Hairy females

Every so often there's a public questioning of why women have to shave. What's wrong with having hairy arms and legs, demands a rebellious female, to a wave of shock and outrage from her more conventional sisters.

The latest renegade is Emer O'Toole in the Guardian, who says she has now resisted shaving for 18 months and found it isn't the problem she thought it would be. She's quite happy to be hairy, and so apparently are most of the men she comes across, including her current boyfriend.

Yes, people sometimes giggle or make comments about her hairiness, but that's their problem, not hers. Children are generally curious rather than critical, wondering why women shave in the first place. She doesn't mention her academic colleagues at the University of London but presumably they aren't bothered.

Of course it's relatively easy for a middle-class leftie Londoner to get away with such scandalous gender-defying insurrection, but I wonder how easy it would be in less enlightened communities. The reaction in the average suburban street would surely be frosty enough to send her running for cover.

The problem is that the vast majority of women have been so thoroughly conditioned into the idea that body hair is repulsive, unhygienic and masculine that from puberty onwards the daily ritual of frantic depilation becomes firmly entrenched, particularly when every other woman looks impeccably waxed and plucked and lasered.

I imagine also that Emer is lucky enough to have only a modest sprinkling of body hair, intriguingly different rather than wincingly unattractive. Some women unfortunately have such rampant growth they simply wouldn't contemplate letting it all hang out.

I must say my own attitude to body hair is somewhat ambivalent. The idea of leaving your body as it is without forcing into some arbitrary gender stereotype is obviously appealing. On the other hand I've always found thickets of body hair either on men or women distinctly unalluring, and given the choice between women keeping their body hair or men removing it, I would actually opt for the latter.

Not that the female hair-purging routine is going to stop any time soon, despite the brave boycott by one truculent columnist. Neither are the lads going to uproot their beards, chest hair and pubic undergrowth, however much their womenfolk might fancy the idea. Some things are sacred.

PS: What's the norm in gay relationships, I wonder? Shaving or not shaving? I've no idea.

(Emer O'Toole's piece on body hair is hilarious and worth a read)