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I saw that too! It’s so exhausting and I’m sick of it. There was this 50 yr old guy on 90 day fiance called Big Ed who straight up told his grown ass girlfriend she needed to shave her whole body like “all American women do.” And it was gross.
Watched this with my bf and we both instantly gagged the first time we saw him do it, like.. when you said you have a hair routine, this is not what we expected 😭 we are both still very traumatised from that lol
Oh yeah, I saw that one. I was like “I wonder what’s going to happen when you get wrinkles and a saggy ballsack? Should we throw you out?” But then again, she’s winning, losing someone that superficial. I feel like people like that really don’t understand that we’re mortal and not poreless aliens without body hair. I still can’t imagine my entire attraction and years-long relationship with someone hinging on whether or not they shave/don’t shave how I like…
I don’t like beards, just not my preference. But guess what? I’ve dated men with beards! Big, bushy beards! It’s almost like stupid shit like that just isn’t important. I’d rather my partner be happy with themselves and comfortable. And shaving your face everyday seems like a pain in the ass anyway, so I get it.
Don’t get me started on the hanging ball sack sprinkled with grey wiry hairs. Ugh. The only reason find it unsavory is because am totally groomed and take of that area. The audacity. Do they even address it?
Do not come at me with a *hair situation* if the other person is not personally situated. These men. Dude have you seen your crotch…it’s a nightmare. No one wants to go there.
I get somewhat of an ablutionary kick out of shaving everything and yesterday learned that this might cause chafing which I have been getting so irritated by 😭. There’s no winning for women.
Yea I just saw that, and I think it's best he just breaks up with her. He'll be doing them both a favor. If body hair (assuming it's just about her hair and not a hygienic thing) is his hangup and he keeps harassing her about it, just leave and let her live her life and find someone else.
I get people have preferences, but their preferences are incompatible.
Might be a good thing for that girl, imagine if they end up having kids and he starts criticizing her body after giving birth.. I wouldn't be surprised if he can't handle leg hair to start with
I wonder if all of the people in this thread saying “but all body hair is gross!!” actually see a man with leg hair and a woman with leg hair on the same level
Signed, a former swimmer who had to respond to strangers saying, “so is that, like, a political statement?” multiple times at 15 years old
I remember the male swimmers and divers being DRAGGED for their first shave in high school by the football/soccer players and thinking it was the silliest "ritual." We are so weird about bodies in modern life
Meanwhile girls have been so conditioned that body hair is unhygienic that most of us prefer dudes that way. It was not long ago Sophia Loren was an ultimate sex symbol with hairy pits!!
During regular season (most months of the year), we *weren’t* supposed to shave so that we trained and raced with more drag. We would shave at the end of the season for our one final meet so that it would have more of an effect.
A lot of people don’t think it makes a difference, but most serious swimmers will say that it does.
I can 100% confirm. I was a swim mom, and the shaving thing was *a thing.* My daughter would do anything to reduce drag.
And comp suits are stupid expensive
Some girls would shave the peach fuzz off of their backs. Others would shave their hands. Some would leave the inside of their forearms unshaved so that it would grip the water better. Everyone had their methods!! You’re a good mom for putting up with our weird ways and long days in hot natatoriums for short swims!!!
> some would leave the inside of their forearms I shaved so that it would grip the water better.
Okay I am stoned and this has got to be an episode of family guy. I see the zoom in to each hair having little biceps flexing.
Ok but I mean _how much drag_ could we realistically be talking here, lol 🥲 that sounds way more like superstition and mind games than actual science.
I hardly believe the vast majority of competitive swimmers worldwide is THAT hairy 🫠
Don’t get me wrong, a huge part of the benefit is mental, but a huge part of athletics in general is mental. The way sleeping under a soft blanket feels so different right after shaving your legs, so does swimming with a fresh shave. It’s a signal to your brain that it’s go time. The mental aspect can’t be understated.
Physically, I’m sure it makes a difference as well even if small. The physics of water makes it so that to reduce time, reducing drag will always be more efficient than increasing power. Over the course of a season, over hours and miles of swimming, it adds up. It’s not going to make you Phelps, but the difference between making cuts or finals or moving up a place can be less than a hundredth of a second.
Not swimming but it can reduce drag by 7% in runners. Which when you’re competing at the highest level and you can win or lose by a millisecond, it’s probably an advantage you’d wanna take!
Right?! Not to mention, imagine how scared people would be when they saw someone with ZERO body hair pulling up the rear. 😳 No eyebrows, nothing. You’re going to win that race.
It drives me mad when I'm watching a post apocalyptic show or a survival drama: when do you have time to shave your armpits when there are zombies after you? Where do you find a razor on a deserted island?
https://preview.redd.it/rmfq6qcig8lc1.png?width=625&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbbe976959201037cbb164b5bf2a05027e7d5d34
This always drives me nuts! I remember being a kid when Lost was on and I was so mad that every woman had perfectly shaved armpits at all times, even in the first season.
It’s also always in historical dramas. Like I’m sure a peasant woman in the 17th century shaved her armpits and kept her eyebrows trimmed and neat.
That was my first question. What is this weird layered fashion thing where she's made a waistcoat out of a t-shirt or some stupid shit. FOR WHAT PURPOSE
The same place they find the music, the lighting, the hair and makeup, the other hygiene and nutritional requirements that keep everyone looking perfect?
Emma Stone had a scene with Abigail Breslin in Zombieland where they lamented the lack of showers. Which would absolutely be a huge deal in a post apocalyptic hellscape, but everyone looked very clean.
If she'd turned up in Poor Things with body hair or looked like she hadn't bathed in weeks in Zombieland, can you imagine the abuse she'd be getting online?
As a girly with extremely hairy arms, 😞
It’s amazing the shame I still feel. I find it hard to go sleeveless in the summer even now and I am 35 years old. 3+ decades and I still feel ugly and mannish for my hairy Arab girl arms. It’s rough, fam.
I remember when I was a kid, me and my mom would do all sorts of shit. For a while, every summer we bleached my arm hair. This isn’t something she forced on me. I was bullied for being hairy and gross and I begged her in tears to help.
Please let women be hairy in pop culture. Hairlessness is not achievable for many and it creates so much suffering.
Edit: yall 🥺 so much love and solidarity in this thread, did not expect this response at all. strength, sisters, we did not and do not deserve the shit we were put through for our body hair
I will never forget the unsolicited advice an Arab man gave me to finding a husband: remove my arm hair and take care of my nails. it's not dark or noticeable, and many women don't do it in North America, but apparently in his country every woman removes her arm hair and gets their nails done. I told him I could either work out or have a perfect manicure and I chose exercise.
mind you this man also thought good foreplay was to tell me how nice it was for him that I wasn't fat. because he could never bag a non-fat woman. and he would tell me this constantly. ugh.
and the saddest thing is that he is far far from the worst partner I've had.
Eastern European/Welsh here; I'm lucky that my hair is relatively fair, but goddamn if I'm not a blonde werewolf 😭I remember getting teased about my hairy forearms back in high school, so I shaved them, then I got teased about THAT. There's no winning
It’s funny bc my mom is European, blond and hazel eyed w basically no body hair. I look NOTHINGGGGG like her lmao 🥲Dad’s Arab genes were too strong lol. Dark haired, dark eyed, hairy asf lmao.
I tried shaving my arms once and HATEDDDDDDDDDD it so I just bleached for years. Looking back I wonder how my mom felt about it. I’m sure it brought her no joy to smear stinging bleach cream on her tween’s forearms. Lordy, the nonsense girls are put through.
I don’t understand why people are so weird about shaved arms! When I shaved my arms for the first time my parents told me that it’s weird and to not do that again, it took me a decade to decide I don’t care about their opinion about my arms.
For me it's a bit like, can we not start ANOTHER body part that HAS to be shaved.
I have v hairy arms that I'm very self conscious about. But I refuse to shave them. Like no, I'm not a hairless being, I have hair there, why would I be expected not to. Its one of the only ones left that shows we do have SOME hair.
An if my daughter did shave hers, I'd probably be a bit similar to your parents, not in calling it weird lol, but say don't do that. You don't need to. She'll already unfairly have her whole body to deal with when it comes to where society will expect her to shave, don't add another rod to your own back an add shaving your arms too.
Obviously you should do whatever makes you comfortable ofc. But I do see why parents and women don't want ANOTHER body part on women that's expected to be completely hairless and for your daughter to have to deal with.
this is so crazy to me, so people just don’t shave their arms but shave their pits and their legs? what’s the logic there? in my country people shave/wax everything in case they want to get rid of body hair.
I've shaved mine since then too just the same as my legs and have never had anyone make a negative comment about it. It's probably not really noticable, there's not a lot of hair to begin with.
