don't worry, I'm a professional ([info]fallen_arazil) wrote,
@ 2008-03-14 18:26:00
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Current mood: cross
Entry tags:feminism

bikini season
So summer is on the way, and my sixty-something year old mother has been making noises that it's all well and good to have hairy legs in winter, but now that shorts season is coming, my legs look gross and I should shave them.

There's a part of me that really does think my hairy legs are gross, but that's exactly the reason I can't shave them, because that feeling is just proof to me of how deeply I've internalized this arbitrary double standard of aesthetics, where women are smooth, pre-pubescent-ly hairless, with long eyelashes and red lips, wearing skirts and high heels. I mean, the idea that good grooming demands I shave my entire legs purely because I happen to have internal reproductive organs is ridiculous, right?

Right?

~Djinn


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[info]fallen_arazil
2008-03-15 12:52 am UTC (link)
Ah, I expressed myself badly. I don't really think my hairy legs are 'gross', but I am acutely aware that other people will look at me and think that, and it's that knowledge that makes me uncomfortable, and creates in me the desire to conform in order to avoid negative attention. While I know that no one whose opinion I actually value will care either way, somehow that idea that strangers will look at my legs and think badly of me because I don't shave them ... bothers me, and that realization bothers me even more.

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[info]psychedk
2008-03-15 01:23 am UTC (link)
Ooh, it's an interesting paradox. I have to first say I'm not a feminist at all, so these kind of issues always leave me puzzled. But I do have many friends who are, and in so many other ways I don't fit into conventional boxes, nor do I wish to. So I can sympathize. I've spend a lot of time finding out what felt true to me, in many regards, and some will be close to conclusions drawn by the large majority, some will be very far from them.

I don't think of it as conforming. After all, there are actually people who like natural hair, and again other people who don't care either way. I don't shave my legs in the winter either, because my husband don't care enough to ask me to do it, and I'm generally lazy, but I like that others don't look at my legs and think "geez". Call it conforming, call it vanity. It's probably more a question of suffering from normal fear of what people might think of you (and only a handful of people can really be free of that); it's all semantics to me, because in the end I'll do whatever makes me comfortable. If that happens to please a large portion of people, then so be it...

Edited at 2008-03-15 01:25 am UTC

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