"Ew, your legs are so hairy": #everydaylookism and the normalisation of the hairless body
The changing norms of body hair removal are dramatic and illustrative. I
have written previously about the rise in body hair removal as the ‘canary in the
mine’. We now remove nearly all body and facial hair.
A survey of 7580 US
residents aged between 18 and 65 found that “74% reported grooming their pubic
hair, 66% of men and 84% of women” (Osterberg,
Gaither, Awad, Truesdale, Allen, Sutclifee & Breyer, 2016, p.162). A generation ago this didn’t happen; few women
removed pubic hair and there was a time in 60s and 70s when underarm hair could
be considered sexy. (Although there are arguments about how extensive the
acceptance of body hair really was. Some think it was limited to the fairly
small, fairly affluent, hippy culture.) The change from then to now is dramatic.
As Rebecca Herzig argues “within a single generation, female pubic hair had
been rendered superfluous” (2015, p.137).
It’s not just body hair we are
obsessively removing, facial hair has also become a source of shame and disgust.
It is incompatible with the smooth, flawless, luminous, radiant skin tone we
aspire to. Note that these adjectives are more applicable to metal or
sculpture than to flesh. Flesh is tactile, leaky, squeaky, bumpy and
smelly. It is eminently touchable, but it is not firm, hard and uniform. Yet the
skin we aspire to is. It is skin without spots, blemishes, large pores,
wrinkles, veins, lumps, and bumps. This kind of smoothness is not human. It is
the smoothness of cartoons or the smoothness of dolls. The trend towards
seeking to approximate this inhuman face is shown clearly in the emergence of
the subset of people trying to be human dolls.
Most of us don’t want to go this
far. This type of body modification still looks extreme. But it is one end of
the spectrum; all of us are seeking to be smoother, to erase our wrinkles and
reduce our large pores. Large pores are interesting. Another new ‘flaw’. To see
pores as a flaw is the product of the technical gaze, not a human gaze. The
smoothness we are seeking is influenced by HD TV and selfie culture. We see our
skin as if through a microscope, every flaw is magnified. The smoothness we are
seeking is technical-smooth not human-smooth. No one is as smooth and perfect
as their Instagram suggests. So while we might not all want to look like dolls (with
perfectly smooth, frozen and plastic faces), we are doing more to be smooth. We
are using more lotions and potions, wearing more face masks with more
‘super-ingredients’ and seemingly magical powers (whether ‘natural’ or ‘high tech’),
injecting more chemicals to freeze and fill our faces, and engaging in ever
more plastic surgery. We worry about the ‘extreme’ end, but the routine end can
be even more demanding.
The demands of a smooth hair free
body are extensive. This is big business and the body hair removal devices market was valued at “USD 1.2 billion in 2017” and is set to “reach USD 3.4 billion by 2025”. Bodies grow hair. They do. But
despite this, the hairless body is regarded the normal or natural body. It is the hairy body which is
disgusting and unnatural. 72% of US adults think women “should remove hair from
their face” (78% men, 67% women) (YouGov, 2017) and 65% of GB men and 35% of GB women
think women “should ideally remove all” of their facial hair (YouGov, 2016).
Many forms of hair removal – think waxing or
electrolysis – are painful. Hair removal is also time consuming. On average,
women with facial hair spend 104 minutes a week managing it (Lipton, Sherr, Elford, Rustin and
Clayton, 2006). Hair
removal is required. Not regarded as a beauty practice but as a health or
hygiene practice. Being hairy is a source of shame as very many of the
#everydaylookism stories show:
And this type
of body shaming starts young:
For those of
you who don’t think this is important – "it’s just comments on appearance”, “it’s
trivial”, “it’s normal”, “it’s just a joke”, “brush it off”, “it’s just banter”
– it isn’t. It is deeply hurtful, and it stays with you. Shown clearly by these
stories:
These #everydaylookism stories show just
how extensive the shame of body hair is. This kind of shame cuts deep. It is
shame of the self. In an age where our bodies are ourselves, we need to push
back on body shaming culture. Shame is debilitating, destructive and wholly
unproductive. #everydaylookism seeks to call out body shaming. To reduce the
pressure and change the culture. We need to make it unacceptable to make
negative comments about people’s appearance – including their body and facial
hair. Such comments induce shame. They are cruel. Stopping body shaming won’t
mean we don’t worry about our body hair, we will still feel internal pressure.
But if we can’t be called out, can’t be publically shamed, the fear will
decrease. If we do this together we can gradually create a kinder and less
demanding body culture.
Every story shared with the
#everydaylookism story is one drop in the ocean, one person’s experience, but
together they are powerful. They show just how devastating body shaming is. We
don’t put up with other negative comments, we should not put up with negative
comments about our bodies. Share your story anonymously with us at everydaylookism.bham.ac.uk and share the campaign. Let’s end
lookism.
Heather
Widdows, Author of Perfect Me and
Professor in Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham
Jessica
Sutherland, Research Assistant and Global Ethics PhD student at the University
of Birmingham
Bibliography
Herzig, R. M. Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. New York and
London: New York University Press, 2015.
Lipton,
M. G, Sherr, L., Elford, J., Rustin, M. H. A. & Clayton, W. J. 2006. Women
Living with Facial Hair: The Psychological and Behavioral Burden. Journal of
Psychosomatic Research, 61(2), pp. 161-168.
Osterberg, E. C., Gaither, T. W., Awad, M. A., Truesdale, M. D., Allen, I., Sutcliffe, S. & Breyer, B. N. 2016. Correlation Between Pubic Hair Grooming and STIs: Results from a Nationally Representative Probability Sample. Sexually Transmitted Infections, 93(3), pp. 162-166.
Osterberg, E. C., Gaither, T. W., Awad, M. A., Truesdale, M. D., Allen, I., Sutcliffe, S. & Breyer, B. N. 2016. Correlation Between Pubic Hair Grooming and STIs: Results from a Nationally Representative Probability Sample. Sexually Transmitted Infections, 93(3), pp. 162-166.
Great post! Shocking how young some of the everydaylookism comments were recieved at. Even just the labour of weekly or more frequently shaving legs adds up - what a burden. When I think of facial hair transplants it does feel like body hair is the latest area of appearance that is so laughably/depressingly being 'mined for profits' (Orbach 2016). Especially found this useful in your post: that body hair expectations come from a "technical gaze, not a human gaze". Reminds me of Susan Bordo's wise words: "This is perceptual pedagogy, How to Interpret Your Body 101. These images areteaching us how to see. Filtered, smoothed, polished, softened, rearranged. Andpassing. Digital creations, visual cyborgs, teaching us what to expect from flesh andblood. Training our perception in what’s a defect and what’s normal. (Bordo, 2003,p. xviii)"
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