I have to confess, it was very late in life before it occurred to me that some women might take pride and pleasure in - or at least be indifferent to - their natural facial/body hair. It seemed like such a universal and deeply entrenched idea that everyone - male and female - found this hair unattractive, that I suppose I always assumed that women with mustaches either didn't care what they looked like or came from a very different culture.

These days, going to cabaret shows and indie concerts, it's not unusual for hipster women to draw on mustaches with eyeliner or glue on fake goatees, and it looks rather cute...so I wonder what all the fuss was about. Who wouldn't want to look a bit more like, for example, Frida Kahlo?

Does anyone here come from a culture where facial hair on women is actually seen in a positive light? I get the impression that it's not such a big deal in some countries, but I don't think I've been to one yet...

That's fucking depressing. I actually spend hours researching laser hair removal treatments for use at home, and they were all super expensive, the cheapest was like £50, in the end I was like fuck this shit and ordered an expensive vibrator.

It's frustrating though, that hair removal is not only expensive, whatever method you use, and it adds up over the years, but it's time consuming as well, (and often painful)

I can understand how as a culture we've come to a place where female body hair is seen as unattractive, (no doubt there'll be comments in this thread outlining why it's hideous) but it would be nice if we had enough of a collective consciousness to say, well here's all the reasons against stressing over hair removal, maybe we should just stop?

"The world is full of women with beards. Or at least they have the potential to have a beard ... instead of spending the time, and the money, on the waxing, and the shaving, and the electrolysis and the plucking."
--Jennifer Miller
http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/nytimes/917M-000-012.html

Well, I know that they're working on a pill that removes body hair by interfering with the signal pathway between between post-pubescent hormonal changes and hair growth, so these people will probably all be out of business soon anyway.

"It's more obvious than you think", ah sure thing. To be honest, many guys don't even notice when a girl's just gotten a haircut, or has lost 5 pounds, but now all of a sudden we're made out to be the sex with the eagle eye, that actually cares about this? It's degrading for women, and what it implies about men isn't too nice either.

Quite a few girls have told me that they were surprised by the fact that, after not having been in relationships / out dating for a while, whilst being subjected to glossy mags and these type of ads, how cool and laid back guys were on the topic of beauty / body shape / clothes. And even in the rare cases of guys actually caring, girls, would you really want to look sideways at a guy that cares about the shape of your labia and the two stray face hairs you may have? Spending money on procedures like this is like legitimising the existence of idiots like that, and eventually, creating more of them.

I wish women would muster the solidarity to and self-respect to collectively boycott crap like that, you'd be surprised how quickly male opinion would change to accommodate for this. The amount of power a woman has over men is something most women don't even fully realise, let alone use. Why so many women are wilfully putting themselves through immense psychological (and often physical) pressure to conform to some sexist, idealised, irrational and rather unattainable beauty ideal when they could just show all of it the middle finger, and still get cute guys, enough friends and lead a happy life will forever be beyond me.

I'm in a sort of early menopause (I'm 40) and am getting stray chin hairs. I do pluck them (or sometimes swipe them with a razor if I'm feeling lazy) and well, gone.

I do have a weird reaction to seeing facial hair in the mirror; it really disturbs me. But my husband thinks it's hilarious. "You have a beard hair! Cute!"

Apparently his grandma had them and so he thinks they're amusing and not OMG FREAKY. So I guess I could grow them out and braid them if they didn't bug me.

Everyone who has posted a comment relating female body hair to male opinion even (especially) to claim that male opinion would be welcoming: you're missing the point.

I find body hair an interesting topic...
i'm 24 but only started dating a year ago, shortly after I came out (as lesbian). Before I started dating I was super worried about body hair - Nair on the upper lip, pluck the stray chin hair, etc. And I was terrified about how I would be expected to maintain my pubic hair once I was in a relationship and having sex with someone - I mean, really, everywhere you turn you hear about how women should maintain themselves "down there"!