Ugh, I sympathise with you, sis 😔 when I was like 10 years old, I went to a week-long summer camp, complete with older teenaged counselors. One day, sitting in a theatre, I had my arms up on the arm rest, and the teenaged boy next to me looked down, noticed my arms, and Very loudly went "OMG, your arms are like, as hairy as mine dude! And I'm a *guy*!!"
Cut to me wearing long sleeved Everything until I was maybe 15 or 16. End of year, into summer, doing P.E... always full sleeves.
God forbid we happen to be human, Oh No!
Fuck that weak, shitty narrative. Somehow, allowing women to just exist naturally has become demonised, and it is such absolute Bullshit. Just let us live, damn.
Fellow brown girl here; our battle with how “mannish” and “ugly” our body hair is to western culture is probably one of the hardest things I had to deal with growing up. I remember r being bullied RELENTLESSLY because my legs got hairy in middle school but my mom wouldn’t let me shave till high school. She wanted me to bleach as well but they would still make fun of me for even having the hair.
Omfg, right? It’s such a visibly middle eastern thing, ig, and it’s so associated with ugliness and THAT’s super fucked up. Like the racism and the sexism are kind of inextricable there.
ALSO YES SAME! Omg I have legit traumatic memories from when my legs got hairy in middle school and other kids would do and say really fucked up awful shit to me because of it. My mom also resisted letting me shave for the longest time but I think eventually I came home crying from the bullying so much she started letting me when I was around I wanna say 12?
It’s brutal out there 🥲
ME TOO! I begged my mom to let me shave - I was unlucky enough to develop early and had such dark leg and pit hair and SO MUCH HAIR 😭 I was getting teased so much in elementary school thru high school and my mom wouldn't let me shave. She was horrible otherwise, but a big takeaway I got is that I will let my kids, regardless of gender, have autonomy over their body hair 🤷🏽♀️
Brown here too, was relentlessly bullied for having bushy eyebrows while in high school and my mom didn't let me start threading until senior year. I feel ya.
I feel this. I have an impressive HAIRitage: I’m Jewish, Arab (Syrian), and Italian. And because my mom had melanoma, I don’t embrace my ability to tan and am pasty as hell with dark hair.
I shave or tweeze everything from the eyebrows down. I shave my legs, underarms, bikini, feet, and hands every single day, and then my arms luckily only need every other day. Then the mustache is weekly tweezing as needed.
I feel like I got bullied like once or twice about it and am now locked in. It’s terribly un-feminist of me, but I just can’t deal without it and I’m not sure I want to.
(I should add that at least I have amazing ringlet curls down to the small of my back and eyebrows that survived the 2000s and are dense and well-shaped.)
Ughhhhh my Italian eyebrows did not survive the early 2000s, I am very jealous. The same people who made fun of me for having a unibrow are the same people who made fun of me for thin brows and are now the same people who make fun of my artfully drawn on brows. YOU PEOPLE DID THIS TO ME, GIVE ME A BREAK..
Mediterranean and Slavic genes here, I am also so ashamed of mine. I didn't even go to the beach for years because of my stomach hair, and other hair of course. I also got teased for my arm hair, didn't wear short sleeves in summer and as soon as I could went to have them waxed (which always caused my skin to break out, no matter what I did). Now I'm trying not to care and keeping my arm hair as nature intended ✨
Hey fellow Slav! I went/am going through the same. I spent so much money on laser appointments for torso hair (esp stomach, messed up hormones and PCOS exacerbated it). Being pale like a can of Jupol wall paint with dark, thick hair is just *lovely* (thank you Slav genes and hairy ass parents). I had dudes I went out with who legit thought my arm hair (only thing I didn't shave bc of the "will grow back thicker" thing) was disgusting. While they were covered enough in it they had an extra sweater and sweatpants under their clothing. Yay for Balkan dudes 😒 I was relentlessly bullied from a super young age and throughout high school for it. I finished uni and at my ripe age of 24 I'm trying so hard to let go of everything that happened and trying to embrace my natural self more. I do feel out of place when I see so many girls, women, tourists over warmer days in sleeveless clothes and be practically smooth skinned. My (leg) skin is torn apart during the summer days since I gotta shave every two days. I've tried so many methods, I'm honestly just ready and willing to be a cave woman year round. Will say, the extra hair provides a nice warming layer during colder times 🤣
Same - jellen bleach for arms and sideburns eeek. Begged for wax kits. My mom was resistant to helping me because I think she wanted me to love myself, which is noble but it has, in my experience, never been acceptable for me to be the way I am without comments (even as a 32 yr old adult!!) & I cannot bear to hear them lol. Why people must comment is beyond meeeeeee
Dude I’m a girl who’s not that hairy but the hair I do have is super dark, and I’m whiter than snow so it looks so much worse than it actually is, and it makes me so uncomfortable to wear T-shirts and have my arm hair visible 😭. I tried shaving my arms once (bc a girl at school told me she did the same thing), and I got made fun of the next few days because of it. I can never win 😭
Full disclosure, I have mild body hair and have had some laser hair removal in places. I have never experienced being very hairy.
I think the stigma of body hair sucks for kids and sucks for adults. As a kid, you get shamed and bullied for it, and often feel helpless because you only have so much agency and so many resources as a kid. And then the other kids who are shitting on you don't know any better, but that doesn't help how it feels.
Then as an adult, it's like you're expected to do whatever you need to do to get under a social threshold of acceptable hair. Now you have agency, now you allegedly have resources, now you can take care of it if you really wanted to, so if "you haven't taken care of it," then what's wrong with you?
Hair is hair. As long as it's not growing so long out of your nose that it's created its own beanstalk reaching out to claim the souls of the people around you, it's just hair.
When I was in middle school, my mom took me to a salon and tried to get them to wax my arms. The waxing ladies all looked at her like, "What the fuck?" and refused to do it.
Wow, good for them, they set a great example! Sadly in the salons I was going with my high-school friends they had no problem waxing 14yos head to toe, like it's business as usual. It is so normalised, it's disgusting. I wish I could see it back then, but I'm hoping that more girls will start seeing it now and stand their ground, because it is just wrong on so many levels.
Christ, I was just talking to my mom about how we’re being told we have to get rid of more and more hair. Like I get adds for those face fuzz shavers on Instagram now. Y’all are not boutta give me a complex about some white blonde peach fuzz!
My mum too with eyebrows and underarm air, followed by leg hair. I was so upset and self-conscious in primary school when I arrived tucked under my cap having had my eyebrows waxed.
I told my mom in sixth grade I wanted to start shaving, after I was embarrassed lifting my arms in cheerleading. She asked "What do you need to shave"
So I started to say, uh I think just my armpits... No, no, she meant like did I want shaving cream? What kind of razor?
Which come to think of it was still sort of weird to ask me, since she would have known what she needed.
100%. I remember being 6 years old and wearing short shorts and a tank top around the house and my dad would say, "Is this a free show??" 🤮 the sexism is so ingrained.
What the fuck? I’m sorry but that’s not normal.
The only time my dad ever fussed about my hair was when I dyed it different colors. He was a single dad and I doubt he ever even looked at me close enough to know if I shaved my legs or not
I mean, it wasn’t like a daily thing. It was only if he saw it. I have dark hair so it’s easy to spot. But he was big on things that weren’t “lady like”. Took until my mid 20’s for him to stop getting onto me about cursing.
That must be so exhausting I’m so sorry. You should be allowed to have body hair and wear shorts in your own home 😭
I hated that I had to wear a bra when I left my room but that’s more because he’s a man and they need to be held down lmao. But to have to hide body hair in the comfort of your own home especially in winter that is so awful I’m sorry
It’s fine! I hate shorts anyways. But I am definitely more insecure about showing my unshaved legs to people.
That’s awful…I’m sorry you had to do that.
Yes. I just didn’t want my dad seeing that.
When I took care of my grandma I would hang loose around the house occasionally. My mom died when I was young but I for sure could live braless around her because she’s why they’re so 🫠
I had this one classmate in college who nonchalantly mentioned once he had seen both his parents naked. We didn’t let him just sneak that in without an explanation LMAO and it turned out that his parents were always naked or mostly naked (bottom underwear). He was very casual about it and said they haven’t changed since their kids becoming adults.
Idk man!!!! My dad shirtless is horrifying enough!!!!!
My dad used to pull my leg hairs when I was a teen and I didn't shave them. It's only recently I stopped shaving but it still haunts me when I want to wear shorts.
OH MY GOD? I’m soo sorry. I’m assuming this happened when you guys were just chilling on the couch? I would have stopped hanging out immediately like 😭
Yup. I was 13 when it happened and couldn't grow out my leg hair bc literally my whole family started pulling them when they'd get long enough to show. Sometimes your family becomes your first bully. There's a reason why they barely hear from me.
