Wild thing
After being gone a month on the road, I finally got a razor in my hand and shaved off the soft, fine fuzz on my legs. It was a big job, and took longer than the routine, maintenance shaving that I normally do when we’re living in a real house.
Maybe there’s a reason the camera never captured Francis McDormand’s close-up leg shots in Nomadland. Whatever. The hair on my legs made me feel bad, and decidedly unsexy.
It got me thinking. I felt like a guilty, horrible, ugly, wild beast for the fine little hairs that poke up around my knees.
I thought about the approximately 7,500 generations of ladies before us who never knew the concept of “razor.” Of course, I also thought about my husband’s hairy legs, (and every other man). No bother for him. Ever.
I thought about the chore, the wasted hours, the expense, the futility and repetition, and I realized, that shaving legs is a necessary evil. If we women don’t present smooth, slim, and silky legs to the world we will be judged.
Ever hear the one about the man-hating, ugly, hairy legged feminist? She’s ugly because she has human hair and did nothing about it, displaying a vulgar hatred of men by not catering to his every whim, and also being rude to other women who are trying so hard to kick past the glass ceiling with their sexy, sexy legs.
Yes, we are judged if we don’t shave. Harshly. Also, if we do.
Guilty as charged
That is, I also judge myself guilty of buying these dumb plastic razors, paying the pink tax (at those times when I don’t just grab the blue ones.) When we use any kind of disposable plastic, or even if we use an electric device, we are wasting coal and oil-fired energy. If we charge the dang thing, we are using batteries. We are polluting.
We may as well be dropping microplastics directly into the mouths of starving sea-bird chicks, or stabbing sea turtles in the face with plastic handles while we choke them with the bags we bring the stuff home in.
Further, by perpetuating compliance and non-deliberation we are propping up the status quo with our own plastic mountain of Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The GPGP should add another G.P. for Girl Patriarchy.
But what about all those women before us? They escaped scrutiny by wearing long skirts. For their outward gender displays they simply supported the extinction of whales for corset ribs and plucked rare birds naked for the feathers. Men advanced dominance by sending all the fur traders to kill every beaver, mink, racoon, and fox in sight for hats and coats. When fashion moved on it was time to kill all the buffalo and belch trains across “virgin” land instead. Manly stuff, that.
Prior to wearing plants and animals, women simply had too much cooking, cleaning, and coddling to do to worry about their leg hair. And that was whether or not they had small people to care for, or not. Someone had to clean those beaver coats and hats.
Sexy stuff
People, it seems never get past our need for soft women who are hard working. We want women to be smooth and soft even as they due every kind of labor, (pun intended) and heavy (period?) lifting.
Yet, we uplift men for their clean-shaven faces, but also for their rugged, beardy masculinity. They win either way. Women, not so much. We now have a zillion products to buy to either remove and/or enhance all body hair. And most of these billions of dollars are spent by women.
And please, no comments about men’s dangerous dirty jobs. A man gets to stand under streaming hot, delicious water after his labors. A woman is far more likely to be the one washing his grungy clothes, removing his stains, cooking his meals, cleaning that shower, and making sure he never has to face the rudeness of offensive leg hair on her body.
Smooth is sexy. But that is more likely than not due to our social programming than our common sense. If it’s sexier, than why is it one-sided?
If there is an answer I would surely like to know what it is.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
 |
 |
 |
 |
