Judy Jarvis ’07

Women’s hair has long been a loaded concept. For the Victorians in particular, “it became an obsession. In painting and literature, as well as in their popular culture, they discovered in the image of women’s hair a variety of rich and complex meanings, ascribing to it powers both magical and symbolic,” explains historian Elizabeth Gitter. ¹ Contemporary shampoo and conditioner ads feature women swinging their voluminous locks in the camera frame, the ads’ narratives congratulating the brand on its thickening and smoothing qualities. The hair featured is luxurious and never short. We are meant to gather that hair is a coveted good, to still accept the Victorian standard—but only if it exists on the head.

Hair on women’s armpits and legs, which has the same density as scalp hair, is not admired for its thickness or smoothness, nor its luxurious softness, despite growing from the same genes. Hair is lovely and “magical,” but with the strict stipulation that it is only so on female’s heads. But who’s stipulation is this? Historians respond, “the norm itself was initially fostered by depilatory marketers, who saw that money was to be made from convincing women that body hair was a flaw.”² Through pervasive advertising and framing body hair removal as a necessity rather than a choice, razor companies have successfully make a physiologically arbitrary action a socially necessary habit: Approximately 85 percent to 90 percent of women have unwanted body hair.”³

One could easily argue that all beauty standards are, at their root, arbitrary. “’Beauty’ is a currency system like the gold standard,” writes Naomi Wolf in the The Beauty Myth. As evidenced from consumer culture, ‘beauty’ need not have an explicit reason to be classified as so. The reason shaving is significantly different from other American beauty standards, however, is that rather than requiring an additive action like applying make-up to one’s face, this beauty standard requires removing something natural from one’s body. It is thus one of the most problematic beauty aesthetics, in part because its derivatives are so overlooked. Christine Hope argues that hair removal is a subtle push to return women to a child-like body, “to consider women as less than adults.” This desire is “reflected in and reinforced by the custom of female hair removal and the advertising which accompanied its introduction.”⁴

American female body hair shaving was triggered by a “sustained marketing assault” that began first against armpit hair in 1915, when sleeveless dresses came into fashion ⁵. An ad in the May 1915 issue of the upper-class women’s magazine Harper’s Bazaar features a woman with her sleeveless arms flung into the air, exhibiting her hairless armpits. The ad reads: “Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”⁶ Seventy-two percent of the hair remover ads in Harper’s Bazaar from 1915 to 1919 specifically mention underarm hair ⁷, most mentioning only underarm hair. In 1918, ads began mentioning “limbs,” though legs were not mentioned by name until 1923.

Sears Roebuck stores began selling sheer-sleeved dresses in 1922 and not-so coincidentally, the first women’s razors showed up for sale in their fall 1922 catalogue⁸. Ads from the mid-20s typically put equal emphasis on underarm and leg hair removal. The World War II-era shortening of skirts further helped advertisers’ thrust for leg hair removal, and “[b]y the middle of the century, attention had been drawn to lower parts of the anatomy and a tanned, shapely, hairless leg was a thing of beauty,” Hope observes in her inventory of Harper’s and McCall’s magazines’ hair-removal ads . Body hair removal had become a norm, as well as a public discourse, as evidenced by the headline of one of the McCall’s ads in the early 1940s: “Let’s Look at Your Legs—Everyone Else Does.”¹⁰ Due to these marketing coups, female body hair removal has become a contemporary, largely unquestioned staple of fashion.

This hairless version of reality is so pervasive that it goes against evolutionary meaning, but we pay little attention to it because social norms of beauty are dependent on it, social norms derived directly from fiscal gain. Corporate gain is a direct result of classifying body hair as shameful. No matter how brightly colored the ads or how cheerily the model smile while holding a razor to their tanned leg, ads for razors at their most basic telling women there is something wrong with one of their natural functions: hair growth. “Advertising aimed at women works by lowering our self-esteem,” writes Wolf.¹¹ The bottom line of razor marketing is selling women a product by which they may change themselves.

Like deodorant, razor marketing “arouses the psychological fear of unpopularity and exorcises it by showing how you may avoid embarrassment,” wrote early advertising experts Doris E. Fleischman and Howard Walden Cutler. And just as deodorant is marketed as a hygienic necessity, female leg and armpit hair is symbolically unhygienic. Were the argument of shaving for cleanliness and personal hygiene truly valid, it would follow that both genders would engage in obligatory hair removal, as did the ancient Egyptians. In the last few years, there has been a rise of a hairless male aesthetic, like Versace models with clean-shaven faces and chests; but, with such high percentages of women shaving, it is clear that the hairless beauty standard applies to women of all classes, whereas male body hairlessness seems to be predominantly at a haute couture level.

Advertising campaigns like the recent Schick Quattro assault, subtly but deftly assert the razor’s right over the woman’s body. The most expansive and inventive section of the company’s website is titled, “Quattro® Lingo.” The Lingo contains 24 made-up definitions of shaving-related terms, some of the more benign ones including, “Bathtub Tinsel, noun. The ring of itty-bitty hairs and soap film left in the tub after a serious shave.” Others are more loaded, like “Chastity Pelt, noun. What you have on your legs when you intentionally go without shaving before a date as a way of making yourself behave” and “Girlilla Warfare, noun. Temporarily suspending shaving as a way of punishing your mate for something. Could backfire if you end up uncovering a newfound fetish.” The humor in both is dependent on the reader’s assumption that body hair on a woman is disgusting and would thus be a ‘punishment’ for your mate if you didn’t shave, or an incentive not to engage in sexual activity. Not shaving your body hair is self-punishing in regards to your sex life, these two in plainly imply. (Unless, of course your man has a hair “fetish,” the second term concedes; for liking body hair on a woman could only be a deviant “fetish.”)

