shaving & body hair

How often do *you* shave? Shaving the body is such an interesting ritual: sensual, compelling, possibly painful! Products abound to enable us to rid our bodies of hair. Swimmers do it, I assume, to enhance their speed in the water…but what about the rest of us?

I was in my early teens when I started shaving, and I don’t remember *not* having a strong sense of shame about the dark, thick hair that grew (and still grows) on my legs & arms. There’s a myth that shaving makes hair grow back darker, but mine started out course & heavy.

Are there elements of masochism & self-torture in this ritual? Why do we feel compelled to be hairless? Why is hair ok on some parts of our body, but our mainstream media ridicule female celebrities who are caught off-guard with their armpit hair showing?

posts about blogs about posts, oh my

The web is like all interconnected & stuff, so bloggers cross-post on the same topic quite a bit. Here are a few posts that Pam Spaulding very generously added to the blogs pandagon, shakespeare’s sister, and americablog, on the topic of hair & politics. The comments & discussion the posts evoked are worth reading!!