Pride Comes Before a Follicle

“It’s all about sex. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”. Caroline, 23, is a student from London, and is describing her decision to get a Hollywood, her “fifth or sixth” as far as she can remember. Her friend Lisa, 22, tells me she normally opts for a Brazilian, because “it looks a bit weird otherwise”. We’re not talking about holidays, nor even about cocktails. We’re talking about pubic hair. This is depilation, 21st century style.
In 2004, the UK spent £59m on depilatory products such as wax, creams, razors and bleach. A recent poll found that 97% of British women regularly remove hair from their body, and more than 99% had at some point in their lives waxed, shaved or used other means of hair removal. How is it so widespread? Why do women of every age and creed do it? And do men really care whether it’s there or not?
Depilation in its many forms has been with us for centuries. It was common amongst ancient Egyptians as long ago as 4000BC, when hair was considered shameful and uncivilised. Women would use beeswax to remove body and leg hair. Middle eastern women developed a hair-removal process using a soft, sugar-based paste. Most beauty parlours will still offer ‘sugaring’ as a less painful alternative to waxing. Medieval peasants in Britain didn’t develop any such complex chemistry to rid themselves of hair: early depilatories were made from quicklime, bean-flour, urine and sulphurate of arsenic.
Nowadays, hair removal is an altogether simpler affair. Veet, the best-known company specifically dedicated to hair removal, offer a range of waxes, creams and razors to rid women of unwanted hair. For those who want a permanent fix there is electrolysis – a means of killing the hair root so that hair cannot grow back.
Marian Carr, head of the British Institute and Association of Electrolysis, says that electrolysis is the only scientifically proven way to permanently remove hair. The process is done by cauterizing the hair follicle with needles. Doesn’t it hurt? “It depends very much on the sensitivity of the skin, and the skill of the operator,” says Carr. “If it’s badly done it hurts.” Carr says that electrolysis was a taboo subject until about ten years ago - “Some people didn’t think it was feminine” – but now things are different. “It’s socially acceptable,” she says. “There is a wide range of hair that is perfectly normal but we consider it unacceptable. Women remove hair because that’s what’s socially acceptable within our culture”
Merran Toerien, a medical researcher at Bristol University, wrote her sociology doctorate on female depilation. She interviewed women from various social backgrounds and asked them why they got rid of their body hair. “The overwhelming reason women gave was that it’s the social norm” she says. The subjects equated being ‘well-kept’ with being feminine, and being hairy with being masculine. Social pressure also has much to do with maintaining a hair-free look. “I heard repeated stories of being taunted, both as children and as adults,” says Toerien. “By friends, by family, by work colleagues and even bosses”.
But you don’t have to be a sociologist to realize that hairy women aren’t accepted by mainstream society. Julia Roberts found that out in 1999 when, during the premiere for Notting Hill, she exposed a clump of underarm hair to the delighted paparazzi. Drew Barrymore made headlines in February last year for appearing at New York Fashion Week with unshaved armpits. The Daily Mail printed photos beneath the headline ‘Drew’s the pits’ and was careful to draw attention to Barrymore’s supposed split with boyfriend Fabrizio Moretti. The link was clear – women who don’t depilate are guilty of a lapse in standards. They don’t look after themselves.
“I think it’s disgusting,” says Caroline. “Letting yourself go like that”. She’s been shaving her legs and armpits since she was 13, and considers herself a late starter. “My Mum wouldn’t let me buy a razor before then”. Caroline is one of a number of women who pay £45 to have a ‘Hollywood’ – waxing all hair from the pubic area. A slightly less extreme procedure is the ‘Brazilian’ which leaves a small patch on the pubis – a “landing strip” as X Folia manager Shaleena Grigg calls it. X Folia is a beauty salon with studios in Docklands and Holborn. Grigg reckons the popularity for complete hair removal from the genital area first began about six years ago, but ballooned after it featured in an episode of Sex and the City. “Women come in for it all year round, but especially in the summer,” she says. The procedure can be painful, and Grigg says it’s not something that can be done by yourself at home. “It’s a very sensitive area down there,” she says, “so you have to be careful”.
If it’s such a painful procedure, why do women go through it? “It makes you feel sexual,” says Lisa, Caroline’s friend who prefers a Brazilian wax. “And if a guy realises you’ve taken care of things, he’ll know you’re a sexual person”. Caroline feels that waxing the pubic area is now the norm. “No-one likes hairy women”.Caroline may be surprised, then, by some of the fetish communities that fester in the darkest corners of the internet. Armpit-sex.com is an online message board for men who can’t get enough of hairy women. Sal, the web administrator for armpit-sex says he started the site for acomoclitists – men with a fetish for shaven women – but found that it was overtaken by fans on the opposite end of the spectrum. “Men simply want what they cannot have,” he says. “Some cultures look down on unshaven women and that fact alone causes some men to rebel. They need that forbidden fruit”. Sal’s website provides plenty of fruity content for his readership, including long prose descriptions of sexual encounters with hairy women and pictures sent in by proud husbands. But could images of furry armpits make it into the mainstream media?“I can’t imagine how many complaints we’d get.” says Adrian Higgins, editor of Page3.com, the online home of the Sun’s famous pin-ups. “It would never happen. It’s not acceptable, and frankly it’s just not appealing”. Surprisingly, Page 3 doesn’t have to use airbrushing techniques to obscure unsightly body hair on its pictures. “The models do it themselves,” says Higgins. “If they didn’t we wouldn’t use them”. So what sort of woman would let her hair grow? A refusal to depilate is a defining stereotype of feminists. Germaine Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch that women ridding themselves of their body hair was an act of defeminisation: “Men cultivate [the removal of body hair]… women suppress it, just as they suppress all aspects of their vigour and libido”. Merran Toerien says that is not the case any more. “Times have changed since the Female Eunuch,” she says, though she acknowledges that it was once fashionable in feminist circles to let body hair grow. “Feminists today are more concerned about issues of equality”. She suggests that followers of Ashanti yoga often let their hair grow. Jenny Amadine, a teacher at London’s Yoga Place, dispels the myth. “I’ve been in the industry twenty years,” she says, “and no-one I know follows it.”My difficulty in finding a woman who refuses to depilate is a neat illustration of the overwhelming popularity of this particular kind of social grooming. Many of Merran Toerien’s subjects said they got rid of their body and facial hair because it made them feel more feminine, and therefore more attractive to men. Perhaps Caroline is right after all: it’s all about sex.