scarlet_blu

memoirs of a (sorta) ex-shaver
carolyn mackler

By the 1920s, both fashion and film had encouraged a massive “unveiling” of the female body, which meant that certain body parts—such as hair and legs—were bared and displayed in ways they had never been before. This new freedom to display the body was accompanied, however, by demanding beauty and dietary regimens that involved money as well as self-discipline. Beginning in the 1920s, women’s legs and underarms had to be smooth and free of body hair; the torso had to be svelte; and the breasts were supposed to be small and firm. What American women didn’t realize at the time was that their stunning new freedom actually implied the need for greater internal control of the body, an imperative that would intensify and become even more powerful by the end of the twentieth century.
--Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls

Were you aware of the historical tradeoff of women getting rid of one constraint (too much clothing) only to be shackled with a whole new set (de-hairing and dieting) when you started shaving? I sure wasn’t. All I knew was that the other girls in my junior high gym class suddenly had legs as smooth as an infant and I celebrated the birth of every new underarm hair by grabbing a pair of scissors and trimming it down. Feeling inexplicably weird about the soft blond peach fuzz coating my legs (that hadn’t warranted a nod until the winter of seventh grade), I pounded my mom with questions about shaving: “When could I? How do you? Could I get my own razor?”

“Wait,” she cautioned. “Shave once and you’ll have black stubble for the rest of your life.”

Heeding no warning, I crouched in the tub with a bottle of Johnson and Johnson’s baby oil and my dad’s old black Gillette. I was focused, driven. Though hell or greasy water, I would have smooth legs. This experimental style (which resulted in awful itching and didn’t work very well) was eventually eclipsed by more conventional methods: my own pastel disposable ten pack, a can of Barbosal shaving cream and, a few hours later, a smear of Nivea cream to ease chafing. When I shaved at night, I would lie in bed rejoicing in gloriously silky legs, feeling like a real woman.

Oh, I was quite the shaver. I indulged daily, careful not to omit a patch, not even down near my ankles. I bent my knees to scrape them clean and only rarely sliced off some skin in that difficult place in the front where the bone touches so close to the surface. I excised hair as someone would peel tar from the bottom of their feet after going barefoot on a summer road. An impressed family friend once joked she would hire me to shave her legs. The guys at school routinely swiped their hands across girls’ legs to patrol their shaving prowess and then taunt them if they were slacking off. If I were running late, I’d protect myself by faux shaving—just doing the strip between the bottom of my jeans and the top of my cotton socks.

And here I lived, in this world of plastic legs, where moms and daughters, teachers and coaches shaved without a bat of the eye. It was all any of us saw; every woman had smooth legs. It was hygienic, like brushing your teeth or clipping your toenails. I tremble to think of what would have happened if I, a vaguely insecure, overly tall sicteen-yeard-old, had paraded into homeroom one morning sporting furry legs and an ample bush under each arm. In a town of conformity (where the gossip of the school was that Marta dared to have “flat hair”—meaning no perm, no hairspray, no poofed bangs), this would have meant instant death by humiliation. I would have rather stuck my head in an over.

Desperately suffocated by this clone-ishness (but seeing no way out from within), I jetted off to college at eighteen, with aspirations of hobnobbing among the potpourri of people boasted on the promotional fliers. I imagined a borderless territory for etching out exactly who one was, in the absence of relentless peer police. Granted, things were different. The word was that the college years were a time to get all the nose rings, goatess, crimson hair and bottomed-out Birkenstocks out of your system, to quick-get-it-over-with and dabble in bisexuality and ménages a trios (or at least talk about it), because you’d probably never get another go. So the parameters of conformity had widened, but ultimately, people still navigated within the confines of what was cool and acceptable. And other than on those marginal take-no-shit women, leg and armpit hair was still uncool. Shaving was still the undisputed norm. And the guys were still on hand to check for stubble.

The summer after my sophomore year, something happened that rocked my closely shaven world forever. I took a month-long mountain trek, and with only enough space for essentials, no forecast of running water and no one to impress, I left my razor on the shower ledge at home. And for the first time since I had any hair to speak of, my leg and underarm hair began to grow. And grow. And grow. And the strangest thing was that I actually liked it. Not only did it feel good to be free of that constant bristle, it looked healthy and fuzzy and strong—somehow the way a woman’s leg should look, not all bizarre and unfamiliar, like I was this androgynous Bigfoot with hairy legs and pits. Understandably so: I had been around for two decades, and this was my first up-close peek at a woman with body hair! The second I re-emerged into civilization, I shaved away the evidence, but my perceptions had been altered. In other words, I had dipped my hand in the cookie jar, and I liked what I tasted.

In the midst of all this, I had been wading through months of dorm-room body-image rap sessions. It was becoming painfully clear that In our high-powered, image-focused environment, eating disorders ran rampant. To be young and white and female was to have “body issues”, as we tenderly referred to them. We all had been afflicted by the bug, in varying ways. We freaked out about our bodies. We paid homage to the Stairmaster and hated it. We opted for salad bar, no dressing, instead of cheesy dining-hall pizza. We gained the freshman fifteen and struggled to lose the sophomore twenty or thirty. Analyzing it ad nauseam was our way of reacting, fighting back and learning to overcome this pressure for physical perfection. Meanwhile, as we shaved/plucked/waxed our body hair away, a dialogue on body hair lay dormant. We didn’t see anything political in it.

