From My Journal...

I recently made a post in my Journal about how happy my wife and I were to see an unshaven girl in shorts at a movie we went to last week. One of my friends commented so I decided to ask her a few questions in regards to her shaving habits. Well, some anonymous woman came by and decided to answer questions that were not intended for her and then proceeded to leave me this remark : "I'm wandering why you are so attentive to hair! isn't people's choices? i think we owe every humain beings respect and let them decide if they want to shave/wax/lazer/electrolysis we should not judge anybody that thinks hair is disgusting or appealing."

To which I replied with... "Do you really feel that women have a fair choice when it comes to not shaving? There are countless businesses that have on their job descriptions words like "the applicant must maintain a clean look". To them that means have shaven bodyparts. Also, are you really free to make a choice if the consequences are social stigma and being ostracized from the community or have your choice of job limited by what you are not willing alter on your body. What would you think if the vast majority in society pierced their lips, both eyebrows, and nose and then proceeded to ostracize, berate and demean those who didn't. Is that freedom to you?

I asked a person one day why she was wearing pants on a very hot day and she said because she just didn't feel like making a political statement that day. She felt like being anonymous. Imagine if every time you left the house people would stare at you and have little whispering conversations about you, would you really feel free or would you feel a bit trapped.

This is that American attitude to tell people that they have freedom of speech but then make it so there are dire consequences for speaking something that deviates from the norm. Just because you are not arrested for something doesn't mean that you are free to do it.

How can you have freedom of choice if one side, motivated by greed, has a million venues to push forward their ideals while the other has word of mouth. Little girls grow up seeing shaven bodyparts everywhere. On TV, in Movies, in Magazines, at the beach, from their mothers, on the internet, the list goes on and on. Very few have any female role-models of any kind that don't shave. How can you make an informed choice with that much bias? You can't imagine the look of astonishment I've seen on preteen girls' faces after they've seen my wife's legs. Sort of like there is an alien walking amongst them.

Do you know what the statistics of women shaving in North America were prior to 1915? 0%. Women didn't just suddenly decide to shave on a whim. There was a huge add campaign that was started by the Gillette company to convince women that hair was unsightly. This was done, in part, because as part of the (WWI) war effort Gillette gave free razors in care packs for the male service men fighting. This, of course, made a big dent in profits. So the men, at Gillette, decided it was bad exclude more than half of their potential clients and went after the female market. They somehow decided that armpit hair would be the target of their onslaught. Obviously things worked out better than they could have imagined.

What you can judge people on is having a knee-jerk mentality based on ignorance and fear. The harshest critics of natural women these days are the vast majority of women who deep down feel they have to be hairless in order to function normally in society. They often get angry at women who don't conform, because they feel they have to. This stems from fear of rejection. You seem to think that you don't fall into this category. That is certainly possible, but I don't believe that you can really honestly say that it is a question of choice. If it is then why not stop shaving for a year of your life and wear all the regular cloths you wear (including summer) and see how free you feel. The one caveat would have to be that the year must start either before May 1st or after September 15th. Shaving the one time in June/July/August would change the effect because you can effectively look shaven for 2-3 months, especially if you wax.

Oh wait, I forgot. You wouldn't do that because you are choosing to shave. Isn't it amazing how billions of women are making the same exact choices all over the world? Isn't it even more amazing that they only seem to start making these choices soon after multinational corporations tell them on TV, in movies, and magazines that women are hairless? I know that I always associate billions of people all over the world doing exactly the same thing with being free [sic]."


Unfortunately the women came back to say : "Yes people employers ask their employes to have a clean look, it DOES NOT mean you have to shave. It just means look professional, wear clear stockings to keep the hair close to your skin if you need to.

Yes america likes to TELL people what to do, it DOES NOT mean you have to obey. People need to learn to be assertive and have higher self-esteen / self-worth and stick to their beliefs but please don't be rude / disrespectfull and judge everybody else that isn't on your side.

People that are trully affected by this hairless societal norm should find alternatives that would honnor their beliefs while functionning in this society."


The last thing she wrote (in Bold) really saddened me. Pretty disheartened, I replied with "1. There are jobs that demand women show their bare legs (ie amusement park worker, F1 local hostess, and many others). Neither stockings nor leg hair would be acceptable for such jobs.

2. My point was that it is possible to go against what corporate America wants, but there will be extreme & unwarranted consequences. I don't think I was being rude at all in pointing this out. What I personally judge other people by is up to me. The same way that you and others judge me by what I say & do.

3. So you are saying that people who don't want to shave should have a more difficult life because they are making a choice that doesn't conform to what is dictated to them! Why should someone who simply doesn't want to do something to their own body be forced to seek "alternatives"? That is wrong on so many levels."

And I ended the discussion there by closing my journal to anonymous posters. The whole incident took what was a really good day for my wife (proud she_bears member) & I and turned it into yet another example of how brainwashed we as a society are becoming. I hope I haven't stepped on anyone's toes by posting this. I know that this is an important women's issue and as a man I don't have the ability to feel it as closely as someone living it does.