Charlotte Sargent

The Specter of Excess

The rise in the removal of body hair has gone up increasingly over the years. “Women said they removed body hair to feel cleaner, more feminine, more confident about themselves, and more attractive. Some women liked the ‘soft, silky feeling’ of shaved legs, while others enjoyed feeling sexually attractive to men” (Fahs, Delgado, 15). Women have and feel the pressure to be hairless; it makes them feel clean, soft, attractive, and feminine. The removal of body hair is a normal social practice for most women. “Women who do not shave or remove hair report feeling judged and negatively evaluated as ‘dirty,’ ‘gross,’ and ‘repulsive’ (Fahs, Delgado, 13). This shows how greatly women judge themselves in their body’s natural state. It was interesting to read how “women rate other women who do not shave as less attractive, intelligent, sociable, happy, and positive compared with hairless women (Fahs, Delgado, 13). Women feel the pressure, yet we enhance the pressure to fit a social norm, at the same time. In the article “The Specter of Excess,” nineteen women were asked to stop removing their body hair for twelve weeks and to keep a journal of their personal reactions, feelings, and responses to their body hair as well as the reactions and responses of others, and how they felt it affected their sexuality.

Many of the women received similar responses of some sort of disgust and questioning of sexuality from their family and others, but answers also varied according to race. Women of working-class and color particularly struggled with body hair because “it exacerbated their sense of ‘differentness’ form the white middle or upper-class women in class” (Fahs, Delgado, 18). White, middle or upper class women did not struggle with this insecurity even close to that extent. One woman of color said, “I felt like people would think I was a ‘dirty Mexican’ because of the hair, that I was doing something nasty, and people would connect my body hair to my being lesbian or Mexican” (Fahs, Delgado, 18). The responses that the women of working class, middle class, or of color had were similar. Another woman said, “I come from a family that didn’t have much money, and to let yourself go is going against everything I have been taught. I’m always careful about coming across as respectable and clean, just so I don’t confirm all of those stereotypes people have of me as dirty and low class” (Fahs, Delgado, 19). This was interesting to me because I have never thought about the even greater amount of pressure less privileged women or women of color have and feel to remain hairless. These women feel as though they are looked down upon, seen as dirty, uneducated, and given bad stereotypes. Women also reported that they truly valued and seek the approval of their male partners. One girl described how her boyfriend was supportive at first, but then started making comments, “he joked about it being gross. I felt gross during sex” (Fahs, Delgado, 20). This delineates the power men have on women to make us feel attractive, feminine, and confident. If your boyfriend doesn’t love the way your body works, most women are willing to change their bodies in order to change the way they are perceived by their sexual partners.

However, at the end of the experiment, the majority of participants learned a lot about themselves and society. Some women stated that they now feel more comfortable with their bodies in its natural state. Other women said it made them realize how much they conform to society and that they are now much more aware of who they want to be and their actions. I have never really connected body hair with race, I always thought women shaved because it is what most women do and it is what society expects of us; to look clean, smooth, attractive, and feminine. I have always shaved because it is the way I have been raised in society and it is what I am accustom to. I must say that I do feel more attractive and feminine when I shave, and it makes me feel better and cleaner. I don’t shave because I think people will look down on me as lower class or because of my race, but I do shave because I don’t want others to look at me as dirty or to think of me as someone who doesn’t worry about taking care of myself.  One summer, I was in Alaska for a month and a half, with only four other kids and two leaders. We could only shower once a week, which was a real lifestyle change for me. I became extremely close with my crew, but after two weeks of not shaving my legs, I had to give in. My crew leader kept telling us to see if we could try to go the whole month without shaving, but I just did not see any reason to. I feel so much cleaner and better when I am shaven, and during this period of time I was in no way trying to impress anyone, nor was I worried about being judged. I just wanted to shave because it feels more natural to me to have smooth legs. This all shows how engrained it is in society and our minds, the idea that women should be hairless and that we feel we need to be.