Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture

Horace Miner, in his satirical account of the meticulous and often pednfiil customs Americans practice in caring for their bodies, failed to mention one of the most common masochistic rituals—the removEil of hair from the legs and armpits of the female hody.' Women have for countless years heen concerned with the occurrence of hair on their hodies. They have removed the hair from their head, from the puhic areas, and from their faces and have used it for erotic purposes. Butin puhlic advertising, the most ohvious areas of concern have heen the legs and armpits. Female observers have heen quick to comment on the misery that the customs of removing hair from these parts of the hody have occasioned. Rohin Morgan calls "heing agonized at fourteen because you have finally shaved your legs, and your flesh is on fire" one of the "harharous rituals" of heing female in America."^ Emily Prager, a young adult recounting the preparations she goes through before a date, acknowledges that the harharity ofthe ritual does not disappear with early adolescence, "I used to shave my legs just hefore the date. I wanted to he sure they were ultra-smooth for the evening ahead. It took years of frantic last-minute efforts to (1) weish out the hlood spots on my panty hose while (2) trying not to reopen the shaving nicks while (3) somehow detaching the sticky nylon from the severed skin, hefore I realized that one hour hefore a date is no time for me to have a razor in my hand."^