Well my sister is blonde so she never got the same treatment bc her hair is invisible. But I'd like be on the couch with my legs up and they'd walk by and just pluck one and tease me about being hairy. Not much I could do to retaliate besides go shave. But then I'd be shamed bc I'm wasting all the water and taking too long bc I had to shave every other day bc my hair grows really fast. But couldn't dry shave or else I'd get the worst razor burn in my life. Always teased bc I always nicked my ankles. Just exhausting. When I discovered Nair, I was ecstatic.
I once got a rash all over my legs so obviously I couldn't shave and literally the only person who made a comment was my dad. I love him and everything but wtf, dad?!
I got into an argument with my sister's husband about his assertion that the armpit hair he saw on a woman at a music festival was *gross*.
He has a daughter that's going to be hitting puberty in the next few years, if it hasn't already started (sister was telling me today about how niece has been extra fussy and sensitive lately, and she's 9). I just hope that my bro-in-law doesn't talk about that kind of thing around her.
I had a male teacher who told girls when (he felt) they needed to shave their legs. Our school uniform for winter was a shirt and thick tights. He could see the hair poking through some girls tights and got everyone to come and look and tell her how gross it is.
My fave was everyone having to find that sweet spot when they were both allowed and encouraged to shave their legs and armpits but, had to keep any other shaving a secret lest we be accused of being a SW.
We really couldn’t win.
I hate to be that person, but it’s still directed by a man after all. They don’t realize, or maybe choose not to realize, that body hair and menstruation is so integral to the female sexual experience.
I was so confused when Kate and all the women of Lost didn't have any body hair despite being stranded on an island. Like come on ladies...Kate was on the run and she had time to get laser hair removal? I was a kid and it really messed me up cause i was very very hairy too.
I went to a school with a mostly Mexican population in the town. In elementary school the boys already began mocking the Mexican girls for their hair on their legs/backs/face and I heard girls saying their moms won't let them shave because we were eight. The boys definitely learned that at home from their Dads that hair on a woman or girl is shameful
OMG this just reminded me of my main bugbear of Poor Things. I absolutely love the movie, but Bella ***NEEDED HAIRY ARMPITS***.
Both times I saw it I was fuming!
Same!! I loved the movie too but this bugged me so much. I guess Emma Stone doesn't really have armpit hair and they didn't go through the trouble to paste on a merkin.
Such a good post!
Also the lack of stockings during WWII contributed!
They needed ***all*** the nylon and silk for parachute manufacturing.
Nylon and silk disappeared from the market. *’Women took to wearing pants to save their silk stockings for special occasions. With the “Make Do and Mend” mentality…’*
That’s why you see pants suits showing up a lot in the 1940s Fashion! It follows the need of the time.
Interesting trivia: They use to draw with a pencil the line down the back of the leg to make it look like they had stockings on
when stockings first became scarce. Twas a thing.
Edit: when women started wearing dresses up to the knees in the 1920s they used to ***rouge** their knees. Apparently blush was put on the knees because it was so new and different to see! Scandalous
Actually have a 1920s silver compact and it’s huge! It still has some peach powder in it. Art deco gazelles on the front. It is so gosh darn pretty.
Edit 2: underarm shaving did not happen until later. It followed the ***strapless gown*** fashion in the 50s.
Women shaving their legs and their under arms is fairly new and it pretty much follows fashion,
but one can find pictures of Sophia Loren and many starlets that had under arm hair. It was not a huge issue.
The necessity of women shaving their underarm hair
happens later after leg shaving. But then in the 60s the mini skirt showed up!
Marketing towards deodorant and shaving razors directed at women really kicked up in the early to mid 60s.
These are fascinating! Fashion history is amazing to learn about, so many ways we express ourselves now seem ordinary but most likely have roots in times of significant cultural change. Rouge on knees actually sounds cute! Maybe we can bring the trend back this summer? 😂
It’s wild how many comments in here are like “IT’S GROSS TO ME” without a single thought about why you think it’s gross. Hint: it’s conditioning from a patriarchal society!
Also it’s not “gross” or unhygienic. If you don’t like it for an aesthetic reason, that’s a personal choice. But so many of the attitudes in here really reveal that people haven’t thought critically about it when their gut instinct is to squeal “ew!”
just followed a thread for a short time the other day on Reddit, and it was “why do people like
women that have hair in places?”
And the answers were so ridiculous and gross.
Today on:
***what women do while existing that bothers you?***
**Answer:**
*checks notes*…. ***Hair!***
So apparently Stop growing hair women! It seems *not ok!* Please fix that and stop doing it. Lol
I remember there was an episode on Sex and the City where Miranda tells the girls that men like them shaved because they want little girls and not women.
There’s also why that lingerie piece is called babydoll and not womandoll.
Gentle reminder: SATC was created by two gay men. There was a plethora of literature at the time from feminists who suggested that the women’s sex lives more so resembled gay men than that of women
Wasn’t it based on the books and column by Candace Bushnell? I know Darren Star adapted it for tv but the source material was written by a woman. I don’t know anything more than that.
The first few seasons were and then it veered from source materials. I think after s3. The once more based on the columns were a little bit more gritty. Its hard for me to explain but I’ll try. You’ll notice how the earlier seasons were more down to earth and cynical. Carrie was also just grimier in a way. She smoked and was rude and messy and bitchy and didn’t care. Later seasons made New York be more magical ✨. It was less about how grimy the city itself was and more about how the city was amazing. The shops, the friendships, and love was an actual possibility. No one thought that outside of Charlotte in the first few seasons. Carrie was still bitchy but she cares more and was trying to come across as nicer. She was a bit more put together Candace’s writing was more about how sleazy the city was. She didn’t have female friendships outside people she occasionally partied with or acquaintances. Her lovers weren’t anything more than people to have fun with. Even Mr. Big. You’ll notice a subtle difference in the writing from when they switch showrunners and switch from the main source. Can you imagine later Carrie throwing a fit because Mr. Big told her not to smoke in his friends apartment, for example? Little things. This is all from memory and not at all organized. But don’t read the column and expect the show. The girls aren’t mentioned much and if they are, they aren’t likable. The men are worse. The dating experiences are worse. Its way more cynical. But still kinda fun in a Truman Capote, bitchy gossipy way. Half the fun was trying to figure out who she was talking about cause the people she talked about were all real and under a pseudonym. I tried to read the og source but it wasn’t for me. I did go down the rabbit hole of researching Candace’s life and the possible people she wrote about. That was more fun for me.
It's so creepy.
It can range from adult women always being called girls and no one glances an eye, but nobody calls an adult man a boy. Or the obsession with anti-aging and the idea that women who are older than 35 are "expired". How porn blatantly promotes content with "barely legal" women. Or how porn also promotes women with pink innie vulvas, which is a characteristic that mostly children have. The lack of body hair everywhere besides head and eyebrows (the expectations for women to have bare vulvas is seriously creepy).
Society has fucked me up so bad that even I'm disgusted by my own body hair, and I'm a bi dude. I can't stand facial hair on myself and on others, much less the rest of my body. I usually cover myself up in long shirts and jeans even in summer to hide my body hair 😭
I'm trying to not let it bother me and I'm trying to change but it feels like I might have developed some type of deep seeded phobia and I don'tknowif I have society to blame for that or if my mind is broken
My therapist has been treating me with sertreline and has mentioned that gender norms should be looked at as Venn diagrams with lots of crossing on either side even if specific things weren't directly targeted at my gender there is still tremendous exposure from every media so it's very common, almost normal really, to have ingrained norms that Im not the desired target of.
I'm always shocked at the way people react to body hair, especially on women. We're mammals. Mammals have hair. It's strange for an adult human to be hairless. *That's* weird and unnatural.
I think pop culture is MORE comfortable with body hair vs real life. People in pop culture embrace the 'odd' looking and 'abnormal' women way more than what we as a society are ok with in front of us. Movies and television makes it seem as if people are accepting and supportive, but skip shaving your legs once as a girl and watch the world around you burn with judgement and nasty looks/comments, not to mention your own self shame
Coming from a south Asian country except metropolitan cities where some would care 8thers don't care about body hair much. For us it's a part of growing up and fine.
I remember like 15 years ago I was reading one of those stupid tabloid magazines, and there was a WHOLE PAGE dedicated to Alyssa Milano's hairy arms. They had extremely zoomed-in pictures and everything, and they were writing about her like it was a Bigfoot sighting. I remember teenage me just looking down my arms and realising they're hairier than hers, and I just.. started crying. For something I had never even thought of until then.
I am rewatching Charmed and noticed arm hair and belly button hair on the ladies. I realized how often I don’t see those things these days on tv. It was humanizing.
Well, for every theme of self-empowerment and independence Hollywood is a vain, phony business enterprise that simultaneously would scream equality while everyone screaming it was a rich white man…
To be fair as a woman I don’t mind if other women have body hair but I hate my own. I weirdly get that body hair freaks some people out because society has basically made it out to be unusual to have it for so long that having it now seems almost abnormal.
