First of all, before you read my diatribe, go read this one:
http://shutupsitdown.blogspot.com/2008/04/politics-of-body-hair.html
Back? Hello there! I agree with much of what was said, but perhaps not for the reasons… Mostly they revolve around my own preferences and how I don’t feel they are societally driven.
I shave my legs maybe 4 times a year, but I shave my vulva every 6 or 8 weeks vs. my armpits… whenever I wear a sleeveless top and the hair is too long for my taste, and I have my brows waxed every three weeks.
The hair on my legs doesn’t grow that fast, and when it is there, it’s pretty silky and virtually invisible unless you are up close and personal. I’ve been shaving/trimming my vulva since the hair started growing. I just don’t like it. I find I am much more sexually sensitive without a ton of hair, thought to be honest, at the longest I’ve let it go I didn’t have the “natural bush” that bush loving men want to see. I shaved my arms for years. I just don’t like body hair. Is it a societally charged disdain? I have no idea. I don’t think it is… in my life I’ve seen both ends of the pendulum – natural, hairy, but beautiful women and fully shorn, equally beautiful women.
Why do I have my eyebrows waxed? Don’t laugh. I had natural brows till 97ish and my friend attacked them with some tweezers. Thus became a low affair with the stylized brows of the 40′s and 50′s. Totally socially driven. As the years have gone by, they’ve gotten less arched, less drawn on. They follow the natural arch, I mostly clean up the straggly ones on the outside. Many of the current “hot” actresses, actors too!, are going au natural on the brows.
I feel like too much of a hypocrite saying I am natural. My usual saying is “mostly natural, slightly modified.” I dye my hair. I have tattoos. I have piercings (indeed, I have big chunks of cartilage outright removed). I shave, pluck and wax. I straighten (not so much anymore). I do a lot that isn’t strictly natural.