The marketing campaign underscores femininity as the most basic reason to shave, asserting that a woman is anachronistic and bestial if she does not shave. The cave-woman illustration and caption evidences this bluntly: “Tame the Cave Lady, verb. To shave out-of-the-way places such as the toes—where women aren’t shown by movies or magazines to have hair, yet almost all do.”

Others more subtly hit home that shaving is a hygienic necessity. “Jaybird, noun. A carefully executed, super-thorough shave to set your mind at ease before a checkup, massage or other appointment that calls for shedding your clothes in front of a total stranger.” Since hair removal is in no way hygienic (in fact, if blades are shared or not cleaned and changed appropriately, shaving itself could actually be unhygienic) the ads can only imply that uncleanliness results from not shaving.

The “voice of the herd”¹² may indeed compel women to shave, but the hairless herd originated and is perpetuated by marketing interests, interests that American women have internalized as “beauty” and justify as a personal choice. “I shave because I like it” is a frequent assertion, but a historically inaccurate statement. Women shave because Harper’s Bazaar arbitrarily told them to in 1915. But razor companies are doing everything possible to make sure you forget it, because the simple origins of female body hair removal are enough to make us question this destructive, expensive, and unnecessary cultural habit.

1. Elisabeth G. Gitter, “The Power of Women’s Hair in the Victorian Imagination,” PMLA 99.5 (1984): 936.
2. Merran Toerien, Sue Wilkinson, and Precilla Y.L Choi, “Body Hair Removal: The ‘Mundane’ Production of Normative Femininity,” Sex Roles 52. 5/6 (2005): 404.
3.Marika Tiggerman and Sarah J. Kenyon, “The hairlessness norm: The removal of body hair in women” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 39.11-12 (1998): 873.
4. Christine Hope, “Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture” Journal of American Culture, 5.1 (1982): 98.
5. Ibid 93.
6. Ibid 94.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid 95.
9. Hope 96.
10. Ibid 97.
11. Wolf 276.
12. Ewen 137.

By Phillipe Kleefield ’09

As much as they might like to disagree, most gay men on Vassar campus are easily identifiable. Whether they wear their polos a little loose or their Diesel jeans baggy, they are easily distinguishable from your average straight boy. They may flamboyantly prance around campus or chose to lay low, but they are all equally homosexual; there are no shades of gray. However, in contrast to the gay man’s stereotype, the bear community is hyper-emasculating the gay man’s image and making its presence known New York City and around the world.

As of late, the gay community has seen a rise of the “bear culture.” Bears define themselves as mature, masculine men who seek to maintain an outwardly manly appearance. Bears come in many forms; however, generally, beards and chest hair are an unspoken requirement. Sometimes bears are chunky and overweight; sometimes they are muscular and defined, like your archetypal man’s man. For the most part, a bear is outwardly tough, lending no insight to the fact that in the bedroom, they may show a much more vulnerable side. Yet a complete definition of a bear is highly debatable.

Time-Out New York, a magazine dedicated to weekly events in New York City, recently focused their gay and lesbian subsection on the bear community. They listed an assortment of clubs for bears, ranging from campy monthly events such as “XXL’s Transatlantic Tea Dance,” to the more hardcore “WOOF bar” in Chelsea. Bears are everywhere, even invading the online dating scene with websites such as bigmusclebears.com or others, where one posts a picture and surfers determine whether or not you are a bear. GLAAD and the Center in NYC include links to bear-friendly websites, recognizing the presence of the bear community. While the bear movement started in the San Francisco bay area in the ‘80s, it contemporarily has become a popular, mainstream movement. Look closely at the muscle man sitting next to you on the subway; he might be on bigmusclebears.com.

Unfortunately, bears can be patronizing to gay men who display effeminate style and mannerisms. On popular bear dating sites, a typical ad might ask for “no fats or fems, hair’s a plus.” While many bears give off a “straight,” rugged, manly man vibe, many of them are just as flamboyant as the typical club kid, and condescension towards other gays is problematic. Bears may be bears, but there is no need to further segregate within a community that already suffers from so much discrimination. I’m not asking for peace and love; after all, gay men are not a homogenous group of people. I’m just asking for some common respect.

For fun, I recently posted a basic profile on bigmusclebears.com to see whether bears were really as selective as they come off. For those of you who know me, rugged, manly and masculine are not the first three adjectives that come to mind. I recently checked the profile and I’ve had 93 people put me on their “I like” list, an X-rated version of the Facebook “poke.” I’ve also received messages in which people ask me if they can be my Daddy. I was pretty surprised to find responses to my profile, mainly due to my “unbearly” qualities and my lack of use on the website. If bears are as manly, rugged and put off by effeminate men as they would like to think, then what do they want with an old queen like me?

The qualities that make you a bear are constantly in question. If you are hairless and effeminate, but really attracted to the bear-type, are you still a bear? If you have some qualities that fit the description, but not all, are you still a bear? If you want to find out for yourself, start up a profile on bigmusclebears.com—you might find a bear looking for a cub. Check out the local run down bar, and you might find a daddy looking for a boy toy. The bear community hasn’t quite made it to Vassar campus yet, but when it does, straight boys beware: your buddies might just be BITs (bears in training).