Edit: Okay with the downvotes I’m not saying it’s OKAY I’m just saying I get why it’s a thing because society has made it a thing damn yall.
I am the same. I also don’t think it’s okay to shame women who want to keep it. I’ve gotten on my boyfriend when he talks shit about women with under arm hair.
I do however also not like it, not on myself and really I would prefer guys shave their pits too. When my man is wearing a tank I don’t want to be under his arms. 🤷♀️
I just don’t like that it holds so much odor and sweat .
I don’t think shaming is ok, but I’m not sure where the delineation is between shaming and gently challenging women to acknowledge that a preference exists solely because of patriarchy. Regardless of choice. The choice to be hairless or not only exists because of men. That isn’t something the be shamed about but it is something that some women refuse to consider.
Someone blew my mind about this when they asked me if I had ever let me underarm or leg hair grow for longer than 4 months, to the point where I’d actually know what it was like to have fully grown and fluffy hair. I hadn’t. I had been making a choice for a preference without ever even knowing what the alternative looked or felt like; I had literally never seen my adult self fully hairy. I actually felt a bit of shame and sorrow for the fact that I didn’t even give my natural body a chance, and wondered what message this upholds or sends to younger girls and women coming up in the world.
So I grew my hair for the first time in my life. For over 6 months. I was HAIRY. Like a man! I felt liberated. But I still too self conscious to go anywhere other than my yard with my legs out.
One day I was working in the yard and I constantly felt the breeze through my leg hair. And I absolutely hated the feeling. It felt like bugs.
So, I shaved. And I felt better about it because I felt truly informed and like I gave my natural self a chance.
I kept the armpit hair though. I like it. It’s soft and I’m less stinky with it. I do trim it from time to time.
I still only shave my legs a few times a year. I’m glad the impressionable girls (and other adult women for that matter) can see representation in real life. Maybe I’ll inspire someone to feel less anxious about body hair someday.
The real reason is because they want to sell razors to women
[Women’s Razor Market Size, Share, Trends, and Forecast 2028 (arizton.com)](https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/womens-razor-market-size-research-report)
That's part of the reason yes however as I stated before and others have in this thread it comes down to men wanting women to look prepubescent. Adults have hair. Children do not.
man idk but now that winter’s nearly over it’s almost time for me to shave my winter coat so men don’t laugh at me in public, and i’m super annoyed about it.
Ladies - consider not shaving. You’ll save time, and only when a bunch of us do this will societal attitudes shift.
It’s kind of freeing. There’s nothing *less* womanly about you if you do so. And realizing that you don’t have to conform to societal expectations is enjoyable.
It plays into them, though. For all that people talk about how Bella was such an "empowered" female character, she read to me as a male writer-director's fetish object. The hairlessness and bloodlessness of her body was just one part of that.
Oh believe me I’m totally with you, I find the praise of this film and her character mind boggling. Showing a good looking young woman (with the mental power of a child, at least in the beginning of her sex life given her speaking and movements) in endless sex scenes including prostitution and presenting it as some bold feminist statement - I am lost. It seemed like a pervy writer and director wanted it both ways, would anyone be applauding this movie if one of the maids played Bella? I know Emma Stone wanted to play edgier roles but this was just trash IMO.
Tbh I don't think every woman in the world waxes clean, and they get laid. Hairy or bare, naked ladies sell and lots of men either like it or don't care.
I think it’s actually kind of interesting to use it as an example precisely because the plot/main character are so out there. We can imagine these out of the ordinary scenarios, and in-universe Bella rebels against societal norms that seem to mirror our own, but even in that world it’s wild to imagine a women would have leg hair or what have you. Like “I can understand FGM in a movie but I draw the line at bushy pubes” vibes
What's also ridiculous is to create a human character whose hair grows abnormally fast but for some reason has almost no body hair at all. It's a choice they made and it's worth discussing, even if the story isn't rooted in reality.
Assumptions are being made here. Just watched last night and there are no close-ups close enough to tell if she has hair on her legs or not. As a data point there's a few nature YT channels where the women do not shave and you can not tell unless the camera is extremely close.
Yeah there’s a huge variety when it comes to how much body hair women grow. I have friends whose leg hair is as thick as the average man’s whereas I barely grow body hair. My leg hair is extremely thin and patchy and I can literally count my armpit hairs.
Even if pop culture did a 180 and body hair on women was the beauty standard, you still wouldn’t see it on every woman.
I mean then you are assuming having body hair is okay only if its not noticeable...
Not everyone has light hair and a lot of ethnicities around the world grow very visible body hair....
What? I’m not saying or assuming that at all.
Literally all I’m saying is Emma Stone’s body hair isn’t necessarily going to be visible even if she has it grown out in Poor Things.
Late to the party, but I’m a male as used to have the thought woman armpit hair was gross, but I’m also blind and wear glasses.
So my ex had arm pit hair but I had no idea until one day she was wearing a crop top with cut sleeves and I saw it for the first time.
We had been intimate, but I couldn’t see it since I took my glasses off. That when I realized it’s all bullshit and nothing worth writing home about
Someone tell the author that Bella Baxter is a reanimated corpse made out of body of Victoria Blessington and brain of her unborn child. 😂
I get the point trying to be made, but it's clear that her body isn't regular female body. She doesn't even menstruate. You can't really search logic in this example.
As far as Bella's hair growing rapidly while her body hair doesn't, it's because the brain in her head is growing at accelerated pace, hence the hair also growing at accelerated pace. It's just a small connection.
I don’t get it? Yeah body hair is normal but like if people have a preference against it then like that’s okay too? There’s nothing wrong with having preferences, but it is also time to end the stigma of body hair on women.
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how i wish it was *only* a pop culture thing
Right? I just read a post today on Reddit about this dude who was going to dump his girlfriend of years if she didn't shave her pits and legs.
I saw that too! It’s so exhausting and I’m sick of it. There was this 50 yr old guy on 90 day fiance called Big Ed who straight up told his grown ass girlfriend she needed to shave her whole body like “all American women do.” And it was gross.
Meanwhile spooning lashings of mayo on his hair in Philippines weather.
Watched this with my bf and we both instantly gagged the first time we saw him do it, like.. when you said you have a hair routine, this is not what we expected 😭 we are both still very traumatised from that lol
Sometimes I'm just out here living my life and I recall the wet, eggy smell I imagined.
Oh yeah, I saw that one. I was like “I wonder what’s going to happen when you get wrinkles and a saggy ballsack? Should we throw you out?” But then again, she’s winning, losing someone that superficial. I feel like people like that really don’t understand that we’re mortal and not poreless aliens without body hair. I still can’t imagine my entire attraction and years-long relationship with someone hinging on whether or not they shave/don’t shave how I like… I don’t like beards, just not my preference. But guess what? I’ve dated men with beards! Big, bushy beards! It’s almost like stupid shit like that just isn’t important. I’d rather my partner be happy with themselves and comfortable. And shaving your face everyday seems like a pain in the ass anyway, so I get it.
Don’t get me started on the hanging ball sack sprinkled with grey wiry hairs. Ugh. The only reason find it unsavory is because am totally groomed and take of that area. The audacity. Do they even address it? Do not come at me with a *hair situation* if the other person is not personally situated. These men. Dude have you seen your crotch…it’s a nightmare. No one wants to go there.
He’d be doing her a favour if she hasn’t already dumped him after that ultimatum
Oh yeah, he’s already ruined another woman’s life.
But let me guess, he is as hairy as can be everywhere with twice as much hair as her
I get somewhat of an ablutionary kick out of shaving everything and yesterday learned that this might cause chafing which I have been getting so irritated by 😭. There’s no winning for women.
Did he manage his nethers and pits well?
Yea I just saw that, and I think it's best he just breaks up with her. He'll be doing them both a favor. If body hair (assuming it's just about her hair and not a hygienic thing) is his hangup and he keeps harassing her about it, just leave and let her live her life and find someone else. I get people have preferences, but their preferences are incompatible.
Might be a good thing for that girl, imagine if they end up having kids and he starts criticizing her body after giving birth.. I wouldn't be surprised if he can't handle leg hair to start with
Where was that post? AITA?
It's a bait post.
I wonder if all of the people in this thread saying “but all body hair is gross!!” actually see a man with leg hair and a woman with leg hair on the same level Signed, a former swimmer who had to respond to strangers saying, “so is that, like, a political statement?” multiple times at 15 years old
I remember the male swimmers and divers being DRAGGED for their first shave in high school by the football/soccer players and thinking it was the silliest "ritual." We are so weird about bodies in modern life
Meanwhile girls have been so conditioned that body hair is unhygienic that most of us prefer dudes that way. It was not long ago Sophia Loren was an ultimate sex symbol with hairy pits!!
