Gross, She Doesn't Shave: an exploration of female body hair throughout history

Ashamed, disgusted and ugly: it’s how a female from the ages of puberty to death should feel if they do not shave their body hair.  How could this be?  How could a natural occurrence within our bodies be viewed as something unnatural and taboo? 

  When I was 10 years old, I felt the pressure to shave.  I would see hairless women in TV, on magazines.  My dolls had perfect smooth skin.  My mother shaved, my grandmother shaved, my aunt shaved.  All of the women around me shaved and so I, too, felt that pressure to shave.  I remember feeling strange when I would look down at my hairy legs, or whenever I would lift up my arm.  I felt different and odd for something that was so very natural.  And so, at 10 years old, I began shaving. 

  

  Here in the United States, shaved women heavily outnumber unshaved women.  Is it vanity, our culture, the media?  What is it that makes a woman continuously shave?  And why do we feel grossed out when we see a woman’s body hair? 

  Female body hair removal dates back to Medieval Europe!  A male author of a feminine “recipe” book from the 1500s instructs women to rub boiling arsenic water on their hairy areas.  He then instructs the ladies to follow up with cold water so that “the flesh doesn’t come off.”  Lovely. 

  Body hair on women, but not men, evokes disgust and the removal of such hair has become the everyday norm.  World history, documented by art, shows the absence of hair on the female body.  It is not clear if shaved women posed for these portraits or if man simply objectified the female form and painted what he imagined.  But when we observe art throughout the ages, nude men proudly displayed their body hair, while women had none at all.  Male body hair looks to be celebrated within certain portraits. 

  The only artist that I can recall from history who addressed female body hair within his paintings is Gustav Courbet.  He has multiple paintings of females proudly displaying their body hair, so much so that their body hair almost becomes the focal point of the entire piece.  Gustav Courbet led the realist movement within the art scene of 1800s France.  Gustav’s “erotic” paintings that portrayed real and natural women were exiled and would not be seen by the public until the 80s!  The body hair that was displayed in his paintings elicited disgust from viewers.  The paintings were viewed as crude, sexual and dirty.  Courbet established a group for himself and other artists that promoted the expansion of free and uncensored art. 

  If we go even further back in time, to 3000 B.C., societies in Egypt and India were developing copper razors and exfoliating crèmes for the hair removal of both sexes.  What could have possibly been the motivating factor behind this movement? 

  It is said that ancient Egyptian priests (much like our media today) thought that body hair was shameful and unclean.  These priests thought that their sophisticated society needed to be separated from the animals and barbarians in the world.  They equated their own body hair to the hair of wild animals and beasts.  They also believed that one would be more susceptible to diseased if they were hairy.  To be hairy in ancient Egypt meant that you were dirty, neglected your hygiene and were no better than an animal.  Sound familiar?

  Female body hair seems to be viewed as dirty/disgusting throughout history to modern day.  But it is more normal and far more acceptable to see a man with a wild and untamed beard than it is to see a woman with body hair.  Why?

  If you are a woman and you shave, I want you to think about why it is that you shave.  Is it a personal preference?  Does hair make you feel uncomfortable?  Is it to appease your significant other?  Do you feel pressured to shave?

  If you are a woman and you shave, I want you to try to go without shaving for as long as you can.  Record your thoughts, how you feel about growing out natural hair.  Would you feel dirty?  Would you feel free?  Would you feel uncomfortable?  I believe we owe it to ourselves as women to experience our bodies how they naturally are and to not feel ashamed.  If you shave for whatever reason, that is your decision.  But when you let yourself feel ashamed of your au naturel, that is when you inhibit your own happiness.