Perceptions of body hair on white women: effects of labeling

A full Brazilian or all natural: understanding the influences on young women's decision to remove their pubic hair

BACKGROUND

Research indicates that young women are being exposed to increasing pressures to remove pubic hair from their bodies, which has the potential for both negative physical and psychological consequences. Women's personal choice and reasoning for partaking in pubic hair removal is influenced by broader social influences; however, there is little theory-based research drawing from established decision-making models investigating the underlying processes that lead young women to engage in pubic hair removal practices. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, it was hypothesised that 1) attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control would predict intention to remove pubic hair; 2) additional variables (prototype similarity and favourability) from the Prototype Willingness Model would significantly predict intention to remove pubic hair; 3) feminist values would significantly predict decreased intention to remove pubic hair; and 4) intention and perceived behavioural control would predict future self-reported removal of pubic hair.

METHOD

The current study included a sample of 270 young women (17-25 years old), who completed an online survey and a follow up survey 4 weeks later (N = 96).

RESULTS

Attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and similarity to prototypical pubic hair removers were significant predictors of intention to remove pubic hair. Intention was significantly positively associated and feminist values were significantly negatively associated with actual pubic hair removal.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings align with Theory of Planned Behaviour propositions. Furthermore, the expansion of the model highlights how broader social images impact on young women when deciding whether to engage in a behaviour that is intimately associated with their body image.

Pubic hair and its removal: A practice beyond the personal

Pubic hair removal, now common among women in Anglo/western cultures, has been theorised as a disciplinary practice. As many other feminine bodily practices, it is characterised by removal or alteration of aspects of women's material body (i.e., pubic hair) considered unattractive but otherwise “natural.” Emerging against this theorisation is a discourse of personal agency and choice, wherein women assert autonomy and self-mastery of their own bodies and body practices. In this paper, we use a thematic analysis to examine the interview talk about pubic hair from 11 sexually and ethnically diverse young women in New Zealand. One overarching theme – pubic hair is undesirable; its removal is desirable – encapsulates four themes we discuss in depth, which illustrate the personal, interpersonal and sociocultural influences intersecting the practice: (a) pubic hair removal is a personal choice; (b) media promote pubic hair removal; (c) friends and family influence pubic hair removal; and (d) the (imagined) intimate influences pubic hair removal. Despite minor variations among queer women, a perceived norm of genital hairlessness was compelling among the participants. Despite the articulated freedom to practise pubic hair removal, any freedom from participating in this practice appeared limited, rendering the suggestion that it is just a “choice” problematic.

Perilous Patches and Pitstaches

Although some research has examined men and women’s general attitudes toward women growing body hair, little research has engaged in a side-by-side examination of women’s imagined experiences of growing body hair with an experiential component of growing their own body hair. In the first of two studies, I asked a diverse community sample of women aged 18 to 59 to assess their impressions of women who grew body hair and to imagine their own, and others’, reactions to their hypothetical body hair growth. For the second study, I utilized response papers from 62 women from diverse backgrounds in an undergraduate women’s studies course, who grew their body hair for an assignment. Results showed overwhelming negativity toward women growing body hair in both studies, but they differed in perceptions of social control and individual agency. Women in Study 1, who merely imagined body hair growth, described it more nonchalantly and individualistically, citing personal choice and rarely acknowledging social pressures placed upon women even disgusted by other women’s body hair. Women in Study 2 regularly discussed unanticipated social pressures and norms, rarely discussed personal choice, and reported a constellation of difficulties, including homophobia, family and partner anger, and internalized disgust and “dirtiness.” These results on a seemingly “trivial” subject nuance the “rhetoric of choice” debate within feminist theories of the body while also illustrating a vivid experiential assignment that delves into women’s personal values, relationships, and social norms. Implications for assessing and changing attitudes about women’s bodies—particularly “abject” or “othered” bodies—are discussed.

“It Shouldn’t Stick Out from Your Bikini at the Beach”

Women’s and men’s bodies and sexuality can be understood as socially situated and socially produced. This means they are affected by, and developed in relation to, patterned sociocultural meanings and representations. We aim here to understand a recently emergent, and potentially gendered, body practice—pubic hair removal—by examining the meanings people ascribe to pubic hair and its removal. Extending the widespread hairless bodily norm for Anglo/Western women, pubic hair removal is an apparently rapidly growing phenomenon. Men, too, are seemingly practicing pubic hair removal in significant numbers, raising the question of to what extent pubic hair removal should be understood as a gendered phenomenon. What we do not yet know is what people’s understandings and perceptions of pubic hair are, and how they make sense of its removal. Using a qualitative survey, the current study asked a series of questions about pubic hair and its removal, both in general and related to men’s and women’s bodies. In total, 67 participants (100% response rate; 50 female; mean age 29, diverse ethnically, predominantly heterosexual) completed the survey. Thematic analysis identified five key themes in the way people made sense of pubic hair and pubic hair removal that related to choice, privacy, physical attractiveness, sexual impacts, and cleanliness. Meanings around pubic hair and its removal were not consistently gendered, but it was still situated as more of an issue for women. With potential impacts on sexual and psychological well-being, sexuality education provides an important venue for discussing, and questioning, normative ideas about pubic hair.

Breaking body hair boundaries: Classroom exercises for challenging social constructions of the body and sexuality

Courses in women’s studies and gender studies within US contexts have long prioritized content that critically examines the social construction of bodies and sexualities, consciousness-raising about how social identities interface with disciplinary and institutional practices, and the notion that ‘the personal is political.’ This article examines the social and pedagogical implications of an extra-credit assignment where I asked women to grow out their body hair and men to remove their body hair for 10 weeks in several upper-division women’s studies courses. Students’ response papers and weekly logs from 87 students over four semesters highlighted the social policing of gender and sexual identity, pervasive disgust and misinformation about body hair, raced and classed dimensions of students’ experiences, configurations of masculinity as agentic and powerful, and postexperiential reflections on challenging social norms. This assignment showed how temporary excursions into rebelling against body norms can generate sociopolitical awareness, particularly for living as Other (e.g. queerness, fatness, disability). I also consider implications for ‘ripple effect pedagogy’ and ‘peer generated pedagogy,’ along with pedagogical reflections about using the assignment as a consciousness-raising tool in feminist classrooms.