What Do You Think of the "Free to Be Hairy" Movement
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paperpudding wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »People can also address more than one issue at a time. I notice a tendency for people to dismiss non world important issues that they don't agree with by saying where are your priorities?
As if people addressing a non world important issue can not also have more serious concerns.
If that were not the case none of us would be on chit chest thread at all, unless we had no other concerns or priorities.
Are you able to summarise very briefly the point you've been making?
People shouldn't care about what others do with their bodies? Women shouldn't have to shave? Women have to shave because of culture, and that's a bad thing / good thing / just a thing? If women have to shave then so should men? Women and men should be treated the same in all things? Women are at a disadvantage in our society? The patriarchy dictates what women do with their bodies?
This thing has been going on for 9 pages too long and I'm just confused now.
The point I am making is that western culture has distorted beauty standards for women so that natural body hair is seen as more than a personal choice but as disgusting and feral and that we should examine our own prejudices about such issues.
Yes I do think women are at a disadvantage compared to men over this as such artificial standards and connotations if one does not follow them are not applied to men to anywhere near the same extent.
Your premise is that Western culture (magazines/beauty market) is what influences and not the other way around. The market puts forth what sells and eliminates what doesn't. If there were not a market or appeal for women with shaved armpits, not amount of marketing could make it so. My opinion on the matter is that women typically do what they themselves think makes them attractive or comfortable. I don't think you're giving women enough credit to determine for themselves what they like and are suggesting that they only like what they like because society told them so. I personally don't like body hair, on men or women. To me, it is a genetic throwback to our ancestral days and is completely unnecessary from a biological standpoint (except for the hair that grows in our noses and eyelashes which have a particular purpose).
No I don't agree that women just do what makes them attractive or comfortable - if that were so why would women in the last 50 years or so in western culture all be shaving hair from arms and legs but nobody needed to do so to be attractive or comfortable before our time or in other cultures??
Of course people are influenced by the media and by cultural standards around them - none of us make individual decisions in a vaccuum, is naive in the extreme to think we do.
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biggsterjackster wrote: »biggsterjackster wrote: »Wasn't that a thing in the 80's? It's back? Cool!
I don't remember it back then, and if it was, I probably would have been against it then....being a know-it-all teenager and all back then.
Maybe just in Europe, where I lived back then. Nena was pretty hairy.
Still fairly common over there....of course, that's where I probably came to not care if a woman does or doesn't shave being that I spent quite a bit of time in the Med when I was in the Navy. I was starting to take notice of double standards at the time (men get their head buzzed in boot camp, women don't; women are allowed to wear earrings, men aren't; etc.) and wondered why women over in the states are expected to shave their pits and legs, but men aren't.1 -
You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross1
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_A_Real_Mouthful wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »_A_Real_Mouthful wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Well not in this thread they haven't - although the attitudes to women have been expressed several times.
And interesting that men can do nothing ie be their natural un hair removed bodies, but women cannot.
Natural men are ok but we want to glorify artificial concepts of beauty for women.
so there's nothing wrong with fat gross dudes who can only grow a neckbeard then eh?
but there is. everybody makes fun of them. rightly so. just google neckbeard meme.
and women can do anything they want. if you or anybody wants to grow their leg/armpit hair out 6 feet long, knock yourself out, nobody can/will stop you. but its not what most guys want. most women would look at you as aberrant as well if you did I'd think.
trying to change societal standards of what most heterosexual men want by growing your leg hair out is the same as hardcore christians believing they can "pray away the gay".
its not going to happen.
Yes but the point isn't what heterosexual men prefer but the fact that this is so ingrained in western cultures as an artificial standard of beauty. Men don't just prefer something in a vacuum - it is a cultural expectation developed over the last century in our culture.
Other cultures and other times ( in fact just about every culture and times except ours) have not expected women to have hair less legs or armpits.
And it goes way beyond just having your own preference - eg the post just after this discussion showing the photos and saying 'disgusting'
Why is the natural female body disgusting?
why are balding guys who rock a combover disgusting?
sexual preference same as everything else. true those guys could keep just letting it grow but it looks absurd when they do and its definitely not preferred in the sexual marketplace.
artificial standards aren't always a bad thing. or else we'd all look like grungy cave men/women and we'd stink to high heaven...if you say women shaving their leg/body hair is an artificial standard, why not makeup? what about deodorant? what about clear skin products? moisturizers? toothpaste? after all its all natural to not use those things- where do you draw the line? who gets to decide the line?
the sexual market decides it. anybody is free to do anything they want with their own body, least here in the US. I love that, its a beautiful thing, but you can't act like there's something wrong with everybody else when you as an individual choose to go against the flow. that's just silly.
