One advantage of being a guy is that I don't have to bother about my body hair - except in the facial area. It must drive women nuts having to remove it all.Men can go around with forests of the stuff sprouting from every conceivable surface and that's just fine. In fact for some women, the hairier the better - for them hair quantity denotes masculinity rating.
It may be fashionable now for certain types of men to remove their body hair - gays, sportsmen, models - but for many women absence of male body hair is still deeply suspicious and a bit of a turn-off.
Women however are expected to be totally devoid of body hair, even though many women are naturally quite hairy - a fact that remains a big conversational taboo. I've known women desperate to get rid of vast thickets of hair they laboriously concealed from their menfolk.
But men demand total hairlessness and smooth, silky skin, regardless of the reality. The sight of hairy armpits or hairy nipples is enough for some of them to come over queasy and walk out the door. A woman has to conform to the pin-up stereotype, however artificial it may be.
Many men are blissfully unaware that those satin-skinned supermodels have to wax, shave and pluck meticulously to get like that. Unlike Barbie dolls, they don't just emerge from the box that way.
For a short, brave period, radical feminists refused to depilate and flaunted their natural hair growth. But male distaste and female loss of nerve ended the experiment.
Now that genetic modification is getting into its stride, I suppose one day women will be able to rejig their genes to eliminate body hair growth altogether. That'll save a lot of time (and pain). Just as long as they don't go bald....
PS: Wikipedia suggests several reasons for hair removal, apart from aesthetics and gender stereotypes, going back to Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome: to prevent infestation by lice, fleas and other parasites; to prevent body odour from odour-causing micro-organisms; and among Ancient Egyptian priests, to present a pure body to the gods. In Ancient Greece and Rome, both men and women removed body hair.
PPS: The infinitely wise and excellent K8 the GR8 has also done a post on hairiness and hair removal. Very funny and very informative. Go take a peep at her hair-removal trials and tribulations.
See also Hirsutism
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Having spent a few days pondering all this, I've concluded that the fairest way forward is for men to remove all their body hair as well as women - and share the pain and the effort and the pleasure. Respect for women means equal use of epilators, strip wax and tweezers. Are you ready, guys?
