The negation of the hair on the female body as a form of social control Bashny.Net

If you ask girls why they shave their legs or use wax strips, they can reply that they want, that is their personal choice, that they are just better when they have smooth skin. In the twentieth century in the struggle with the woman's hair began to lose money, health and life.

The history of the relationship to unshaven legs, and when epilation with self-esteem, and how this struggle has become the way gender and social control.





In the U.S., more than 99% of women get rid of body hair. For the life of the woman who shaves, it spends about 10 thousand dollars, and waxing takes more than 23 thousand. The intolerance of the hair is more recent.

Until the late nineteenth century white women's hair in General is not particularly bothered. As explained by Rebecca Herzig's book, "Plucked: a History of hair removal" ("Plucked: A History of Hair Removal"), "naturalists and explorers in the eighteenth century believed that skin without hair is a fad of indigenous peoples". English colonists view of the beardless Indians surprised and worried.

How unnatural hairless as has become the standard in less than a century?

The demonization of the hair on the female body, oddly enough, began with the books of Charles Darwin's "the Origin of man". An important separation in the evolutionary belief system is the fact that men by nature were supposed to be hairy and women should not. Scientists believed that the apparent difference between male and female reflected a "higher anthropological development of the" race. So the hair on the woman's body became a sign of abnormalities, and scientists set out to prove it. In 1893, a study was conducted that addressed 271 a case of insanity among white women. The result was that the insane women excess facial hair grow for more than the sane. Moreover, this hair also "thicker and stiffer" and remind you hair "inferior races". Havelock Ellis, English psychologist, argued that this phenomenon "is linked with criminal violence, strong sexual instincts and exceptional animal force".

According to Herzig, at the beginning of the XX century "representative of the middle class body hair seemed disgusting, and the fight against them has become a way to separate themselves from the poor and immigrants". The shorter the skirt, the more desperate measures had been taken by ladies. In the 1920s-30s, women used for hair removal pumice stone and sandpaper that cause irritation and leave scratches. Some have put the Shoe wax. Thousands died or were maimed due to Koremlu cream, composed of rat poison. He successfully removed the hair, also called muscle atrophy, blindness, and death. Around the same time there is a new method of getting rid of hair — x-rays: typically, women were exposed for three or four minutes. This method was practiced for nearly two decades — despite the fact that radiation often leads to ulcers, scars, and cancer.

The pressure on women about body hair growing, along with their freedoms. Hair removal how to take care of itself — it is probably one of the main deceptions that are purchased.





Disfigured, dying, but firmly, women continued to fight with the vegetation on the body. During the Second world war the deficit was thick stockings that girls wore, including to hide their hairy legs. So shave that was previously considered an exclusively male activity, has become commonplace for women. By 1964, 98% of American women regularly shaved their legs.

The laboratories developed alternative methods: in the 1960s and ' 70s, doctors began to prescribe hormones, such as "Aldactone" and "Androkur" (which today are often used for sex change from male to female) to deal with hirsutism — excessive hair growth in women (however, the question of its presence or absence is quite subjective). Side effects of this therapy could include cancer, stroke and heart attack, and its effectiveness is quite controversial.

Today women continue to engage in risky methods of getting rid of hair. Laser hair removal can cause burns, blisters and scars. Waxing is painful and not always hygienic. Bleaching can irritate the skin or cause hyperpigmentation.

Hair removal, in fact, is a form of social control on the basis of gender. According to Herzig, it's not a coincidence that the pressure on women about body hair growing, along with their freedoms. According to her, the purpose of this hairless norm is "to impose upon women a sense that their bodies are by nature are some problems". But if you ask girls why they shave their legs or use wax strips, they can reply that they want, that is their personal choice, that they are just better when they have smooth skin.





Hair removal how to take care of itself — it is probably one of the main deceptions that are bought women. So they fall into a vicious circle: they constantly need to chase velvet leather and neatness, which in this coordinate system becomes the main virtue. published

 

Author: Xenia Dons

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: theoryandpractice.ru/posts/15825-bystroe-chtenie-demonizatsiya-volos-na-zhenskom-tele-kak-forma-sotsialnogo-kontrolya