When I was 11, I started plucking my eyebrows.
When I was 12, I started shaving my legs.
When I was 15, I started shaving my face.
When I was 16, I started shaving my upper lip.
When I was 17, I started shaving my arms.
For years, I continuously maintained an intricate, almost unnecessary dedication to ridding my body of its hair. I ignored my heritage completely, my Italian and Middle Eastern roots dismissed by that single driving thought: I can be hairless like everyone else I see at school, in the media, on TV.
In the series 1923, Helen Mirren watches her husband, played by Harrison Ford, as he carefully shaves his stubble off. When she comments that watching him shave never gets old, he states there’s a new razor for women, so perhaps he’ll watch her shave.
Helen Mirren’s response? “They invented a razor for women where no need existed, then they invented the need.”
A line that seems incredibly insignificant to the rest of the story truly got me thinking.
Around 1908, three major industries in the United States aimed to show Americans that women’s underarm and leg hair was unfeminine. These industries were the male hair removal industry, women’s fashion, and women’s magazines. Now I’m sure you’re thinking, just as I was, Why on Earth would the male hair industry care about women’s hair removal? The simple answer? Money and market expansion.
Another shocking event in the history of women’s hair removal is The Great Underarm Campaign (yes, it’s a real thing). This phenomenon began picking up speed in 1914, when advertisers became more pointed, yet subtle, with their messages. Underarm hair was labeled “objectionable,” “unwelcome,” “unclean,” and “unsightly”. Women were told to “smooth” instead of shave their “limbs” instead of legs.
It was Gillette that created the first women’s razor. In their ad, it was marketed as a solution to an embarrassing personal problem to keep your armpits smooth and white.
As the decades flew by, the women’s hair removal industry boomed.
The 1960s brought around “shaming tendencies”, essentially attacking women who didn’t shave and questioning them as to why they weren’t “on board.”
In the 70’s and 80’s, women were pushed to not only tackle their underarms and legs, but their whole body. There was also an overstated emphasis on shaving not to feel your best, but to look better for your spouse.
Let’s fast forward to the present day.
Of course, there is always the choice to not shave any part of your body. In fact, many people embrace this lifestyle with open arms, rejecting the oppressive attitude that shaving has created.
However, social media has enforced a large case of hair removal FOMO onto young girls and women.
While beauty maintenance trends such as shaving our underarms, legs, and pubic hair have been around for a minute, Instagram brought in thousands of seemingly hairless women, all providing their favorite methods of getting rid of hair, and keeping it away. Never mind that they were editing, filtering, and photoshopping their pictures to deceive followers!
Dermaplaning, or microplaning, is a non-invasive cosmetic procedure that is supposed to be utilized as a way to gently exfoliate the face while removing dead skin and debris. It’s also known more commonly on TikTok as a way to remove that ugly, nasty facial peach fuzz. I’m sure we’ve all seen the “hair identifier spray” that thousands of women bought to show us all how disgusting it is to have hair on our faces.
What a useless, made-up product that women were convinced they needed to purchase.
Like Helen Mirren said, a need is created out of thin air, and a product to follow it. We’ve been confident that removing our bodily hair is the only way to feel comfortable, fit into beauty standards, and appear more attractive.
That’s what happened to me.
At the young age of 11, I began tearing out my eyebrow hairs, so worried that people would judge me because they were too big and bushy. I shaved off the hair on my arms because I didn’t want boys at school to think I was unfeminine. I fell into the social media trap and started dermaplaning the hair right off my face.
At some point, this all became too much work. And what for? I think we forget how little attention people pay to us.
I finally stopped all of my elaborate hair removal (I still shave most of my body, though) after no small amount of advice from my mother, and the realization that it didn’t matter how “hairless” I was, people weren’t paying attention to that anyway.
Hair removal is, ultimately, a personal choice, not a personal embarrassment. Just as women 50 years ago were pressured by advertisements in the newspapers loudly protesting body hair, you and I struggle with the subtle, but still present, enforcement of beauty norms in social media.
Remember that your body is your choice.