Body hair removal

Abstract

Body hair removal practices are slippery indicators of how we in contemporary Western societies consider acceptable gendered embodiments. On the surface hair removal seems trivial, but as soon as one scratches the surface, deeply held attitudes about gender, race and class emerge. Women who do not remove body hair from their legs, underarms, face, and, increasingly, pubis, are often considered unfeminine, unattractive, disagreeable, and accused of being “lesbians” or “feminists” and endure a variety of social punishments. On the other hand, while men who do remove body hair (the presence of body hair being a historical indicator of masculinity) are not ridiculed in the way women are for not removing hair, their practices do reflect ambivalence about changing masculinities. Moreover, women and men’s hair removal practices are constructed and help to construct existing matrices of racial and classed inequalities. As such, more research is needed in this field, and in particular on the roles of class and race.