places: noses, necks, even ears. And yet women are expected to somehow fight the war on hair and win daily.
Alright, and to be fair, it’s not just a woman’s burden. (Increasingly, the Brazilian wax is being termed the ‘Boyzilian’ — I’ll just leave that one up to your imaginations.) But yes, some men also suffer the demands of a society whose ideal of ‘glabrousness’ is a pain in the butt to achieve. Every razor commercial for men, besides gradually increasing the number of blades (is it five now, or six?) seems to imply that ‘hey, if you use our razor we can guarantee that you’ll get laid by a beautiful woman’. If only the world were so simple. Maybe it’s time to shift the beauty paradigm. After all, that extra five minutes in the shower is a helluva nuisance. Perhaps we should all meet at Scheveningen and toss our razors into the sea! Then we’d know the meaning of real beauty. Dove soap has these lovely new commercials purporting to embrace ‘Real Beauty’, because they use beautiful, healthy women in their underwear and forego the temptation to airbrush anything. Well, I’m waiting for the commercial with big hairy women lounging around in their underwear. Give me that one, baby!
I’m not saying that a bit of self-grooming is a bad thing, but there is a limit. If a woman decides to spend a summer striding along with unshaven legs, then ‘Right on, sister!’ is the only appropriate response. It takes guts to stick the proverbial middle finger up to culturally-motivated depilation. And if that sounds like a lot of big words, maybe it’s better put this way: you don’t have to shave to be pretty. If my friend starts shaving again just because some guys raise their eyebrows, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Dorothy Parker, MSc Architecture, is from the United States. Her next column will be published in Delta 28. She can be emailed at: onbezorgd@gmail.com
Finally, the sun has decided to come back to Delft. Most of the guys have been looking forward to this for some time now; warmer weather means shorter skirts, and shorter skirts means…well it means women have to start shaving again, for one thing. A friend of mine has been carefully growing her body hair since January first. She’s quite proud of the healthy crop, now fully grown out, not to mention the money she’s saved on razors. But now, with the return of sleeveless shirts and the retreat of wool leggings, she’s begun to doubt the aesthetics of this lovingly cultivated forest of soft dark hairs.
Springing from her armpits, running down her legs in a downy fuzz that reminds one of high school gym class, her body hair doesn’t look bad. It’s just…so unexpected!
But then again, should she bow to the bullwhips of beauty standards? Women are expected to be almost completely bald — everywhere except for the tops of their heads, of course. And if, in a moment of frenzied liberation, a woman decides to shave that, then even today she is subject to furtive glances and the annoying repetition of the question, ‘but why?’
Historically, the removal of hair has been used as punishment (several women might mutter that it still is). In France, after WW II, women who were suspected of collaborating with Nazis had their heads shaved to intensify their humiliation. Hippies in the 1960s occasionally had to suffer the abusive shavings of angry conservatives. But the removal of hair isn’t always understood as punishment: in 19th century art, totally hairless female nudes with luxuriant tresses were painted as a popular theme, if not an implied ideal. Today, we can thank porn stars and Hollywood for our apparent aversion to ladies ‘au natural‘.
When men go out of their way to wax or depilate their bodies, we call it ‘manscaping’ and chuckle about it. Oh of course we wave it off and deem it a requirement of the sport if the guy is a serious cyclist or swimmer. And we may, actually, be thankful to those heavily-furred types that have their backs waxed while holding their girlfriend’s hand in an act of sweet martyrdom. But for the most part women profess to love that wild tangle of male chest hair, or the thatches of unruly armpit hairs that show up in the thousands on every beach in Europe. Men can get away with bikinis and butt hair, for crying out loud! On the train, (where, admittedly, one has to sit uncomfortably close to various examples of manhood in all its glory) the subtle observer can spot hairs sprouting from the most incongruous places: noses, necks, even ears. And yet women are expected to somehow fight the war on hair and win daily.
Alright, and to be fair, it’s not just a woman’s burden. (Increasingly, the Brazilian wax is being termed the ‘Boyzilian’ — I’ll just leave that one up to your imaginations.) But yes, some men also suffer the demands of a society whose ideal of ‘glabrousness’ is a pain in the butt to achieve. Every razor commercial for men, besides gradually increasing the number of blades (is it five now, or six?) seems to imply that ‘hey, if you use our razor we can guarantee that you’ll get laid by a beautiful woman’. If only the world were so simple. Maybe it’s time to shift the beauty paradigm. After all, that extra five minutes in the shower is a helluva nuisance. Perhaps we should all meet at Scheveningen and toss our razors into the sea! Then we’d know the meaning of real beauty. Dove soap has these lovely new commercials purporting to embrace ‘Real Beauty’, because they use beautiful, healthy women in their underwear and forego the temptation to airbrush anything. Well, I’m waiting for the commercial with big hairy women lounging around in their underwear. Give me that one, baby!
I’m not saying that a bit of self-grooming is a bad thing, but there is a limit. If a woman decides to spend a summer striding along with unshaven legs, then ‘Right on, sister!’ is the only appropriate response. It takes guts to stick the proverbial middle finger up to culturally-motivated depilation. And if that sounds like a lot of big words, maybe it’s better put this way: you don’t have to shave to be pretty. If my friend starts shaving again just because some guys raise their eyebrows, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Dorothy Parker, MSc Architecture, is from the United States. Her next column will be published in Delta 28. She can be emailed at: onbezorgd@gmail.com
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