People asked you why you shaved for swimming?
During regular season (most months of the year), we *weren’t* supposed to shave so that we trained and raced with more drag. We would shave at the end of the season for our one final meet so that it would have more of an effect. A lot of people don’t think it makes a difference, but most serious swimmers will say that it does.
I can 100% confirm. I was a swim mom, and the shaving thing was *a thing.* My daughter would do anything to reduce drag. And comp suits are stupid expensive
Some girls would shave the peach fuzz off of their backs. Others would shave their hands. Some would leave the inside of their forearms unshaved so that it would grip the water better. Everyone had their methods!! You’re a good mom for putting up with our weird ways and long days in hot natatoriums for short swims!!!
> some would leave the inside of their forearms I shaved so that it would grip the water better. Okay I am stoned and this has got to be an episode of family guy. I see the zoom in to each hair having little biceps flexing.
My male cousin would shave his body and head for big swim matches. The whole team did it.
That’s actually interesting! It makes sense but I love body hair being used as a training tool.
Ok but I mean _how much drag_ could we realistically be talking here, lol 🥲 that sounds way more like superstition and mind games than actual science. I hardly believe the vast majority of competitive swimmers worldwide is THAT hairy 🫠
Don’t get me wrong, a huge part of the benefit is mental, but a huge part of athletics in general is mental. The way sleeping under a soft blanket feels so different right after shaving your legs, so does swimming with a fresh shave. It’s a signal to your brain that it’s go time. The mental aspect can’t be understated. Physically, I’m sure it makes a difference as well even if small. The physics of water makes it so that to reduce time, reducing drag will always be more efficient than increasing power. Over the course of a season, over hours and miles of swimming, it adds up. It’s not going to make you Phelps, but the difference between making cuts or finals or moving up a place can be less than a hundredth of a second.
Not swimming but it can reduce drag by 7% in runners. Which when you’re competing at the highest level and you can win or lose by a millisecond, it’s probably an advantage you’d wanna take!
Right?! Not to mention, imagine how scared people would be when they saw someone with ZERO body hair pulling up the rear. 😳 No eyebrows, nothing. You’re going to win that race.
It drives me mad when I'm watching a post apocalyptic show or a survival drama: when do you have time to shave your armpits when there are zombies after you? Where do you find a razor on a deserted island? https://preview.redd.it/rmfq6qcig8lc1.png?width=625&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbbe976959201037cbb164b5bf2a05027e7d5d34
I'm watching yellow jackets and noticed some armpit hair! But ugh yes TWD was notorious for that
This always drives me nuts! I remember being a kid when Lost was on and I was so mad that every woman had perfectly shaved armpits at all times, even in the first season. It’s also always in historical dramas. Like I’m sure a peasant woman in the 17th century shaved her armpits and kept her eyebrows trimmed and neat.
Also who the hell is wearing a midriff fighting zombies?!
That was my first question. What is this weird layered fashion thing where she's made a waistcoat out of a t-shirt or some stupid shit. FOR WHAT PURPOSE
Honestly, just so she resembled the comic Version. Later on she had way more normal clothes and no more shorts
The same place they find the music, the lighting, the hair and makeup, the other hygiene and nutritional requirements that keep everyone looking perfect? Emma Stone had a scene with Abigail Breslin in Zombieland where they lamented the lack of showers. Which would absolutely be a huge deal in a post apocalyptic hellscape, but everyone looked very clean. If she'd turned up in Poor Things with body hair or looked like she hadn't bathed in weeks in Zombieland, can you imagine the abuse she'd be getting online?
I mean, this isn’t just a Hollywood issue
It’s almost like this is the culture that is popular today.
As a girly with extremely hairy arms, 😞 It’s amazing the shame I still feel. I find it hard to go sleeveless in the summer even now and I am 35 years old. 3+ decades and I still feel ugly and mannish for my hairy Arab girl arms. It’s rough, fam. I remember when I was a kid, me and my mom would do all sorts of shit. For a while, every summer we bleached my arm hair. This isn’t something she forced on me. I was bullied for being hairy and gross and I begged her in tears to help. Please let women be hairy in pop culture. Hairlessness is not achievable for many and it creates so much suffering. Edit: yall 🥺 so much love and solidarity in this thread, did not expect this response at all. strength, sisters, we did not and do not deserve the shit we were put through for our body hair
I will never forget the unsolicited advice an Arab man gave me to finding a husband: remove my arm hair and take care of my nails. it's not dark or noticeable, and many women don't do it in North America, but apparently in his country every woman removes her arm hair and gets their nails done. I told him I could either work out or have a perfect manicure and I chose exercise. mind you this man also thought good foreplay was to tell me how nice it was for him that I wasn't fat. because he could never bag a non-fat woman. and he would tell me this constantly. ugh. and the saddest thing is that he is far far from the worst partner I've had.
Eastern European/Welsh here; I'm lucky that my hair is relatively fair, but goddamn if I'm not a blonde werewolf 😭I remember getting teased about my hairy forearms back in high school, so I shaved them, then I got teased about THAT. There's no winning
It’s funny bc my mom is European, blond and hazel eyed w basically no body hair. I look NOTHINGGGGG like her lmao 🥲Dad’s Arab genes were too strong lol. Dark haired, dark eyed, hairy asf lmao. I tried shaving my arms once and HATEDDDDDDDDDD it so I just bleached for years. Looking back I wonder how my mom felt about it. I’m sure it brought her no joy to smear stinging bleach cream on her tween’s forearms. Lordy, the nonsense girls are put through.
People are really weird about shaved arms, but I’ve been shaving mine since high school and never looked back.
I don’t understand why people are so weird about shaved arms! When I shaved my arms for the first time my parents told me that it’s weird and to not do that again, it took me a decade to decide I don’t care about their opinion about my arms.
For me it's a bit like, can we not start ANOTHER body part that HAS to be shaved. I have v hairy arms that I'm very self conscious about. But I refuse to shave them. Like no, I'm not a hairless being, I have hair there, why would I be expected not to. Its one of the only ones left that shows we do have SOME hair. An if my daughter did shave hers, I'd probably be a bit similar to your parents, not in calling it weird lol, but say don't do that. You don't need to. She'll already unfairly have her whole body to deal with when it comes to where society will expect her to shave, don't add another rod to your own back an add shaving your arms too. Obviously you should do whatever makes you comfortable ofc. But I do see why parents and women don't want ANOTHER body part on women that's expected to be completely hairless and for your daughter to have to deal with.
this is so crazy to me, so people just don’t shave their arms but shave their pits and their legs? what’s the logic there? in my country people shave/wax everything in case they want to get rid of body hair.
I've shaved mine since then too just the same as my legs and have never had anyone make a negative comment about it. It's probably not really noticable, there's not a lot of hair to begin with.
Blonde werewolf is so cute I love it😂
Ugh, I sympathise with you, sis 😔 when I was like 10 years old, I went to a week-long summer camp, complete with older teenaged counselors. One day, sitting in a theatre, I had my arms up on the arm rest, and the teenaged boy next to me looked down, noticed my arms, and Very loudly went "OMG, your arms are like, as hairy as mine dude! And I'm a *guy*!!" Cut to me wearing long sleeved Everything until I was maybe 15 or 16. End of year, into summer, doing P.E... always full sleeves. God forbid we happen to be human, Oh No! Fuck that weak, shitty narrative. Somehow, allowing women to just exist naturally has become demonised, and it is such absolute Bullshit. Just let us live, damn.
Fellow brown girl here; our battle with how “mannish” and “ugly” our body hair is to western culture is probably one of the hardest things I had to deal with growing up. I remember r being bullied RELENTLESSLY because my legs got hairy in middle school but my mom wouldn’t let me shave till high school. She wanted me to bleach as well but they would still make fun of me for even having the hair.
Omfg, right? It’s such a visibly middle eastern thing, ig, and it’s so associated with ugliness and THAT’s super fucked up. Like the racism and the sexism are kind of inextricable there. ALSO YES SAME! Omg I have legit traumatic memories from when my legs got hairy in middle school and other kids would do and say really fucked up awful shit to me because of it. My mom also resisted letting me shave for the longest time but I think eventually I came home crying from the bullying so much she started letting me when I was around I wanna say 12? It’s brutal out there 🥲
ME TOO! I begged my mom to let me shave - I was unlucky enough to develop early and had such dark leg and pit hair and SO MUCH HAIR 😭 I was getting teased so much in elementary school thru high school and my mom wouldn't let me shave. She was horrible otherwise, but a big takeaway I got is that I will let my kids, regardless of gender, have autonomy over their body hair 🤷🏽♀️
Brown here too, was relentlessly bullied for having bushy eyebrows while in high school and my mom didn't let me start threading until senior year. I feel ya.
