Female body hair is somewhat of a taboo subject. How many times a month do you go for painful, inconvenient and expensive hair removal treatments, as if shame was preventing you from showing your face in the world without getting rid of it? However, the hair on our bodies is the exact same as the hair on our heads. So why all the scandal when a woman has the “audacity” to appear in public as nature made her? This topic has been highlighted by Marinette, a frank and honest blogger.
The absence of body hair is a sign of childhood, which suggests that we would prefer women to remain fragile all their lives
A marker of the end of childhood and the beginning of sexual maturity, our body hair starts growing when reach puberty. As adolescents, we start attending the beauticians, or brandishing our razors and pinching our father’s shaving foam to try and meet the ideal standards for women that society has imposed on us. Because regardless of your age, a woman’s body is always supposed to look “younger”. And this doesn’t apply only to body hair. Up until the 1970s, women were under guardianship their whole lives long, eternally considered a minor: firstly under her father’s guardianship, and next under her husband’s. Nowadays, this idea of eternal youth stays unconsciously anchored in social mores, even in the most modern societies. Here are 4 prejudices about female body hair that we finally want to debunk.
1/ Body hair is dirty
No, body hair is not dirty -quite the opposite in fact. In fact body hair filters bad bacteria. It’s no accident that we have it!
2/ Body hair smells bad
As long as you wash yourself, body hair does not smell bad, and doesn’t make you sweat any more than you would without it. On the contrary, body hair regulates sweating and filters bad bacteria.
3/ Body hair is masculine
Although as far as we’re aware, women have it too! Sure, we have less of it, but all the same…
4/ Refusing to shave is extremist
Modern society often associates a woman with body hair as an out-and-out feminist. However, many women are deciding to stop waxing not because of political activism, but because of practicality. Because hair removal is expensive, and it hurts!
