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We have an array of amazing content from our writers! Check out our Twitter page and have a look at all of our posts below: 






Debra Gimlin: Academic Obituary Meredith Jones  10/04/2017
“You might not notice it … but I do”: Shame and Cosmetic Surgery Luna Dolezal  05/04/2017
Gendering Adderall: Weight Loss, Work, and Cat Marnell's Memoir Sophie A. Jones 30/03/2017
Somia R Bibi
13/03/2017
Naheed Hanif
28/02/2017
Kirsty Lee
13/02/2017
New Book Launch!

08/02/2017
Glen Jankowski
23/02/2017
 Dana Berkowitz
12/01/2017
Fiona MacCallum and Heather Widdows
19/12/2016
Sofia Persson
05/12/2016
Sofia Persson and Naheed Hanif
21/11/16
Larissa Pople and Gwyther Rees
07/11/2016
 Melanie Latham
02/11/2016
Sarah Grogan
24/10/2016
Heather Widdows
 05/10/2016 
Sharron Brown
26/09/2016
Louise Rondel
26/08/2016
Anna Westin
11/08/2016 



Dr Andrew Edgar
 02/08/2016 
Fiona MacCallum
03/06/2016 
Dr Carolyn Mair 
20/07/2016
Heather Widdows
13/07/2016
Fiona MacCallum
 09/06/2016 
Fiona MacCallum
01/07/2016

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"Ew, your legs are so hairy": #everydaylookism and the normalisation of the hairless body

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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 b...
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“You might not notice it … but I do”: Shame and Cosmetic Surgery

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Augmenting the Body: Disability, Care and the Posthuman is an interdisciplinary research project that explores practices of bodily augmentation, from caring robots to prosthetic limbs, across the fields of English, Engineering, Healthcare, Philosophy, and Robotics. The project, led by Professor Stuart Murray and funded by a Wellcome Trust Seed Award, involves collaborators from the University of Leeds, the University of Exeter, and Sheffield Robotics. In this post, one of the collaborators working on the project—Dr Luna Dolezal (University of Exeter)—offers a snapshot of her work on the relationship between bodily augmentation through cosmetic surgery and beauty demands. It is only very recently that elective cosmetic surgery has entered the mainstream as a routine and socially acceptable way to alter appearance. In the 1950s, for example, aesthetic plastic surgery was a largely marginal and unknown medical practice. Just a few decades later, it is a recognized medical spe...
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The pure erotics of Brazilian Waxing

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One of the questions I often get asked when I talk about my research is how much longer I think the trend for full pubic hair removal will last. I’m hesitant to give an exact expiry date if I’m honest. But I think this question opens up into broader discussions about what impact social, political and economic change has upon our bodily surfaces, and how embodied ideals of womanhood and femininity can both shift and remain constant over time. More revealing than any answer I might be able to give about the potential longevity of the Brazilian wax, is the asking of the question itself.  It demonstrates an understanding of pubic hairlessness as ‘current’, constructed, transitory, and it encourages conversation about where the norm has originated from, and why women in particular feel pressured to conform to it.  My Google Alerts notified me recently of an online survey examining men and women’s pubic hair grooming preferences, undertaken by Cosmopolitan.com , and suggesti...
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