Concept, Form, Voice.

Unctuous foamy cream slowly being lathered on by an “attractive” (read barely clothed and outrageously skinny) made-up woman, splashing hot water, and an expensive five blade razor. Those are the basic elements typically being advertised to women by marketers selling the work (note that I deliberately use the more negatively connoted word “work” in this text, and I’ll come back to the reasons behind this at a later point) of leg shaving. However, because of the experience I’ll expand on below, I have recently come to view with a brand new set of lenses the conscious gender role performance that is the action of removing hair off one’s legs.

It all started when I was approached by a 20-something man I didn’t know, half way through my usual workout at the gym. “If you move your feet like this while lifting the weights, you’ll get a lot more out of your training,” he said. Resenting this unrequested “expert’s help” interruption, I took my earphones off to politely decline further interaction. Before I had a chance to say anything, he had already bent down, and reached out for my legs. As his hand briefly came in contact with my lower calf, he exclaimed “Holy shit! Your legs are hairy!” Uncertain that I had heard correctly, I asked him to repeat. As his statement sunk in a second time, I shrugged with indifference, and then found myself responding with a defiant “Well, so are yours.” “It’s not the same: I’m a guy, and I’m supposed to have hairy legs. For a chick, it’s sick-looking and not right,” he replied.

Not missing a beat, I fired back “And why the hell not?! I have killer legs, and hair grows there naturally just like it does on a man.” “Women are supposed to shave, so they look hot and smooth, and can be pretty enough to find a boyfriend or a husband. I’d _never_ shag a girl if her legs weren’t taken care of,” he arrogantly added.

WOAH! This guy’s first infraction had been to invade my personal space by touching me without my permission. His second was to have assumed I required a man to “teach” me how to work out; when in fact I was perfectly fine on my own. His last statement, however, was deeply wrong on way too many levels. Unsure as to how to even react, I eventually settled on bewilderment and spat out “Who the hell do you think you are, to believe you have the right to judge, police, and govern women's bodies like that?!” Cutting him right off, I launched into a passionate defense of women’s rights to their bodies. This of course led him to abruptly exit the premises of the gym while calling out “Crazy bitch,” leaving me alone to think about all this, and pretty blue in the face.

On my way home I realized that even if it’s been a while since I stopped shaving my legs, I had never actually experienced the broader social and more “political” aspect of the personal choice I have made. The systematic come and go of the blade as it glides from ankle to thigh seems fairly insignificant in itself, and so does applying hair removal cream or strips. Although, when you stop to think of it, this simple action is profoundly ingrained in our society’s standards of female “beauty”, which dictate that only hair-free legs can be beautiful. So who’d possibly want be viewed as other than proper and attractive, right?

Well, this brings me back to the language specification I made earlier. I use the word “work” rather than something neutral like “task” to make a distinction between shaving solely out of personal preference for the short-lasting smoothness; and shaving out of fear of being judged as unattractive and/or by fear of being rejected by partners or friends. And since “work” typically defines something most people “do” not so much for their personal enjoyment, but more in order to gain something (money, usually, but social approval in this case), I attempt through language to mark the two different intentions behind the action of shaving.

The place where these two separate intentions get all tangled and hard to clearly define, is when women stop actively thinking about shaving because they have internalized through consuming advertisement and being brought up with these standards of beauty, what it really means to shave. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate where the end of one intention is, and where the beginning of the other starts. The more I think about it the blurrier the lines get, and I find myself wondering whether it’s still actually possible for a woman to completely disregard the social aspects of complying with this gender role performance, and this, without mixing bits and pieces of both intentions while still thinking they’re only shaving for themselves.