And then I started dating a woman and realized that neither of us have any expectations for the other's grooming, besides cleanliness. I don't know if that's generalizable to other lesbians - probably women have as varied opinions as men on the topic of hair, and I just got lucky. But after being with a woman who doesn't expect me to shave or trim or pluck - not even the weird nipple hairs (which no one mentions, but come on, someone else has to have those), I very much doubt I'd ever be willing to go to that trouble for anyone again. It's something I really appreciate about my partner, that she doesn't ask me to change my body in any way - we don't say, "lose weight!" (how many times did I hear my parents say that to each other, and to us kids?) or "shave this!" or "bleach that." I'm more often embarrassed to get caught shaving or whatever.

In fact, being with a woman and loving another woman's body unconditionally has been the single best thing to help me counteract all the terrible societal messages we get everyday about our bodies. It's also nice to have someone to talk to about those pressures and messages, how they affected us as teens and now, how we relate to food - it's nice to talk about those things with someone who you know approves of your body :) And because of that, we can make the conscious effort to often send each other body-positive messages. I think that that is all easier in a two-woman relationship, but I also don't see why it couldn't be the same in a sensitive opposite-sex relationship.

Ever since in 7th grade a boy in my class told me that I have more facial hair than he did, I've felt self conscious. I immediately plucked my "mustache" (and still do it to this day).. and as I was shaving my armpits today, I was wondering: why do I have to do this when men don't have to? oh life..

One thing that interests me about this issue is that not only are we supposed to be disgusted by our facial hair, we're supposed to go through all sorts of inconvenient and sometimes painful ordeals to remove it. I have a beard and moustache, and (like billions of men and an unknown number of women) I shave it off every morning, when I'm brushing my teeth and putting my contacts in--no big deal. But apparently that's not OK--we're supposed to bleach, wax, pluck, depilate, laser--anything but simply shave it off, because that somehow unacceptably compromises our femininity or something.

@ alexkeller

What I tried to do with my post is mention that there are always enough people out there who have an alternative perception of beauty and gender roles. Denying this but at the same time claiming that many women aren’t as superficial as men in their own ways criteria-wise (proof needed here), is plain-out wrong.

I never mentioned it. I never denied it. I never said something like “Women aren’t as superficial as men”. What I want you to know though, is the following: if women prefer men with full bank accounts they search for a provider. No man is forced to get with such a woman. Such a woman will render an equally old-fashioned service to the man whose money she plans to live of off: the role of status-enhancing trophy. This can be a very stable relationship if no irrational feelings of romance are attached. So actually we cannot talk about this like it’s something superficial: it is completely rational. Both earn rewards for the effort they have put into grooming themselves into the acceptable man and woman.

To put male pressures off as less significant or less debilitating in this respect is rather female-centric, I hesitate to wager they can be and often are equally debilitating.

They are not. There is an universal devaluing of the female. Gay men, for example, or men that look gay who are considered female because it can be speculated that they prefer to penetrate themselves are killed in higher numbers than lesbians, at least in the USA.

As for the part about ‘the unworthy’ that men “will not stick up for”, that is hard to disprove seeing that I wouldn’t really know what studies I could toss at you without you putting them off as skewed / small sample size / males that conducted the study, etc, etc. So all I can say to this one is I digress, if this is your view.

You misunderstood. It might happen that women will not stick up for women considered unworthy or non-compliant to enhance their status. Men have their foot soldiers- because such a fear is instilled in women to be unlovable to men (since this means punishment) some of them will readily ruin other women to get dog biscuits. (I’m not going to word it differently because this is just the way it is.)
Also: you give in because there is no way to convince me that you are right? You accuse me of being biased but in fact you have just declared that talking to me is useless since you think you know that I cannot be convinced. Now who is biased?

Putting off the often intense pressure to conform that many males feel as ‘patriarchal benefit that is enjoyed’ is ludicrous, and offensive, in my opinion. It’s just as bad as saying “women are naturally looks and family centric”.

What is this ridiculousness? What did I say to make it sound like I was “putting of the intense pressure to conform that many males feel as ‘patriarchal benefit that is enjoyed’”? I didn’t talk about men that much. I didn’t talk about any pressures they feel.
Plus, I do not particularly treasure being likened to conservatives. I know it’s a popular strategy to discredit feminists. (“You are just as bad as an anti-feminist!” I guess this is why they are called anti-feminists because they agree with the people they are in opposition to.)

What kind of power that females couldn’t reciprocate by demanding the fulfilment of the many restrictive male gender stereotypes?

