Nothing is more absurd than companies advertising razors that take off body hair that isn’t even there.
I didn’t notice the absence of body hair in razor advertisements for women until I saw a short video called “An Adpology” released on Youtube on March 18, 2019 by British director Tina Bull.
“Sorry for shaving already shaved legs,” the video announcer said.
It was an eye-opening line. This video made me realize that the idea of a hairless female body was fueled through advertisement campaigns.
How did female body hair become such a taboo that even the hair removal industry is scared to show it?
Teen girls entering adulthood discover that their body hair is considered problematic. I’ll always remember hazardously shaving before PE class in school, only to witness girls teasing those who were not yet aware of their “feminine duty.”
Society quickly taught young girls that hairiness is ugliness.
For women, puberty marks the beginning of an expensive and time-consuming internal and external struggle against their own bodies.
In Britain for example, women spend an average of $29,940 in waxing unwanted hair in the course of a lifetime, according to an April 28, 2017 Harper’s Bazaar article.
Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, professor of critical theory at the University of Reading, edited a book titled “The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair,” in 2006 which gathered writing from 11 professors each researching a different social aspect of female body hair.
According to Lesnik-Oberstein, Western society may have broken a lot of established taboos around sexuality over the past few years but women's body hair remains an area of silence.
This cultural norm could be explained by the need to exaggerate physical differences in genders and a connection between female attractiveness and youth, according to Lesnik-Oberstein’s book.
But since the publication of “The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair”, advertisement companies have taken a few steps to increase body hair acceptance.
Billie, an American beauty company created in 2017, aims to change that beauty standard through an advertisement campaign showing women embracing their body hair, according to a July 1, 2018 Guardian article.
The Billie company avoids shaming women who make various decisions about their body hair using phrases including “However, Whenever, If ever” women would like to remove their body hair, the company has the products they need, according to its website.
At the end of their ad videos, some women are clean shaven and some are not: they’re introducing both possibilities as a personal choice.
We should congratulate these new progressive commercials, but this is just a first step.
Women's body hair is still mainly shown as something to be removed, and we can’t expect companies earning money from razors to completely change the negative body hair perception.
Change has to happen on the big screen and social media too.
In the 2001 film “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the main character Bridget shaves her already hairless legs before going on a date. In season 3, episode 16 of the popular sitcom “Friends,” the three female characters wax their already shiny and smooth legs.
Unlike the advertisement industry, movies don’t earn money from female body hair removal, so we could expect them to break this standard through their character representations.
But changing female body hair perception in society requires some effort from the media industry and also from us, by questioning our gender-based beauty standards.
Emily Ratajkowski, an American supermodel, posted an Aug 8, 2019 photo of her wearing smokey eyeshadow and a fancy lacy bralette with dark, hairy armpits on full display.
Some of the comments from both men and women under the post include “disgusting,” “gross,” and “you look like a man.” Reading this shows how long the road is before we can finally change the perception of female body hair.
While waiting for more acceptance in showing female body hair, I’ll be dreaming about a swimming pool full of women who aren’t stressed by every single hair uncovered by their swimsuits.