Thats probably the most intellectual thing I think Ive ever heard you say
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You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
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You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
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paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
why are you so defensive? everyone is just stating their personal opinions, and then you respond to argue said opinion...
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paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
You make a valid point. I was wondering the same thing.
wasn't this hairy movement done with the "we are women hear us roar", bra burning women of the 60s? I'm amazed this thread has gone on this long well done @pie_eyes look at your thread!!!!
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paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
You make a valid point. I was wondering the same thing.
wasn't this hairy movement done with the "we are women hear us roar", bra burning women of the 60s? I'm amazed this thread has gone on this long well done @pie_eyes look at your thread!!!!
It is a powerful thread indeed! Let's keep it going with a haiku:
Julia Roberts —
Henry David Thoreau — mourn —
Relentless gray pubes.0 -
toni_leigh820 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
why are you so defensive? everyone is just stating their personal opinions, and then you respond to argue said opinion...
I didn't think I was defensive - yes, everyone is stating their personal opinions and I am responding to them - that's what a discussion is.
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I totally thought this was something else0
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I don't like body hair, on myself or others. We should all be hairless from the neck down.
/just shaved yesterday. Yes, there too.0 -
paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
All I can say is that I have a friend who is female who was definitely all about not shaving and the whole empowerment thing...she had a very difficult time controlling her body odor no matter what she did and ultimately she shaved her pits because she is an accounting professional and having to deal with clients, etc. She doesn't shave her legs or anything else.
I always told her she should just try a man's deodorant but for whatever reason she never did.0 -
paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
You make a valid point. I was wondering the same thing.
wasn't this hairy movement done with the "we are women hear us roar", bra burning women of the 60s? I'm amazed this thread has gone on this long well done @pie_eyes look at your thread!!!!
When I started this thread I never imagined it would go on like this
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I shave my armpits , i like it better1
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I find hairy legs and arms on women to be attractive including myself. As well as being completely smooth. I also find shaved legs on a man to be attractive. Or having lots of hair. There are reasons for both to be attractive... probably TMI or too racy to list them here... For some reason though, if a man or woman has a shaved head with no body hair, it becomes sort of uncanny and weird though... personal preference.
as sort of an aside, January 1st of 2015 I shaved my head and stopped shaving everything else. I guess you could say that I wanted to see what it was like to be a person who wasn't trying to be "pretty". I have never followed fashion "trends" but I have been always fascinated with clothing. The textures, the details, the sensations of combining things to make different looks. To me, clothing as self expression is an art form, along with hair and makeup. Not to follow standards of a culture, but to express what is within one's own heart for as long as that need to express remains with you. My expression since childhood was extreme feminine. Long hair, flowing dresses, silks and florals. Softness and fullness and layers. I had grown some sort of feeling though that it all may have been some sort of ego act in order to be considered a some kind of unique beauty so I shaved my head and wore flannels and men's jeans for a year. I immediately realised that my hair and my body really aren't me as soon as I saw my hair all in a pile on the floor. At first, the change was so extreme that I felt completely masculine and unattractive. It was as if I didn't know who I even was after all this time being me, without the clothes and hair to tell me... even though none of these things i had bought or made by hand to wear were forced on me in any way. After a while though, without the long hair to hide behind, I started examining all sorts of things within myself that I didn't realise were in there... things i wouldn't have realised maybe for years, maybe forever, had i not tried something different.
You are all everything and nothing. Everything is in you. I think there just has to be a reason for it to come out in order for it to be something that you show... the right catalyst or the right soup ingredients all together can change so many things about what we think we prefer in many ways but maybe not all...
what is really nice to hear is someone say "i have no permanent preference, but i have curiousity about the reasons why someone is choosing or not choosing to shave, or really anything else for that matter" It's the reasons behind why people do what they do that are so interesting. And I think it really all boils down to whatever happens to be meeting their needs at the moment.
Apologies, I have a tendency to either be long winded or silent for months and i am in the mood to communicate this week.
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paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
That's right. They don't stink probably because they shave! I'm not saying it's any different for women. Of course it's potentially stinky for both genders!1 -
paperpudding wrote: »You are free to do whatever you wish...one reason I would not do this is that bacteria loves hair to 'glob' onto and then you stink...so gross
Hardly any men where I live shave their legs or under their arms yet they don't stink.
Why is it gross and stinky if women do not do so? I don't think bacteria can differentiate.
That's right. They don't stink probably because they shave! I'm not saying it's any different for women. Of course it's potentially stinky for both genders!
ok...I totally read this incorrectly! Yes..I guess I'm not thinking as Big Gulp alluded too. lol!!0
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