But isn’t body hair yet another image issue dumped in the exhausted laps of women? My mind begins to reel when I ponder the whole de-hairing ordeal:

Eyebrows: Pluck into symmetrical arches, or at least interrupt the unibrow over the bridge of the nose.
Mustache (more genteelly referred to as upper lip hair): Bleach, wax or zap it with electrolysis.
Chin hair: Tweeze out ASAP, even if it means using the rearview mirror at an intersection.
Random very long arm hairs: Yank.
Rest of arm hair: Bleach if too dark.
Nipple hair: Tweeze or fry with electrolysis.
Underarm hair: Shave, of course.
”Bikini line” hair (deemed so vile, only a euphemism can be used): Shave (and get a lovely rash), fantasize about being able to afford electrolysis, wear granny-style skirted bathing suits or shorts to the beach.
Leg hair: See Underarm hair.
Toe hair: Pull out while talking on the phone—owww!

Sound familiar? Women’s body hair is apparently so dirty, gross and vulgar that it elicits queasiness in people. It’s “excess,” meaning it shouldn’t be there in the first place. But it is. I’ll bypass lugging down the hair-as-fur-for-warmth path, because clothes do that trick—but hair has always been there, and it will always be there. It’s easy to forget that women have hairy legs and armpits because we never see them in their natural state. In this society, our eyes have actually been retrained to believe that a woman doesn’t have body hair. Our memory omits the razors, waxes, creams and bleaches that go into making women hairless. In fact, we expect a woman to have smooth legs, et cetera, and are surprised and often repulsed if she doesn’t.

Why has body hair become such a nemesis for women? It poses no health risks. It is not hygienic to remove; it is not cleansing to shave. Rather, the complications arise during the eradication: cuts, infections, rashes, ingrown hairs, dry skin, burning. Is this hairless ideal yet another variation on the tune of “let’s take the best (boobs, curves in some places, hair in very few places) and leave the rest (hips, curves in other places, hair in lots of other places)”? Or is it: “Let’s make women look like eight-year-olds so we can treat them as such”? Or is it: “If women can fill up their extra hours shaving and obsessing about their bodies, then they won’t have spare time to plot a world takeover”? Or maybe it’s: “Women are so grossly overpaid and just don’t spend enough on pads, tampons, pantyliners, Ibuprofen, shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, that we should coax them to buy razors, waxes, creams and bleaches.” A-ha, it’s probably: “How about setting another unattainable ideal for women so they will always fall short of the mark.” I mean, what are women if they’re not feeling insecure about something or another?

Chewing on all these questions, I returned to campus in the fall and began to test-drive not shaving. I would make a firm decision to quit cold turkey, toss all my razors, and let the hair do it’s thing. For the first few weeks, I could pass on the bad shaver-stubble ticket. Okay, fine. But after a month or so, I found myself eager to answer a question in class, yet halted in my tacks by the horror of exposing my tank-topped hair underarms to the cute guy across from me! Ay! I would settle for wagging my hand around on my desk and vow to stick to T-shirts from then on. But I love tank tops! And here began the eternal debate: Should I shave or should I let it go and feel awkward?

I’ve finally hit a point where I can hold out through fall, a hair winter and well into spring. But come summer (lying on bikini-laden beaches, going to the office in a sleeveless dress without stockings, riding a crowded subway and have to reach up to grip the handrail), I start losing steam. At crunchy folk festivals I’m a card-carrying member, but traipsing to a corporate office in midtown Manhattan? Short of bundling up in wool tights and turtlenecks in ninety-degree weather, I feel awfully strange about having hairy legs. I start out by rehearsing witty comebacks. I feel bold and strong for about a day and a half. Then I invent outfits to disguise my hairy legs and underarms. Then the debate rekindles. Finally, I lose my chutzpah and shave in defeat.

It’s throwing in the towel on all accounts: Besides the strength I derive from rebelling against yet another implicit body pressure, hair feels good. Who could have ever imagined the erotic potential in riding a bike or swimming with hairy legs? The breeze ruffles it, the water swishes through it—wow! And sex? Ever sent someone flying out of bed by rubbing your bristly legs against them? Quite the opposite with hairy legs, as it is ultrastimulating to entwine your furry legs with your lover’s. This completely uncharted aphrodisiac is scarily reminiscent of women not being encouraged to experience full sexual pleasure (guys get the hairy leg turn-on). Add to that, body hair looks incredibly sexy and healthy. We’re just not used to seeing it on women.

What body hair needs is more visibility. It needs a publicity agent and a marketing campaign. It needs models and actresses to flounce around with hairy legs and pits. When those trailblazing, unshaven singers and songwriters like Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams stomp onto stage, it sends a loud and clear holler into the hairless vacuum. It propels us to see it, to think about it, to actually make the connection that this is a real women, not the reverse. It cracks open a door that will eventually lead to women having the choice (not the compulsory burden) of whether they want to shave. Maybe someday I’ll become a poster child for body hair. For now, I’m just revving up to go an entire summer without shaving, to storm the office in a sundress and sandals, to wear whatever the hell I want to the beach, to not feel ashamed to show my hairy armpits to the world. Every summer I get a little closer. Maybe this time I’ll make it.