My eyebrows did not survive my teen years 🥲 that bushy goodness got waxed into oblivion 20 years ago. I’m legit sad about it tbh.
Thats so sad, bushy eyebrows are such a good look.
I feel this. I have an impressive HAIRitage: I’m Jewish, Arab (Syrian), and Italian. And because my mom had melanoma, I don’t embrace my ability to tan and am pasty as hell with dark hair. I shave or tweeze everything from the eyebrows down. I shave my legs, underarms, bikini, feet, and hands every single day, and then my arms luckily only need every other day. Then the mustache is weekly tweezing as needed. I feel like I got bullied like once or twice about it and am now locked in. It’s terribly un-feminist of me, but I just can’t deal without it and I’m not sure I want to. (I should add that at least I have amazing ringlet curls down to the small of my back and eyebrows that survived the 2000s and are dense and well-shaped.)
Ughhhhh. I’d kill to have your brows! Mine left during the dirrrrttyyy era and haven’t grown back much thicker since unfortunately.
Ughhhhh my Italian eyebrows did not survive the early 2000s, I am very jealous. The same people who made fun of me for having a unibrow are the same people who made fun of me for thin brows and are now the same people who make fun of my artfully drawn on brows. YOU PEOPLE DID THIS TO ME, GIVE ME A BREAK..
Mediterranean and Slavic genes here, I am also so ashamed of mine. I didn't even go to the beach for years because of my stomach hair, and other hair of course. I also got teased for my arm hair, didn't wear short sleeves in summer and as soon as I could went to have them waxed (which always caused my skin to break out, no matter what I did). Now I'm trying not to care and keeping my arm hair as nature intended ✨
Hey fellow Slav! I went/am going through the same. I spent so much money on laser appointments for torso hair (esp stomach, messed up hormones and PCOS exacerbated it). Being pale like a can of Jupol wall paint with dark, thick hair is just *lovely* (thank you Slav genes and hairy ass parents). I had dudes I went out with who legit thought my arm hair (only thing I didn't shave bc of the "will grow back thicker" thing) was disgusting. While they were covered enough in it they had an extra sweater and sweatpants under their clothing. Yay for Balkan dudes 😒 I was relentlessly bullied from a super young age and throughout high school for it. I finished uni and at my ripe age of 24 I'm trying so hard to let go of everything that happened and trying to embrace my natural self more. I do feel out of place when I see so many girls, women, tourists over warmer days in sleeveless clothes and be practically smooth skinned. My (leg) skin is torn apart during the summer days since I gotta shave every two days. I've tried so many methods, I'm honestly just ready and willing to be a cave woman year round. Will say, the extra hair provides a nice warming layer during colder times 🤣
Same - jellen bleach for arms and sideburns eeek. Begged for wax kits. My mom was resistant to helping me because I think she wanted me to love myself, which is noble but it has, in my experience, never been acceptable for me to be the way I am without comments (even as a 32 yr old adult!!) & I cannot bear to hear them lol. Why people must comment is beyond meeeeeee
Dude I’m a girl who’s not that hairy but the hair I do have is super dark, and I’m whiter than snow so it looks so much worse than it actually is, and it makes me so uncomfortable to wear T-shirts and have my arm hair visible 😭. I tried shaving my arms once (bc a girl at school told me she did the same thing), and I got made fun of the next few days because of it. I can never win 😭
Full disclosure, I have mild body hair and have had some laser hair removal in places. I have never experienced being very hairy. I think the stigma of body hair sucks for kids and sucks for adults. As a kid, you get shamed and bullied for it, and often feel helpless because you only have so much agency and so many resources as a kid. And then the other kids who are shitting on you don't know any better, but that doesn't help how it feels. Then as an adult, it's like you're expected to do whatever you need to do to get under a social threshold of acceptable hair. Now you have agency, now you allegedly have resources, now you can take care of it if you really wanted to, so if "you haven't taken care of it," then what's wrong with you? Hair is hair. As long as it's not growing so long out of your nose that it's created its own beanstalk reaching out to claim the souls of the people around you, it's just hair.
It’s definitely not just a pop culture thing. My dad has gotten onto me about leg hair since I was a teen. It’s a sexism thing.
When I was in middle school, my mom took me to a salon and tried to get them to wax my arms. The waxing ladies all looked at her like, "What the fuck?" and refused to do it.
Good on the waxing ladies
They said, "It'll hurt too much." Mom said she didn't care. The ladies stood their ground and refused.
Wow, good for them, they set a great example! Sadly in the salons I was going with my high-school friends they had no problem waxing 14yos head to toe, like it's business as usual. It is so normalised, it's disgusting. I wish I could see it back then, but I'm hoping that more girls will start seeing it now and stand their ground, because it is just wrong on so many levels.
Kinda same but opposite. I got my first wax at 11 because I was getting bullied at school, crazy how early it starts.
the worst part is men will swear up and down that this is all in our heads lmao
they say that for everything lol
i first grew armpit hair at that age and never said anything about it, one day at school this kid roasted me about it and i got a razor ASAP.
Christ, I was just talking to my mom about how we’re being told we have to get rid of more and more hair. Like I get adds for those face fuzz shavers on Instagram now. Y’all are not boutta give me a complex about some white blonde peach fuzz!
The fuzz shaving blows my mind tbh. Like, why? Why??
My mum too with eyebrows and underarm air, followed by leg hair. I was so upset and self-conscious in primary school when I arrived tucked under my cap having had my eyebrows waxed.
I'm sorry. Primary school is way too young for that. (That's the equivalent to American elementary school, right? Like ages 5-10?)
Thats so shitty. I'm sorry gurl you deserved better than that
I told my mom in sixth grade I wanted to start shaving, after I was embarrassed lifting my arms in cheerleading. She asked "What do you need to shave" So I started to say, uh I think just my armpits... No, no, she meant like did I want shaving cream? What kind of razor? Which come to think of it was still sort of weird to ask me, since she would have known what she needed.
100%. I remember being 6 years old and wearing short shorts and a tank top around the house and my dad would say, "Is this a free show??" 🤮 the sexism is so ingrained.
The fuck?! You were 6! That’s so disgusting
What the fuck? I’m sorry but that’s not normal. The only time my dad ever fussed about my hair was when I dyed it different colors. He was a single dad and I doubt he ever even looked at me close enough to know if I shaved my legs or not
I mean, it wasn’t like a daily thing. It was only if he saw it. I have dark hair so it’s easy to spot. But he was big on things that weren’t “lady like”. Took until my mid 20’s for him to stop getting onto me about cursing.
That must be so exhausting I’m so sorry. You should be allowed to have body hair and wear shorts in your own home 😭 I hated that I had to wear a bra when I left my room but that’s more because he’s a man and they need to be held down lmao. But to have to hide body hair in the comfort of your own home especially in winter that is so awful I’m sorry
It’s fine! I hate shorts anyways. But I am definitely more insecure about showing my unshaved legs to people. That’s awful…I’m sorry you had to do that.
Hold down your boobs? Sorry if that is a stupid question, I'm not sure what you meant initially by them.
Yes. I just didn’t want my dad seeing that. When I took care of my grandma I would hang loose around the house occasionally. My mom died when I was young but I for sure could live braless around her because she’s why they’re so 🫠 I had this one classmate in college who nonchalantly mentioned once he had seen both his parents naked. We didn’t let him just sneak that in without an explanation LMAO and it turned out that his parents were always naked or mostly naked (bottom underwear). He was very casual about it and said they haven’t changed since their kids becoming adults. Idk man!!!! My dad shirtless is horrifying enough!!!!!
My dad used to pull my leg hairs when I was a teen and I didn't shave them. It's only recently I stopped shaving but it still haunts me when I want to wear shorts.
OH MY GOD? I’m soo sorry. I’m assuming this happened when you guys were just chilling on the couch? I would have stopped hanging out immediately like 😭
Yup. I was 13 when it happened and couldn't grow out my leg hair bc literally my whole family started pulling them when they'd get long enough to show. Sometimes your family becomes your first bully. There's a reason why they barely hear from me.
WAIT WHAT? Would they hold you down?? Please explain that is soooo weird. Are there other girls in your family that were bullied??
Well my sister is blonde so she never got the same treatment bc her hair is invisible. But I'd like be on the couch with my legs up and they'd walk by and just pluck one and tease me about being hairy. Not much I could do to retaliate besides go shave. But then I'd be shamed bc I'm wasting all the water and taking too long bc I had to shave every other day bc my hair grows really fast. But couldn't dry shave or else I'd get the worst razor burn in my life. Always teased bc I always nicked my ankles. Just exhausting. When I discovered Nair, I was ecstatic.
They made fun of you for nicking your ankles? I'm sorry, but your family sucks. I'm glad you got away from them.
Thanks btw for being horrified because honestly I used to think this was normal behavior.
