by Manon Cuixeres<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The argument started the way arguments often do, on a Sunday afternoon during a family reunion. The day had been quiet so far, Clara and her dad had brought dessert and they were about to eat it in the living room, where Clara\u2019s grandmother was bringing a tray with coffee cups and a coffee pot. Hannah, Clara\u2019s aunt, had arrived just in time for coffee, and she was commenting on her niece\u2019s amazing leather skirt, when suddenly Clara shows her unshaved legs to her, proudly declaring, \u201cI don\u2019t shave anymore. I stopped entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It should be noted here that the women in this family have always had a painful relationship with their body hair. Clara\u2019s cousin Sophia was barely ten when her mother and grandmother bleached her arms and back\u2014apparently too hairy for a girl\u2014 using a mixture dated from the previous century that smelled horrible and stung. Later, Hannah, her daughter and Clara had all gone through the painful and expensive process of \u201cpermanently\u201d removing their armpit and pubic hair. Body hair, and how to remove them effectively, was often at the center of their conversation, to the point that Clara\u2019s dad had made it a joke. In this context, Clara\u2019s declaration is like a small revolution, but it also sets her apart from the rest of the women in the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh, really? We don\u2019t see anything through your tights.\u201d Hannah assumes her niece wants to hear a reassuring voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t wear tights this summer, though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow does your boyfriend take it?\u201d She sounds genuinely interested.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy boyfriend\u2019s opinion doesn\u2019t matter when it comes to me shaving my hair or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What men think is exactly what shouldn\u2019t matter to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hannah defends herself from what she takes as an accusation from her niece. \u201cI\u2019ve never shaved because of my boyfriend, I started when I was ten. He never told me I had <\/em>to shave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell, if you\u2019ve started shaving your hair when you were ten, he never had to tell you, did he? That\u2019s the thing, they don\u2019t need to tell us because we do it anyway, thinking it\u2019s natural.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hannah takes a sip of her coffee, but the liquid is too hot; she burns her tongue and has to spit the liquid into the cup she\u2019s holding. \u201cShit\u201d, she says, and as her mother passes her a paper napkin, she asks her niece again, \u201cBut what does Julio say then?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHis name is Juli\u00e1n, but yeah, he told me to let my hair grow everywhere<\/em>\u2014these are his words\u2014because removing it looks painful and it\u2019s not worth it. I had decided to stop shaving my armpits last Spring anyway, so I just took it a step further and stopped shaving entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAh, I really don\u2019t like hairy armpits. It\u2019s unhygienic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had a friend who didn\u2019t shave and had pubic louse!\u201d Clara rolls her eyes. \u201cOkay, just because you don\u2019t shave doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t take regular showers! I mean, that\u2019s just basic hygiene…\u201d She takes a bite off her slice of apple pie and sets it back on the small plate on her lap before continuing. \u201cBut if shaving your hair is a matter of hygiene, why do only women need to do it? And why should we shave our legs? They\u2019re not so dirty that bacteria will hide in the hair or whatever…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo, but hairy legs are not very… they\u2019re not very feminine<\/em>!\u201d She is reluctant to pronounce that last word, as if she knows that her reasoning is flawed, but can\u2019t help clinging to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAha!\u201d Clara exclaims triumphantly. \u201cWe shave for patriarchal aesthetic reasons; shaving is about controlling women\u2019s bodies, and if you don\u2019t think so then explain to me why some celebrities have received death threats or rape threats after showing their armpit hair?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hannah looks taken aback for a moment. \u201cYes, of course that\u2019s not okay, but I mean…\u201d She pauses for half a second before going on, \u201cI have a colleague who stinks! And my boyfriend also told me that he stank before he started shaving his armpits, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clara appears to be slightly annoyed at her aunt\u2019s stubbornness. \u201cLook, I sweat a lot, but shaving my armpits didn\u2019t make them less sweaty. I take a shower every day, and might wash my armpits a second time during the day… As I said, this is basic hygiene; it has nothing to do with being hairy or not.\u201d She speaks faster, clearly upset now, her face reddening. \u201cIf anything, pubic hair is a natural barrier against bacteria and infections! If you feel like your sweat is unhygienic, well first of all it\u2019s not, and second of all, if it makes you uncomfortable, a good place to start would be to stop wearing synthetic material such as polyester and turn to natural fibers such as cotton, silk, linen or viscose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She catches her breath, waiting for her aunt\u2019s answer, and her dad chooses that moment to join the conversation. \u201cOh yes, polyester is horrible. I had a shirt made of polyester, I could barely wear it for 15 minutes before it smelled. I only buy cotton now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hannah shrugs and admits, \u201cYes, you\u2019re right about that… but I still think that hair is unhygienic.\u201d Her tone is definitive, as if she wants to end the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The argument should have stopped here, since none of the parties were ready to negotiate the truth of their positions. But Clara, who always wants to have the last word, declares in a calm voice, \u201cOkay, let me say one more thing and then we can close this subject because it\u2019s clear that we won\u2019t get to an agreement here. We all have hands, right? We all use them to wipe our asses, right? We are all supposed to wash them after going to the bathroom because that\u2019s how hygiene works. It applies to everyone. And you\u2019re trying to make me believe that, even though men sweat as much as women, there is some kind of \u201chygiene\u201d particular to armpit hair that only applies to women? That sounds very much like bullshit to me, and I don\u2019t see why women should be the only ones who pay thousands of francs to continually remove their hair when men can just live their life unbothered.\u201d Hannah looks like she\u2019s about to say something, but Chloe cuts her short, talking louder. \u201cAnd I know <\/em>that some men, like your boyfriend apparently, shave their armpits, but they are not stigmatized if they don\u2019t, whereas women are.\u201d Clara drops her voice then, as if closing the subject for good, but her aunt still has something to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She tells the story of how her current boyfriend once was about to have sex with a woman, and as she undressed, he saw that she hadn\u2019t shaved her pubic hair, so he stopped her right there, gave her a razor and showed her the way to the shower. Clara looks sad for a moment, and then declares, \u201cI would have let him there with his dick between his legs.\u201d Her aunt responds that she would have done the same, but that the woman in question hadn\u2019t. But hair is still very much unhygienic, you see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The argument started the way arguments often do, on a Sunday afternoon during a family reunion. The day had been quiet so far, Clara and her dad had brought dessert and they\u00a0were about to eat it in the living room, where Clara\u2019s grandmother was bringing a tray with coffee cups and a coffee pot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8,7],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-8","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web1.unine.ch\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cThat is not true. Most men don\u2019t shave their armpits and they\u2019re fine.\u201d
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