Women as a class have less power than men. There is a limit to the demands they can make and a limit to the sanctions they can give out. A man knows that for every woman that cannot be pressured into things she doesn’t like there is another who is weak. (And this weakness will strengthen the efforts to break the stubborn women because male hegemony has been verified by female submission.) (I'm going with Weber's definition of power here: you have power when you can force someone to do something even against his/her own will.)

I think you’re obsessed with the idea that, since males are overwhelmingly in charge of these institutions, that there is some sort of male solidarity going on, and that those in power actually give a rats ass about the negative consequences what they produce may have on the ‘common’ male population.

I’m obsessed. Really.
There is indeed male solidarity- we call it the “Old Boys Network”. And no, they really don’t give a rat’s ass- why? Because they are never held accountable. Well, that’s not entirely true. They are held accountable by feminists- meanwhile men hold feminists accountable for content they never created.

How about you prove that it isn’t possible for women to lead a happy life? Forgive me for not having a “women’s general happiness with life” study at hand at the moment (though I’m sure these studies are out there somewhere). Even if I had one, you could still put off reports from women who have never experienced discrimination, or don’t perceive any as being “so socialised into patriarchal expectations that they no longer recognise discrimination when it happens / they have a “slave mentality”.

Wording it so definitely was silly of me and the result of having a bad day. However, non-compliance will diminish your chances at love, friendship and happiness if you wish to earn social approval or are dependent on it. If this isn’t true your suffering will be temporary or non-existing at best. Self-acceptance is key but you need a lot of time.
And there comes the crystal ball again: you are assuming things you do not know. Might I suggest to you that asking people if they have ever been discriminated against or feel discriminated against is not a sure-fire way of actually measuring discrimination? First, because it relies on personal accounts and two, discrimination can be normalized to the point of being ubiquitous which influences personal accounts. Even worse, you might be incredibly privileged and feel that what has been rightfully taken from you has been given to you for good reasons- in this case you might feel discriminated against without there being any discrimination.

not conforming to stereotypes is worse for females than for males is a judgement that is not in your (or my) place to make, but rather something that needs to be decided on a micro-level

I really don’t want to imagine what would happen to social sciences if this was the approach to every object of interest, especially when it comes to hierarchal systems. I guess systems of oppression between higher and lower classes or different ethnicities should also be analyzed this way: obviously, we cannot find out if black people and lower class people suffer more than white people and higher class people because personal interaction on the micro-level never aggregates to be displayed as phenomena on the macro-level. But micro and macro-level aren't two different spheres so if enough people on the micro level do something you will see the result on the macro level.
Suffering cannot be measured. However, what can be measured is the frequency of having certain things happening to you that will diminish your livelihood: you can measure the amount of money certain groups of people make as well as the nature of violence a certain group is subjected to by whom under which circumstances. Hate crimes are interesting in this aspect- you do not need a big amount of them to scare a certain group into apathy, just one lynching or rape can suffice because hey are symbolic and are consciously used to put subjugated groups back in their place. Now there is a huge amount of women that are raped once or more in their lifetime: everyone knows this. At the same time, they are blamed for the crimes committed against them. Everyone knows this, too. Consequently, only a small amount of raped women ever go the police. All this combined creates an atmosphere of fear that will necessarily diminish your radius of action: women have been raped in bars so make sure you never go to a bar alone. Women have been raped in parks at night so do not go to parks alone at night. Women have been raped while being asleep in the presence of men so make sure you never fall asleep in the presence of men. Women are raped when they take drinks from guys so always decline (and possibly suffer the consequences of the ensuing temper tantrum). Women have been raped because they wear short shirts and other revealing clothes so make sure you go out in a burlap sack all day. What they never say is: women are most often raped by their partners or other close men so make sure to cut all intimate relations with men. That would actually make sense although it’s naturally not a universal solution and you still would not be entirely free from potential sexual violence.
It should also be noted that I’ve never saw warnings aimed at men in the nature of “Do not go to a bar without your friends, you might get knifed” although this is statistically more likely to happen then being raped in a bar as a woman. Why do you think that is? It always gives of the impression that men should not be afraid of going anywhere they wish.

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