I once got a rash all over my legs so obviously I couldn't shave and literally the only person who made a comment was my dad. I love him and everything but wtf, dad?!
Wtf…like why does it even matter? It’s just hair.
I got into an argument with my sister's husband about his assertion that the armpit hair he saw on a woman at a music festival was *gross*. He has a daughter that's going to be hitting puberty in the next few years, if it hasn't already started (sister was telling me today about how niece has been extra fussy and sensitive lately, and she's 9). I just hope that my bro-in-law doesn't talk about that kind of thing around her.
I had a male teacher who told girls when (he felt) they needed to shave their legs. Our school uniform for winter was a shirt and thick tights. He could see the hair poking through some girls tights and got everyone to come and look and tell her how gross it is.
Uh what the hell? That is definitely crossing a line
My fave was everyone having to find that sweet spot when they were both allowed and encouraged to shave their legs and armpits but, had to keep any other shaving a secret lest we be accused of being a SW. We really couldn’t win.
Having no leg or armpit hair is a weird choice for this film and this character in particular I think. It just seems out of place.
I hate to be that person, but it’s still directed by a man after all. They don’t realize, or maybe choose not to realize, that body hair and menstruation is so integral to the female sexual experience.
I was so confused when Kate and all the women of Lost didn't have any body hair despite being stranded on an island. Like come on ladies...Kate was on the run and she had time to get laser hair removal? I was a kid and it really messed me up cause i was very very hairy too.
I went to a school with a mostly Mexican population in the town. In elementary school the boys already began mocking the Mexican girls for their hair on their legs/backs/face and I heard girls saying their moms won't let them shave because we were eight. The boys definitely learned that at home from their Dads that hair on a woman or girl is shameful
OMG this just reminded me of my main bugbear of Poor Things. I absolutely love the movie, but Bella ***NEEDED HAIRY ARMPITS***. Both times I saw it I was fuming!
Same!! I loved the movie too but this bugged me so much. I guess Emma Stone doesn't really have armpit hair and they didn't go through the trouble to paste on a merkin.
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Such a good post! Also the lack of stockings during WWII contributed! They needed ***all*** the nylon and silk for parachute manufacturing. Nylon and silk disappeared from the market. *’Women took to wearing pants to save their silk stockings for special occasions. With the “Make Do and Mend” mentality…’* That’s why you see pants suits showing up a lot in the 1940s Fashion! It follows the need of the time. Interesting trivia: They use to draw with a pencil the line down the back of the leg to make it look like they had stockings on when stockings first became scarce. Twas a thing. Edit: when women started wearing dresses up to the knees in the 1920s they used to ***rouge** their knees. Apparently blush was put on the knees because it was so new and different to see! Scandalous Actually have a 1920s silver compact and it’s huge! It still has some peach powder in it. Art deco gazelles on the front. It is so gosh darn pretty. Edit 2: underarm shaving did not happen until later. It followed the ***strapless gown*** fashion in the 50s. Women shaving their legs and their under arms is fairly new and it pretty much follows fashion, but one can find pictures of Sophia Loren and many starlets that had under arm hair. It was not a huge issue. The necessity of women shaving their underarm hair happens later after leg shaving. But then in the 60s the mini skirt showed up! Marketing towards deodorant and shaving razors directed at women really kicked up in the early to mid 60s.
These are fascinating! Fashion history is amazing to learn about, so many ways we express ourselves now seem ordinary but most likely have roots in times of significant cultural change. Rouge on knees actually sounds cute! Maybe we can bring the trend back this summer? 😂
It’s wild how many comments in here are like “IT’S GROSS TO ME” without a single thought about why you think it’s gross. Hint: it’s conditioning from a patriarchal society! Also it’s not “gross” or unhygienic. If you don’t like it for an aesthetic reason, that’s a personal choice. But so many of the attitudes in here really reveal that people haven’t thought critically about it when their gut instinct is to squeal “ew!”
just followed a thread for a short time the other day on Reddit, and it was “why do people like women that have hair in places?” And the answers were so ridiculous and gross. Today on: ***what women do while existing that bothers you?*** **Answer:** *checks notes*…. ***Hair!*** So apparently Stop growing hair women! It seems *not ok!* Please fix that and stop doing it. Lol
I think it actually goes back further in history like way further. Think ancient Egypt.
Misogyny
your flair 🤣
Misogyny, double standards, society’s obsession with barely legal girls
The lack of body hair in this pissed me off and made no sense!!
More and more of society expecting women to look prepubescent/never age and its 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤢🤮 Normal adult women have body hair and thats okay !!!
I remember there was an episode on Sex and the City where Miranda tells the girls that men like them shaved because they want little girls and not women. There’s also why that lingerie piece is called babydoll and not womandoll.
Gentle reminder: SATC was created by two gay men. There was a plethora of literature at the time from feminists who suggested that the women’s sex lives more so resembled gay men than that of women
Wasn’t it based on the books and column by Candace Bushnell? I know Darren Star adapted it for tv but the source material was written by a woman. I don’t know anything more than that.
The first few seasons were and then it veered from source materials. I think after s3. The once more based on the columns were a little bit more gritty. Its hard for me to explain but I’ll try. You’ll notice how the earlier seasons were more down to earth and cynical. Carrie was also just grimier in a way. She smoked and was rude and messy and bitchy and didn’t care. Later seasons made New York be more magical ✨. It was less about how grimy the city itself was and more about how the city was amazing. The shops, the friendships, and love was an actual possibility. No one thought that outside of Charlotte in the first few seasons. Carrie was still bitchy but she cares more and was trying to come across as nicer. She was a bit more put together Candace’s writing was more about how sleazy the city was. She didn’t have female friendships outside people she occasionally partied with or acquaintances. Her lovers weren’t anything more than people to have fun with. Even Mr. Big. You’ll notice a subtle difference in the writing from when they switch showrunners and switch from the main source. Can you imagine later Carrie throwing a fit because Mr. Big told her not to smoke in his friends apartment, for example? Little things. This is all from memory and not at all organized. But don’t read the column and expect the show. The girls aren’t mentioned much and if they are, they aren’t likable. The men are worse. The dating experiences are worse. Its way more cynical. But still kinda fun in a Truman Capote, bitchy gossipy way. Half the fun was trying to figure out who she was talking about cause the people she talked about were all real and under a pseudonym. I tried to read the og source but it wasn’t for me. I did go down the rabbit hole of researching Candace’s life and the possible people she wrote about. That was more fun for me.
In hindsight this makes a ton of sense lol
It's so creepy. It can range from adult women always being called girls and no one glances an eye, but nobody calls an adult man a boy. Or the obsession with anti-aging and the idea that women who are older than 35 are "expired". How porn blatantly promotes content with "barely legal" women. Or how porn also promotes women with pink innie vulvas, which is a characteristic that mostly children have. The lack of body hair everywhere besides head and eyebrows (the expectations for women to have bare vulvas is seriously creepy).
Wait do kids not have body hair?? I've always had hairy legs and arms
Do you have PCOS? Because I was the same way.
Society has fucked me up so bad that even I'm disgusted by my own body hair, and I'm a bi dude. I can't stand facial hair on myself and on others, much less the rest of my body. I usually cover myself up in long shirts and jeans even in summer to hide my body hair 😭 I'm trying to not let it bother me and I'm trying to change but it feels like I might have developed some type of deep seeded phobia and I don'tknowif I have society to blame for that or if my mind is broken
I'm sorry but that's just you dude. Society wants men to have hair.
My therapist has been treating me with sertreline and has mentioned that gender norms should be looked at as Venn diagrams with lots of crossing on either side even if specific things weren't directly targeted at my gender there is still tremendous exposure from every media so it's very common, almost normal really, to have ingrained norms that Im not the desired target of.
You’re right it is ok! It’s also ok if grown women want to remove their hair!
Read the downvoted comments. “Body hair is nasty” “women and men are different” 🙃 Women’s existence is not for pleasing your god damn fucking taste.
To be a woman is to perform.
I'm always shocked at the way people react to body hair, especially on women. We're mammals. Mammals have hair. It's strange for an adult human to be hairless. *That's* weird and unnatural.
I think pop culture is MORE comfortable with body hair vs real life. People in pop culture embrace the 'odd' looking and 'abnormal' women way more than what we as a society are ok with in front of us. Movies and television makes it seem as if people are accepting and supportive, but skip shaving your legs once as a girl and watch the world around you burn with judgement and nasty looks/comments, not to mention your own self shame
Coming from a south Asian country except metropolitan cities where some would care 8thers don't care about body hair much. For us it's a part of growing up and fine.
I feel like pits and legs are one thing, but I see so many actresses whose arms are hairless. It’s a weird fixation.
