Women's Pursuit Of Hairlessness And What It Does To Their Minds (And Body)

Like the author of this sharp critique, I also do not remember the time when I was not more ‘hairy’ than I liked. When I sat next to my crush in school, I was always trying to keep my arms palms up so that only the hairless undersides were in his line of vision. Regular, painful, smelly and expensive removal of all body hair came later and never went away. What stayed too was a sense of the unclean; a scratchy feeling of ineptitude when the hairs sprouted back again.

I am not alone in this ‘war’. Neither is the author. This is a near-universal, sanity-bending pursuit of hairlessness women have been conditioned to indulge in.

Why should you be interested in our hairy woes, you might ask. You ought to ask because the answers aren’t simple; because the answers involve complex histories, cultural norms and gender control. This critique only scratches the surface.

Read it because it describes how Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ might have lead people to associate hirsuteness with being ‘less developed’ and how post his work, hairiness became an issue of fitness. Read it because it tells you how gradually hair on women became a class and cleanliness issue; how women underwent radiation, caused themselves muscle atrophy, limb damage and cancer in the process of eliminating hair. Read it because it laments that women still engage in risky, skin (and mind)-damaging practices to rid themselves of body hair and have succumbed to this insidious form of gender control. Insidious because velvety skin is today a part of the ‘beauty from pain’ routine, which generations of women have bought into and now do voluntarily.

And read it because it will make you think twice about the larger narrative that a woman whose body is not smooth is not woman enough.