Do we have to wax to be feminine?

Today’s post has been inspired by two women. First, the wonderful writer and coach Lisa Clark, talks about being comfortable and wearing thongs, which are not the same thing. You can read her post here. Unfortunately you can’t read Edwina Ings-Chambers in yesterday’s Style supplement of the Sunday Times, because that publication wants us to pay for most of its online content, so I can’t give you a usable link. Pity, because Ings-Chambers makes some very important points about the modern obsession with women being body-hair-free, and how this is now filtering down to quite young girls.

I’m rather low maintenance and I do like to be comfortable, and I get very cross and worked up when women feel obliged to wear and do things that cause discomfort, or even pain, in order to conform. Underwear is one aspect of this, and footwear another. I own quite a few pairs of heels, and even some that I would define as “taxi shoes”, but I try only to wear them when I don’t have to walk far. I value my feet and I don’t want them to hurt. Walking along pavements, going on the Tube, spending all day at work in them – no thanks. With makeup, I do try. Well, sometimes. All my friends and colleagues know what I look completely bare faced because a lot of the time I can’t be bothered. I’m also not too fond of the feel of all that goo on my face. Sure, it makes me look better, fresher, younger even, and I’ll put it on for anything formal.

Shoes and makeup are choices. I know plenty of women who love heels and most of my friends put on makeup every day. That’s fine; we’re free to choose and we know it. Hair removal, however, seems to have ceased to be a choice. I don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed in my trainers and bare face (perhaps a bit plain, that’s all), but it now feels like a social obligation to shave, wax and pluck before being seen in public. Now, even I in my low-maintenance splendour would agree that it feels lovely and clean to be all smooth and plucked as well as having clean hair and teeth. Fine, it feels nice, great. But we don’t do it only because it feels nice, do we? We do it because it is expected, because it’s not acceptable to have visible body hair except where you are supposed to.

And is that really fair? Human beings are covered with hair; it’s how we’re made. On children, it’s fine, and as we mature, some of it becomes coarser. We may prefer to look one way or another, but should we really be ashamed of what is a natural part of us? And without going too far into the whole whether-to-wax-or-not pubic hair debate, I do have really serious concerns about our children. Are today’s teenage boys growing up believing that girls and women are naturally hair-free? And what sort of pressure does that put on the girls? If they are waxing and shaving as young as 12, as Ings-Chambers reports, they are already, as children, striving to fit an artificial image of what they should look like.

I’m not advocating a return to a sort of 1970s militant hairy legged brigade, which helped to give feminism an undeserved bad name, and I’m not about to ditch my own razor and spa appointments; I just want to say that I wish I felt I had a choice. I wish I could feel that being feminine doesn’t have to depend upon carrying out these de-fuzzing rituals week-in, week-out. Does my femininity come from the outside, depend on the state of my skin, or from the inside, my personality, energy and spirit? That’s plenty of material for another post, but for now, let’s ponder a few of those questions!