This article is intended to bring an awareness and basic knowledge of a movement pertaining to the topic of feminism and women’s rights. It aims to create a foundation of understanding in hopes of initiating a positive conversation and cultural environment of equal opportunity, while ridding the annoyance and negativity associated with the term feminism.
Hair: A naturally occurring substance, which grows on the human body as well as other mammals, comprised of keratinous filaments (dead skin cells) that usually are cylinder-like shaped and generally serve the body as a type of insulation and protection.
What humans have hair? Mostly all men and women, growing in almost identical places! Yet somehow despite the fact that women and men both have hair growing on most aspects of the body it begs the question, why are women expected to shave and wax their legs, genitals, armpits, eyebrows, upper-lips, etc while men are not tide down to such strict standards for grooming???
In the recent third-wave of feminism which focuses heavily on deconstructing stereotypes, media portrayals, and the language used to define women the topic of women’s hair, specifically armpit and genital hair, has been a popular topic of conversation. Many women, including several celebrities, have taken to social media to reveal their form of choice as empowerment and social rebellion by opting out of shaving their armpit hair as well as other body hair (It is important to note that the no-shave armpit movement has been received more widely than other hair producing body parts due to its easily visible nature, as well as it being able to be appropriately shared across social media).
Historically, across the majority of media outlets and platforms women are and have been portrayed and represented as cleanly shaven, well kept and groomed, emphasizing the sleek hairless and groomed body as an object that represents cleanliness and attractiveness. Women are pressured to maintain these beauty standards and are sanctioned to do so through being subjected to the male-gaze (a term coined by feminist film critic, Laura Mulvey) that argues visual practices are constructed around the male viewer, signifying a psychological relationship of power where the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze, thus projecting what men see as attractive and attitudes pertaining to attractiveness as the ideal standard of female beauty.
Women are commonly displayed in the binary opposition of male/female, portraying women as incomplete or unsatisfactory without the male counterpart, ultimately functioning as an opposition allowing the power of the dominant group, male, to maintain power. The third-wave feminism movement authorizes women to define feminism for themselves through incorporating individual identities into a feminist belief system of what feminism is and what it can become through an individual’s perspective.
Over the past year women of different ages, races, and socioeconomic classes have joined forces in an attempt to dissolve the current cultural notion of female body hair. This increasingly known no-shave movement asserts openly expressing women’s desire’s for social gender equality by ceasing to shave or wax their genital, leg, and particularly armpit hair.
The growth of body hair functions as a symbol for the individual female’s right to choose what she should do with her body hair, and empowers women by giving them authority over their own body while also enforcing different notions of feminine beauty ideals such as natural beauty. Not shaving is identified as a personal choice as well as a challenge to the socially constructed boundary of what is feminine. This blurs the defined and strict lines of standards, creating an awareness for the possibility of a cultural shift in gender identity and female principles of cleanliness and beauty.
As a participant in the empowering no-shave movement I am proud to say that I feel my choice has exposed, and thus started the possibility for conversation and the opening of minds regarding persons who may not have been disclosed to the liberating concept of women choosing how to maintain their body hair. My personal choice has been viewed as brave and ambitious, when in reality it is a basic, personal grooming preference. I prefer not to be tied down or participate in a scripted role of a restrictive shaving schedule and in turn be culturally shamed for not eliminating my body of the prickly follicles that grow back a day or so later.
I believe that women, like men, should be able to choose what they wish to do with their body hair. I am perplexed how in today’s society body hair still embodies such a stigma, especially for women, forcing women to be slaves to their own bodies, despite hair being a naturally occurring process for both men and women.
I view my choice as an alley of power and self-expression, a choice that I intend to control the right to practice freely and openly.
#proudfeminist
*P.S. It is October and you know what that means… it is Breast Cancer Awareness month and this year we are celebrating the more than 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States!*
#breastcancerawarenessmonth