Sunday, August 20, 2006

bodytalk.....

I have been thinking about my body and that of others quite a lot recently, hence my post about "how to look good naked" and an earlier one about whether to de-hair my armpits for my sister's wedding.

I also found this site recently about the real bodies of women after childbirth - the shape of a mother.

It prompted me to take a picture of my own body, complete with it's hair. I thought for a long time before posting one, but I dared, so here is one of my armpits.


I find it quite ugly, yet if this was a man's body, I wouldn't give it a second thought and that is a real challenge. I also struggle to see it the same way I do facial hair, I react postively to moustaches on women in general.

I have done a web search to find blogs or articles about women's body hair. Many that come up are links to advice about removing "unwanted excess" hair. The majority are porn sites for hairy women. That is unsuprising but depressing - if so many people find hairy women attractive and sexy, why is it so taboo?

Polly Vernon in the Observer in January this year stated that "depilatory demands have risen in step with women's position in society. This reminds me of a post I wrote about the link between "beauty" work and women's empowerment.

She reminisces about her own experiences of hair removal as a child. My experience is similar. I started with my eyebrows y mother plucked them for me at first, and progressed to my full leg including toes!

Polly also comments that the "UK hair-removal market is worth £280 million a year, and is growing staggeringly fast" - which will partly explain why we are expected to do it, and it will increase as hair will always grow back!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Loved the shape of a mother site. Such a wonderful discovery.

Anonymous said...

Lovely photo of a hairy britney!

http://static.flickr.com/2/2416054_a1fc2cc887.jpg

Anonymous said...

Prompted by your article I have been doing some reading on when shaving became the norm.

Why Women Shave Their Underarms Today.
It all began with the May,1915 edition of Harper’s Bazaar magazine that featured a model sporting the latest fashion. She wore a sleeveless evening gown that exposed, for the first time in fashion, her bare shoulders, and her (shaved) armpits. Shocking at first, this soon caught on. At the same time a marketing executive with the Wilkinson Sword Company, which made razor blades for men, designed a campaign to convince women that underarm hair was unfeminine. By 1917 the sales of razor blades doubled as women conformed to this feminine stereotype of shaving under their arms. This trend continues to this day in much of the western world.

Anonymous said...

Photo of the 1915 advertising campaign which started it all.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6708/3258/1600/may1915harpers.jpg

yclepta said...

Thanks anon - I will post it - it's very interesting to see where it all started.....