Now Playing: Fix You by Coldplay (when you try your best but you don't succeed, when you get what you want but not what you need)
Women are a little hypocritical sometimes. Or, rather, we're forced to be a little hypocritical.
We all have this fantasy that we'll meet someone wonderful who will love us, warts and all. But then we never let anyone see us, warts and all. We're never allowed to.
I first started shaving my legs when I was eleven, and I've been dutifully living up to social expectations ever since. Well...not really. I can't stand plucking my eyebrows, and my eyebrow razor is dead, so that is that. It's winter, so I'm wearing jeans and tights a lot, plus I cut my knee, so I haven't really shaved my legs in...a very long time.
Now, you'd think that this would reflect on the idea that personal grooming is for aesthetic purposes - i.e. for other people, because I've only slacked off because circumstances dictate that nobody's gonna see me in my Chewbacca glory. Which is not exactly the case. Point the First, I am very, very, very lazy. If my eyebrow razor is broken, no amount of insecurity is going to motivate me to fix it. Point the Second, I'm too busy getting vinegar in my eye and washing sugar out of my hair that by the time I lay eyes on my razor I'm bored, incredibly lazy and the water's starting to run a little cold. Point the Third, I love the feel of shaved legs, really, I do. Eventually I'll shave them, even if it's not sundress season yet. But I am experimenting with feeling good despite the fuzz. And it's working, so why break the chain? Point the Fourth, I'm not really a very hairy person. Nobody can see my eyebrows, much less a few stray hairs that I haven't singed off yet. And you'd have to be pretty alarmingly close to see how lazy I've gotten with shaving my legs, and I didn't even know I had arm hair until I held my arm up to a light.Which leads to Point the Fifth - even in summer, if I can get away with it, shaving is not a mandatory daily ritual, where slovenliness is punishable by death.
Am I a bad feminist for shaving? Some might argue yes, because I am - shock horror! - succumbing to social norms; hypocritical social norms, because I'd never judge a guy for not shaving (actually, that's not true...stubble is amazing).
It has been ingrained into my head that hairlessness is beautiful; feminine. I know for a fact it is not. Everything feminine, we are born with - hair included. Just because I have body hair doesn't mean I can't be a woman. But it's not me that I have a problem with, it's society. The people in society have been raised to believe that women look a certain way, without considering what it takes to look that way. Think about it. Anne Boleyn seduced Henry VIII and never touched a razor in her life. Our forefathers managed to get the deed done before Schick razors were invented.
I wish I was strong enough to be like Mayim Bialik, who is a kick ass feminist who has proudly told the whole world that, despite being a red-carpet-strutting actress, she's never touched her body hair. But I'm not. I'll put a razor to my legs eventually. You'll probably never see me in au naturel glory. But...I'd like to think that, one day, I'll meet someone who not only loves me for who I am, but also for how I want to present myself to the world.
2 comments:
Thank goodness that sloveliness is not punishable by death, in either sloth or woman. (Though Helen Burns and slatteriness came all too close). Rather, it shows the life force.
(And why do we still see death as a punishment?)
Didn't see Part One of The lies we tell little girls though if it's made into a series, it could be quite full.
Eyebrow pluckers? The closest thing to that is a generic tweezer, and that is more usually used for toenails and splinters.
I try to be careful about whatever I put to my eyes or near them.
The points about Anne of Boleyn and the Schikk (insert brand here).
No - your presentation is what you choose.
Feeling good despite the fuzz. And like M Bialik, because of it?
Fuzzy eyebrows are expressive eyebrows (I was given several arches above my eyes).
Oh sure feminism is fine. As long as you get the shit that comes with it and men are equal with women.
1. Men need a Men's Affairs Minister to equate with the Women's Affairs Minister.
2. Scholarships available exclusively to women should be deemed sexist and illegal.
3. Conscription legislation in the event of war should include women (how many women were conscripted in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Malaya, Borneo etc. etc.)
4. If a woman cuts off a mans penis harpie-like bitches on shows like "The View" shouldn't laugh and talk about empowerment (true story) becuase if a man cut off a woman's breasts and clitoris and Dr. Phil started laughing at it feminists wouldn't like it very much.
5. Arch-feminists should not mock or pressure women who genuinely want to be a dutiful housewife.
“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men...”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."
Andrea Dworkin
"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometime gain from the experience"
Catherine Comins, Vassar College
"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it."
Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
"To be male is to be a kind of idiot savant"
Germaine Greer
"All men are rapists and that's all they are"
Marilyn French
“..the ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the total population"
Sally Gearhart, The Future is Female
"No, we don't believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make it."
Simone de Beauvoir
"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them."
Robin Morgan
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