Why Would a Woman Get Rape Threats for Not Shaving?

Daniela had an unruly mop of beautiful, thick, curly, dark red hair, both on her head and under her arms. All summer long, when she raised her arm and the sun sparkled on that lush mane, my eyes were invariably drawn to it.

She was a bit older than me, a child of the outgoing wave of the 70s. She was a hippie at heart, believed in the spiritual world and collected crystals. And as an emancipated woman, she kept her body hair and showed it off without any qualms.

I envied her confidence and never said a word about this — even at the time — uncommon sight. And neither did anyone else I knew. We just accepted her hairy splendor as a part of her unique personality.

That was in the 1990s. Things have gone downhill since then.

People don’t just make nasty remarks about women’s body hair. Some even threaten physical violence against a woman who so openly violates the current ideal of beauty.

In 2017, Arvida Byström received rape threats. Why? Because she posed with unshaven legs for an Adidas campaign video,

Angry men insulted her and called her unfeminine and undesirable. And threatened her with sexual assault.

Yes, the irony was lost to them.

Many people posted abusive comments under the video on YouTube. One said: “Is this what some [women] have become? No thanks.” Another wrote: “Stop brushing your teeth and wiping your ass too fucking feminazi retarded.”

Why they would get so upset about somebody else’s personal choices is a mystery. But here we are. In our so-called liberal society, where men insist that women have equal rights and opportunities, women are threatened because they have hairy legs.

I was not like Daniela. Like most women, I had internalized mainstream beauty standards far too early. My mother’s scathing opinions on what I should look like — she was part of the “suck in your tummy and stand up straight” brigade — laid the foundations. A constant supply of women’s magazines with vapid recommendations on how best to attract the attention of men did the rest.

I spent far too many hours and years correcting the natural tendencies of my body. Plucking, crimping, smearing and, of course, dieting.

Though I was lucky and never developed a lot of body hair, I meticulously made sure there was no hair out of place. At 15, I asked for and received a Philips Epilator. A torturous device that rips the hair from your body with metal wheels.

It kept my legs and armpits hairless as a baby’s. Always. Anyone who has ever used an epilator on any part of their body knows that this is cruel and unusual punishment. But another popular saying I grew up with was, “If you want to be beautiful, you must suffer.” Try using an epilator, and you’ll know this is true.

I’ll forever be thankful that, at the time, no one expected a woman not to have pubic hair. I fear I would have injured myself gravely trying to achieve a Brazilian with that hellish device.

Hairless women were not always the standard of beauty in the West.

While Oriental women have perfected the art of sugaring and threading over centuries, it wasn’t long ago that women in the West went au natural without a second thought.

It was in “1915 when Harper’s Bazaar became the first women’s magazine to run a campaign that portrayed the removal of underarm hair as a “necessity.” Until this point, the removal of body hair — while definitely setting the standards for beauty ideals — was not considered absolutely necessary for women. By 1964, 98% of American women aged 15 to 44 were regularly shaving their legs.”

Even in the 90s, the completely hairless female body was far from the norm. As much as I tortured my armpits and my legs,I never worried about the look or amount of my pubic hair.

Even when I once sat as a nude model for a painter, that was the least of my worries. I remember how surprised I was when my friend Wanya, who was my co-model, removed a few stray hairs in her bikini line with a pair of tweezers.

Plucking the mons pubis until it looks like a “sore plucked chicken” wasn’t yet in fashion.

The sprouting bushes in the sex magazines of the late 70s and 80s would have given the men who attacked Arvida Byström an aneurysm. Mounds of pubic hair on full display! The competition between Penthouse and Playboy wasn’t called the “pubic wars” for nothing.

According to Pubicstyle:

at the start of the 70’s, Playboy’s centerfold models had to pose carefully, and somewhat awkwardly at times, in order to hide the mere existence of their bushes … But competition between Penthouse and Playboy was upping the pressure to push the limits in what Hugh Hefner termed “The Pubic Wars” …Pubes continued to make on-again off-again appearances throughout the mid-70s. Pubic hairstyles, such as they were, were all full bush

As public opinion moved from the full bush to the bikini strip as a landing zone for the male gaze and then to the full Brazilian, so did I.

Even though I used to be opposed to the pre-pubescent look of a bare mound, the shock of discovering my first gray hair sent me scurrying to the closest “Wax in the City” salon.

For a few years, another part of my body became as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Until the pandemic put an end to the meticulously timed visits and I accepted this unexpected sign of aging.

There are many debates about why and when women started shaving. Some say it was a marketing campaign by Gillette to sell more razors. Others say that the depiction of hairless pubic mounds in sex magazines and videos led to a change in visual expectations.

We can safely assume that all this played a role. But people did it for beauty or aesthetics, not for hygiene.

This applies above all to leg hair. Even if we have become accustomed to the sight of shaved legs, there are no advantages to this. Unless, of course, you’re a swimmer or cyclist.

For most beauty trends, there is no good reason to follow them. But there are magazines and ads to push us to do so. And then there’s peer pressure.

As Mckayla Morris, owner of the Chatty Girl blog, writes:

“Many young girls and women, being exposed to ads in magazines, social media, TV commercials, and even just peer pressure, feel that there is an expectation to remove their body hair.”

Not everyone is a Daniela. It’s so much easier to be like everyone else.

People will tell you that body hair is unsanitary and has to be removed for cleanliness.

Is that true? Is not shaving the same as not “brushing your teeth and not wiping your ass?”

No.

If body hair was unclean, we’d have to send men to waxing studios in droves. Not just for the fun of watching them scream and squirm under the beauticians’ hands but also to make them “cleaner.”

And shave our heads. And we don’t do that. Do we?

Most people don’t have a problem with male body hair and feel no need to put a vomiting smiley under the picture of an unshaven man.

Doctors will tell you:

“pubic hair was put there to protect your genitalia from friction and infection. It is more hygienic not to shave it (although depilation does make pubic lice homeless). In removing their pubic hair, most women will get cuts or ingrown hairs, and some will develop inflammation of the hair follicles or hyperpigmentation.”

Armpit hair is a slightly different story. As they can harbor the bacteria that cause our sweat to smell, shaving can reduce the smell. However, this is both a positive and a negative effect.

Studies show that the odor created in the armpits helps to attract the right partner.

This is because the armpits release an odor containing pheromones, a naturally-producing chemical that plays a role in sexual attraction.

Will any of this information stop anyone from removing body hair?

Probably not.

And that’s okay because you’re free to like what you like. And it’s absolutely up to you what you do with your body (hair).

But it does help to understand that there is nothing gross or dirty about body hair. And that there is really no reason to threaten a woman with bodily harm because she chooses to keep her naturally growing hair.

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