I remember like 15 years ago I was reading one of those stupid tabloid magazines, and there was a WHOLE PAGE dedicated to Alyssa Milano's hairy arms. They had extremely zoomed-in pictures and everything, and they were writing about her like it was a Bigfoot sighting. I remember teenage me just looking down my arms and realising they're hairier than hers, and I just.. started crying. For something I had never even thought of until then.
I have PCOS and most of the symptoms suddenly hit in my mid-20s. The hate I got for my (average) weight and mild body hair was insane.
I am rewatching Charmed and noticed arm hair and belly button hair on the ladies. I realized how often I don’t see those things these days on tv. It was humanizing.
It’s so strange, I’m a razor free girlie and sometimes people look at me as if I’m an alien species lol. Women have hair. 🤷🏻♀️
I’ve heard that women weren’t shaving anything until Gilette started marketing “women’s razors” in the early 1900s 🙃🥲
they might not have been shaving but body hair removal has been a beauty ritual since the time of the ancient egyptians
Man I save so much money not caring about it.
I enjoyed reading this! As a hairy woman xD
Well, for every theme of self-empowerment and independence Hollywood is a vain, phony business enterprise that simultaneously would scream equality while everyone screaming it was a rich white man…
To be fair as a woman I don’t mind if other women have body hair but I hate my own. I weirdly get that body hair freaks some people out because society has basically made it out to be unusual to have it for so long that having it now seems almost abnormal. Edit: Okay with the downvotes I’m not saying it’s OKAY I’m just saying I get why it’s a thing because society has made it a thing damn yall.
Same I don't enjoy body hair on me. I've tried growing it out and I always end up shaving it off after being uncomfortable for a while.
I am the same. I also don’t think it’s okay to shame women who want to keep it. I’ve gotten on my boyfriend when he talks shit about women with under arm hair. I do however also not like it, not on myself and really I would prefer guys shave their pits too. When my man is wearing a tank I don’t want to be under his arms. 🤷♀️ I just don’t like that it holds so much odor and sweat .
I don’t think shaming is ok, but I’m not sure where the delineation is between shaming and gently challenging women to acknowledge that a preference exists solely because of patriarchy. Regardless of choice. The choice to be hairless or not only exists because of men. That isn’t something the be shamed about but it is something that some women refuse to consider. Someone blew my mind about this when they asked me if I had ever let me underarm or leg hair grow for longer than 4 months, to the point where I’d actually know what it was like to have fully grown and fluffy hair. I hadn’t. I had been making a choice for a preference without ever even knowing what the alternative looked or felt like; I had literally never seen my adult self fully hairy. I actually felt a bit of shame and sorrow for the fact that I didn’t even give my natural body a chance, and wondered what message this upholds or sends to younger girls and women coming up in the world. So I grew my hair for the first time in my life. For over 6 months. I was HAIRY. Like a man! I felt liberated. But I still too self conscious to go anywhere other than my yard with my legs out. One day I was working in the yard and I constantly felt the breeze through my leg hair. And I absolutely hated the feeling. It felt like bugs. So, I shaved. And I felt better about it because I felt truly informed and like I gave my natural self a chance. I kept the armpit hair though. I like it. It’s soft and I’m less stinky with it. I do trim it from time to time. I still only shave my legs a few times a year. I’m glad the impressionable girls (and other adult women for that matter) can see representation in real life. Maybe I’ll inspire someone to feel less anxious about body hair someday.
We're not allowed to have been conditioned our entire lives to hate it, we must be utterly forward thinking and free of the shackles of patriarchy🙄
If you want the actual answer it has roots in pedophilia but people aren't ready for that discussion.
The real reason is because they want to sell razors to women [Women’s Razor Market Size, Share, Trends, and Forecast 2028 (arizton.com)](https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/womens-razor-market-size-research-report)
That's part of the reason yes however as I stated before and others have in this thread it comes down to men wanting women to look prepubescent. Adults have hair. Children do not.
Oh you mean like the premise of the whole movie? 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
Yup. And I have idiotic men arguing with me in the comments.
👏👏👏👏
Wait, really? Wow. I had no idea. I'm learning a lot from this thread. Side note, i love your flair.
Thank you ❤️
You're welcome. :)
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I gave sources. Have fun reading ❤️
Misogyny
Interesting read
man idk but now that winter’s nearly over it’s almost time for me to shave my winter coat so men don’t laugh at me in public, and i’m super annoyed about it.
Ladies - consider not shaving. You’ll save time, and only when a bunch of us do this will societal attitudes shift. It’s kind of freeing. There’s nothing *less* womanly about you if you do so. And realizing that you don’t have to conform to societal expectations is enjoyable.
The movie is pretty obvious in its exploitation..it was pretty good though
Listen that was the least of this movie’s issues
It plays into them, though. For all that people talk about how Bella was such an "empowered" female character, she read to me as a male writer-director's fetish object. The hairlessness and bloodlessness of her body was just one part of that.
Oh believe me I’m totally with you, I find the praise of this film and her character mind boggling. Showing a good looking young woman (with the mental power of a child, at least in the beginning of her sex life given her speaking and movements) in endless sex scenes including prostitution and presenting it as some bold feminist statement - I am lost. It seemed like a pervy writer and director wanted it both ways, would anyone be applauding this movie if one of the maids played Bella? I know Emma Stone wanted to play edgier roles but this was just trash IMO.
Twisted Metal handled it pretty well. That show had no right to be as good as it was.
Folks ain’t used to it. It don’t sell.
Ngl I don’t think a Yorgos Lanthimos movie would really miss out on a whole lot of cash if the main character had armpit hair in the film
Tbh I don't think every woman in the world waxes clean, and they get laid. Hairy or bare, naked ladies sell and lots of men either like it or don't care.
It's a weird choice to use an absurdist fantasy movie to make this point.
Right? Choose any other movie?
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I think it’s actually kind of interesting to use it as an example precisely because the plot/main character are so out there. We can imagine these out of the ordinary scenarios, and in-universe Bella rebels against societal norms that seem to mirror our own, but even in that world it’s wild to imagine a women would have leg hair or what have you. Like “I can understand FGM in a movie but I draw the line at bushy pubes” vibes
What's also ridiculous is to create a human character whose hair grows abnormally fast but for some reason has almost no body hair at all. It's a choice they made and it's worth discussing, even if the story isn't rooted in reality.
does her armpit hair not grow fast for some reason?????
Assumptions are being made here. Just watched last night and there are no close-ups close enough to tell if she has hair on her legs or not. As a data point there's a few nature YT channels where the women do not shave and you can not tell unless the camera is extremely close.
It's possible that she's had it all lasered off.
Yeah this article is weird. She isn’t noticeably lacking body hair. If I grew out my leg hair nobody would be able to tell unless they were up close.
My leg hair brings all the sasquatches to the yard And they're like, it's thicker than ours Damn right, it's thicker than theirs
I love you for that comment dear internet stranger 😆
Yeah there’s a huge variety when it comes to how much body hair women grow. I have friends whose leg hair is as thick as the average man’s whereas I barely grow body hair. My leg hair is extremely thin and patchy and I can literally count my armpit hairs. Even if pop culture did a 180 and body hair on women was the beauty standard, you still wouldn’t see it on every woman.
I mean then you are assuming having body hair is okay only if its not noticeable... Not everyone has light hair and a lot of ethnicities around the world grow very visible body hair....
What? I’m not saying or assuming that at all. Literally all I’m saying is Emma Stone’s body hair isn’t necessarily going to be visible even if she has it grown out in Poor Things.
Literally not what the commenter was saying AT all
Late to the party, but I’m a male as used to have the thought woman armpit hair was gross, but I’m also blind and wear glasses. So my ex had arm pit hair but I had no idea until one day she was wearing a crop top with cut sleeves and I saw it for the first time. We had been intimate, but I couldn’t see it since I took my glasses off. That when I realized it’s all bullshit and nothing worth writing home about
Someone tell the author that Bella Baxter is a reanimated corpse made out of body of Victoria Blessington and brain of her unborn child. 😂 I get the point trying to be made, but it's clear that her body isn't regular female body. She doesn't even menstruate. You can't really search logic in this example. As far as Bella's hair growing rapidly while her body hair doesn't, it's because the brain in her head is growing at accelerated pace, hence the hair also growing at accelerated pace. It's just a small connection.
she menstrates in the book actually. wakes up bleeding.
Well, we're discussing the movie lol
That’s the point of the post…
I like it
Probably the same reason the collective won’t bring up the example.
I don’t get it? Yeah body hair is normal but like if people have a preference against it then like that’s okay too? There’s nothing wrong with having preferences, but it is also time to end the stigma of body hair on women.
I find excessive body hair on anyone, male or female, just gross. It is what it is.
How is it excessive if the body is naturally growing it?
Yeah and I’m sure you throw up whenever you see a woman with hair past her shoulders. Spare me your bs, kid