This article was written at the edge of a self-conscious paralysis I can barely describe. I recognize that A) I am not a girl, and B) I am only peripherally aware of the trench warfare-style lengths some of us go to every day to feel secure in our personal identities. The only way I can possibly perceive the word ‘identity’ is in how it pertains to me and my own limited, self-centered existence. I learn every day that the things I am — male, white, heterosexual — force me further and further away from a particular conversation, of which I would like to be a small and supportive part.
This conversation is long-lived. Women have struggled against gender inequality for centuries: Only recently have issues like equal pay come under the public spotlight; millions of women continue to be subjected to genital mutilation; in India, parents often prefer sex-selective abortion to avoid having a female child; women’s voting rights in the United States, incredibly, have yet to be marked by a centennial.
Many social movements open conversations about double standards and arbitrary societal pressures women face daily. One of these movements, aptly considered a return to ‘natural beauty,’ contends that women and men undergo separate coercive pressures to maintain (or hide) natural functions of the body. Specifically, advocates believe women shouldn’t shave unless they want to, and I agree.
A photo competition began in China this summer when feminist Xiao Meili decided to grow and encourage the growth of female armpit hair. Dozens of women participated. Entire Instagram pages are dedicated to women’s body hair. Check out @bodyhairloveaffair or @pitangels and you’ll observe the vibrant, dyed passions of feminists seeking equality. Celebrities like Madonna, Amanda Palmer, Sophia Loren, Julia Roberts and Lena Dunham have made it a point to show their support, posing or posting publicly a view of their underarms. Photographers like Ben Hopper have subverted beauty ‘norms’ with caches of rhetorically savvy, powerfully adept photographs of women proudly owning their own patches of conspicuously integrated body hair.
Conceptually, the movement has an abundantly clear message: Women should be free of the pressure to alter their body image to conform to a socially constructed female ideal. But it goes far deeper than that.
I believe the point has less to do with armpit hair than with the automatic way we align our conceptions of beauty to the standard. Airbrushed magazine ads and photo-shopped images create a culture of unreality. And still, we let the judgments of others, of “society,” determine our values. I want some questions answered: When did the determining factor of beauty become anything aside from the way a person made us feel? When did kindness become less attractive than smooth skin?
Only now can the expression of a serially repressed group be heard. With new technologies come new kinds of virtual forums that allow ‘transgressors’ — rights advocates — to gather. This demonstration is one of many that aims to put men and women on a level playing field — both reverentially and perceptually. The gender binary breaks when everyone gets a say.
Feminism, in its most natural form, becomes an issue of pure, unbiased, un-tempered humanity, highlighting a fight that spans gender and identity and free expression. So everyone: Let your body hair grow if you want. Let it tickle your toes. Feel natural and beautiful. Shave if you want. Be smooth or prickly or coarse. I won’t judge you, and it honestly wouldn’t matter if I did.