“that’s different”
26 February 2006 | thoughts | 1 Comment
Violet and I have been having various discussions about some of the societally imposed differences between women and men. One of the better examples would be shaving of body hair.
I apologize in advance for the likely disjointed flow of this entry (as if I’m normally a perfectly organized writer who never gets sidetracked).
I’ve known guys who absolutely would not have sex with a girl unless her legs were shaved. However, I’d bet that if any woman tried putting a “you must have your back shaved/waxed” constraint on sex, this same guy would find it completely unreasonable. While it would be harder to personally shave one’s back, some quick searching turns up some salons which show back waxing to be cheaper than leg waxing. Less money, and likely less time; so from a strictly practical sense, requiring hair free legs seems to be a harsher constraint than a hair free back. Making the picture even more muddy is that a lot of women would probably think that the woman was requesting a lot more in the back shaving than the guy was with the leg shaving. Why?
“Because that’s different.” Because in the year 2006 society has decreed that the ISO standard of women’s beauty in North America includes legs and armpits free of hair. But who and what is society, and how do these standards get set? I joked saying that it’s an ISO standard, but that would be better than reality. At least that way, there would be a model for how one could try to change the situation.
Society at the grand levels is nebulous. Include the entire Earth, and society is too diverse to be a useful concept to talk about. The most specifics thing one could say about a whole Earth society is that taking another human’s life against their will is often considered wrong. One can’t even say always, as sometimes it’s been declared within a mini society that it’s OK to kill an entire village and let “God” sort them out, racism and other such mind rubbish.
In order to have a usable definition of society, let’s consider a smaller segment or a country. Both of the countries I’ve lived in, the US and Canada, have similar societal regards over male and female body hair. Specifically men don’t have to shave anything, except perhaps facial hair and keep the head on their hair short (except for those doing comb overs). Women should shave their armpits, and legs; and shaving/shaping pubic hair is an asset. I think that when most people talk about “society” they mean the society of the country (or at least state/province or city) that they live in.
I have a problem with looking at society as an entire country. Heck, there’s even this problem when just examining a state/province or even a city. There’s no control.
This lack of control is what people seem to have a love/hate relationship with. The broad power, and lack of an individual face seems to elevate society almost to god-ship. Because of this god named Society, a man can decree that only women who make the effort to keep their legs hairless is mate-worthy, and actually have good chances of finding a mate.
Society isn’t a beneficent god. No, society is both Yin and Yang rolled into one. Society gives rights and obligations. Society can make life hard. It’s something to sometimes hate and fight against. Hating it just makes it more powerful.
I mentioned I didn’t like the concept of Society because of the lack of control. How about we consider rescaling “society” once again. Let’s take the god out of it. We’ll declare a non-deity society will only be composed of the people that one chooses to value the opinions of. Suddenly one has a lot more control. If I come across someone who says that they’re not going to seriously consider my opinions on a subject because of my gender, then I remove them from my society. If a “friend” wants to open up internment camps for the detention of citizens of middle eastern decent, then that person is suddenly just a zimboe. Out of my society.
I’m not advocating ostracizing anyone who holds slightly different opinions from yourself. Rather, I think that those who try to spread a meme of obligation are worth tossing an oyster shell or two at. Don’t kill the heretic, simply don’t be their friend. Believing in the xian god is all well and good and you can be my friend. Believe that everyone should be obligated to be xian and a brick wall will make better companionship. Someone who finds the aesthetics of shaved legs appealing is all well and good. Someone who believes that women are not fully human (and thus sexual beings) because they don’t remove hair from their legs isn’t worth knowing. Heck, I used to keep my leg hair short with an electric trimmer because I’m not a big fan of body hair. But I realize that I control myself. Even at the time I was almost shaving, I was dating a girl who would only shave her lower legs because she declared her upper legs’ hair to be thin enough to not be worth bothering about.
I don’t think that enough people realize that they have any power. One woman alone deciding to give up on the hassle, and pain of shaving/waxing might have a harder time finding a boy/girlfriend who’s OK with that, but if she dislikes shaving will ultimately benefit from it. However, if every woman who dislikes shaving stopped it (while I know women who like hairless legs, I haven’t knowingly met one who liked shaving/waxing. I suspect that if most thought they could “get away with it” that after a few years they’d find that the aesthetic benefit of hairless legs didn’t outweigh the negative factors. (Note way up above that I said that I used to trim my hair short with a trimmer. Heck, this was 5 minutes a day and the trimmer wasn’t even scraping off skin like a razor does and I couldn’t be bothered.)
