Hair removal

Abstract

Though hair removal practices vary in meaning and symbolism throughout the world, hair removal for Euro‐American women often symbolizes powerlessness and women's lower social status. Studies find that over 90 percent of Euro‐American women routinely remove their body hair, while far fewer men routinely remove body hair. As a pervasive social norm in many Euro‐American cultures, women remove their body hair for many reasons: achieving femininity, feeling attractive, confirming to pressures, or emphasizing one's less‐than‐fully‐adult status. For men, hair removal carries less significance than other elements of body image such as penis size and muscularity, though men's hair removal is far more pervasive outside Euro‐American cultures (e.g., Muslim cultures).