A lot of things have changed since the seventies. Disco is dead, we’ve learned that polyester itches and bodies have become a lot more bare.
Western women have been shaving and waxing their legs and underarms since the early 20th century, when, for the first time, clothing was revealing enough to show off these body parts. Today, however, men and women alike are engaging in grooming, shaping and removing all or part of their body hair. In the evolutionary scheme of things, body hair played a significant role in sex lives of early humans. It’s strategically located in order to hold onto sweat and promote its smell, because olfactory attraction was so important in deciding who to mate with. While following your nose to a potential partner’s private parts might not sound appealing these days, body hair continues to be a site of sexual expression and obsession.
Like many social movements, the development of preference in below-the-belt grooming can be traced through porn. Male and female stars alike were happily hirsute right into the 1980s. One of that era’s greatest stars, Ron Jeremy, was nicknamed “The Hedgehog” because of his hairy back. This penchant for hairiness was partially due to stricter censorship rules – instead of hiding behind little black boxes, nether regions were hidden behind masses of hair.
Though more recent editions of The Joy of Sex feature drawings of a couple that is significantly thinner, more traditionally attractive and less hairy, the original 1972 edition of the legendary sex guide featured hand-drawn illustrations of a furry couple engaging in various poses of lovemaking. The book even has a section on armpit hair grooming that compares cutting the hair to female genital mutilation, calling cutting the “antennae and powder puffs” of a woman’s underarm “ignorant vandalism.”
Kristy Holmes is a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies who teaches a class called “Feminism, the Body and Visual Culture.” She said especially among second-wave feminists, body hair was both a personal and political statement. “The feminist debate in the 1970s and ’80s said having to shave was a double standard because there was such a focus on equality between the sexes. For women, growing a lot of body hair was political, they thought, ‘My body should indicate my political point of view,’ ” Holmes said. “It’s really interesting the cultural phenomenon that before, to have a lot of body hair, whether underarms, genital or legs, it was important to have. Now, for women it’s seen as unpleasant and vaginal hair has become a site for creativity and expression.”
Today pubic hairstyling has become trendy for both genders. There’s the ubiquitous “Brazilian” with it’s “landing strip,” as well as the Boy-zilian, performed at Diva Salon, which provides a similar shape-up for men. Crystal appliques in the shapes of Playboy bunnies, stick-tatoos and brightly coloured dyes are all becoming par for the pubic course. Porn queen Jenna Jameson has her own line of products for trimming bikini hair.
A few years back, the Queer Eye guys popularized ‘manscaping’ and now in a move back towards a more natural look, British men are using Michaelango’s David as their guide to create a nether region style aptly titled “the David.” And while Tom Selleck built a career on his hairy chest, Ricky Martin made waves by getting his waxed.
All of this may be part of a society that between reality makeover shows and computer-edited fashion photography, praises a very “plastic” beauty ideal; one that includes bleaching teeth, cosmetic surgeries and endless amount of dying, straightening and perming hair. It’s no wonder this now extends to hair on the body as well.
“The media is involved in creating notions of what’s beautiful and not beautiful, clean and unclean, feminist and not feminist and visualizing all of these things,” Holmes said, while adding, “I don’t think a lot of women shave just because of what they see in porn.”
In fact, Holmes doesn’t think women put much thought into shaving at all.
“I shave my legs without thinking ‘What does this say about me as a feminist?’ But anything personal was political for the baby boom generation, and now the younger generation, children of baby boomers or a little bit younger, around the Queen’s campus you don’t hear young women talking about the political importance of body hair,” she said.
In the end, the reasons to groom body hair are as varied as the people who grow it. Many Muslims remove body hair for religious reasons, while Sikhs do not cut or shave any hair on their bodies. Athletes shave to cut down on wind resistance, while Kim Cattrall’s character on Sex and the City dyes her bush after finding a grey hair down there.
So maybe the political is becoming personal again. At a time when other dichotomies of sex and gender are opening up, instead of looking at body hair as simply “to shave or not to shave,” people are looking at even more options for displaying their short and curlies.
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