Now, let’s take a general look at how this would affect the dating/association pool. I imagine that of those who place a requirement on leg shaving will also have other requirements. Sure, there can be some perfectly feminist guys who believe in a woman’s power being equal to a man. But they have such a hairless leg fetish (don’t tell me “It’s not a fetish, it’s just the way things are”; if you can’t get excited when confronted with natural legs, then yes, it’s a fetish. Accept it, bathe in it and come to the debate table intellectually clean.) that they have a need for a girl who shaves. But baring fetishes, the obligation of leg shaving is a meme which reduces a woman’s power. I wouldn’t even say that a fetishist necessarily must take on the meme of women are obligated to shave their legs. Rather they could have accepted a meme that they are slightly handicapped by dealing in a smaller population pool of people who choose to shave their legs.
More specifically, if fetishist A meets person B who happens to match A’s fetish, A will inform B of A’s fetish, and make sure it is understood that if B wants to spend a happy life forever with A, any maintenance to the fetish must be continued. If A does not inform B of the fetish; then either A is being intellectually dishonest to A’s self about the existence of the fetish, or A has a fetish and holds onto the memeplex that maintenance related to the fetish is considered to be an obligation, and thus it isn’t worth mentioning early on in the relationship.
Leg shaving is linked to the memeplex that women can be made into objects of beauty and they should work hard at it. Layers of paints, tints and powders should obscure the ugly face a woman is born with an make it better. Razors should scrape skin, or the hair should be pulled out by the root, with the exception of head hair which should be long and soft, maximizing maintenance. Essentially, a woman’s work should be to try and make up for all of the failings that her birth into flesh was. Meanwhile, men don’t require maintenance as they’re not potential objects of beauty so why bother trying.
Is that a belief system that any woman should want to support?
It could be argued that the preening isn’t an issue of hiding declared flaws, but rather trying to accentuate one’s beauty. But I must admit that from the sense of obligation, I find it hard to believe that “accentuating beauty” is anything other than misogynist apologetics, or dishonesty to one’s self.
Initially if all women began to stop shaving (only if they decided the cons outweighed the pros), initially this would greatly effect competition in the dating pool. All the men would try to flock to those who still did shave their legs. But who would exactly would be flocking? There will be some fetishists who are otherwise great catches. There will be men still living in the 1950’s (ostensibly, not a good long-term catch IMHO). And there will be men who don’t care if a woman shaves her legs or not and likely carry a lot of other beliefs about women not facing requirements that men don’t have to face. But once it becomes clear that fewer women are shaving, such men will probably become more interested in those women not shaving. Firstly, they won’t have to complete with a larger dating pool of men requiring hair free legs, and secondly a woman who thinks about a situation and decides to act as her strength will likely be more appealing to such a man. When all that’s left for the shaving women are fetishists and misogynists the “pro” column becomes a lot lighter.
The problem that I come across in such thought games is how to consider Society vs. society. In the example of leg shaving, it could initially be considered a strong “pro” that there will be a larger dating pool, and thus the decision to shave wins out over dry legs with red bumps that hurt, as well as the approximately 30 minutes lost in the shaving process. But if one decides that Society is a moot point, and one only wants to consider the society one builds, then there is an acceptance that one’s philosophy will be a hindrance, but that moves Society’s declarations of the style at the time out of the pro in the “leg shaving” column, and puts it into the “change my life philosophy” column. Suddenly it might become easier to make a decision to leave one’s legs natural.
Transitioning from thinking of Society to thinking of “small ess” society would seem like ultimately a beneficial philosophical choice. More so, the more who transition, the stronger the benefit. However when Society has gotten to the point where ignorance can be considered a good thing, and politics and religion are not for “polite conversation” it seems that it’s a large battle for any who want to live in society rather than Society. But if you are one of those who tends to hate and rail against Society, consider thinking about choosing one’s own society.
There’s also the issue that I’m not fully sure of the Universality of moving out of Society. If adopted on the large scale in theory there will be a pool of non-obligaters, and multiple separate pools of obligaters. I’m not sure how much different this would be from current Society, and of all the unimaginable pros and cons.
Bleh, those are the thoughts which are in my head today, and it reminds me of some entries I want to also write on, but I’m done for today.
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Brava, Coffee! Well said! I think that men who also eliminate fat women from their dating pool (thus dating only thin women) are also fetishists. But saying that out loud to Society meets with a whole lot of resistance. PS My old man came of age in the 50’s and he’s OK with the hairy legs etc. Like someone said on iblamethepatriarchy.com, maybe one day women will be clamouring for merkins (pubic wigs) when the tide of mainstream beauty images shifts the other way back to hairy!!!