VEGANGELICA

The reason I feel the issue of women shaving their leg and underarm hair is an important gender issue, Tea, is that the pressure on women to remove much of their "unsightly" body hair is one of many sexist ways people treat women around the world, in which women are often judged and valued based more on appearance and sexuality rather than on their capabilities as human beings.

In this thread, girls/women have mentioned that they like BEING female, but they dislike the social issues they face. So, I feel it is important to challenge all the social issues that make being a woman difficult.

I feel that women and men should have equal rights, opportunities and treatment, which is the basis of feminism. It is simply unfair that men can have their body hair showing with no one chastising them, while women face ridicule for showing *their* hair.

Imagine that instead of women shaving we were talking about black people. If our culture told black people, "Sorry, your leg hair is ugly, so you should either wear trousers outside or shave your hair," while white people could go outside without any concern or feeling of self-consciousnes at all, would you be comforable with that? I doubt it.

If it would bother you if BLACK people were told that their body hair is ugly and they should shave it off, cover themselves up, or suffer the consequences, why doesn't it bother you when people tell this to WOMEN?

Just as the sexist view of women's body hair is unfair, it is also unfair that around the world women are often considered property, transferred to husbands, expected to bear many children and not receive a good education, forced to wear coverings over their hair or burkas, not allowed to drive cars, etc., while men face NONE of these socially-created problems. These issues, including body shaving, are all related because all involve women being treated as not deserving of the same social and legal rights as men.

I recommend the short video "Shackled Women" to see examples of how the emphasis on women's beauty confines women's lives around the globe, since it's probably a topic in which you and I are both interested: Shackled Women

Women finally being able to wear pants without social derision *was* liberating...and it took several generations of strong women facing private and public ridicule to finally "earn" cultural acceptance of wearing manly pants. This step forward toward equality for women doesn't mean we should just accept one step back with regards to women's body image issues. There should never be any reason for women to be embarrassed by their own bodies, boo boo! Including their shaved heads!

Raising girls such that they are embarrassed by their own bodies is not part of our environment that I accept. I think it should be obvious why treating girls...treating anyone...this way is a bad thing. It is an issue of human rights and dignity.

Yes, women around the world in many cultures shave or wax/sugar their body hair (and in many of those places women have lower status than men). However, the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Australia started the practice in the 1900s, before which women in the Western world sometimes just shaved their necks...the parts of the bodies that were showing...but *not* their underarms and legs. The recent origin of shaving in Western society is unique because it was so sudden.

The hairlessness norm for women is only getting stronger, too, with the Brazilian wax becoming more common...a painful process of ripping out all your pubic hair. When women feel so much pressure or desire to "look attractive" that they are willing to undergo painful procedures, I feel it's important to try to stop those pressures.

Urban, you can choose to have a beard or not, and no one will ridicule you. They'll probably think you look nice both ways. THAT is a choice. It is a choice between different but equivalent results: "Do I want to look good without my beard, or do I want to look good with my beard?"

If you were a woman, your choice would be slightly different: "Do I shave, or do I want to face public humiliation because my underarm hair and leg hair grew darker during puberty?" That is not a fair, equal choice. That IS curtailing women's right to enjoy and experience their own bodies in the same way that men can enjoy and experience their own bodies.

This issue is related to gay rights, actually, as I think adidasss understands: people should not be made to feel bad about how their bodies naturally are.

__________________