Re: brush removal
Posted by Anna Beltestad on May 15, 2000 at 13:07:35:
In Reply to: burning bushes and other brush removal posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on May 15, 2000 at 09:27:13:
A little off topic but I reminded of the time when I was a bike
messenger in California and it was summer and quite hot, and I was
wearing a tank top, and a carload of guys drove past and yelled
"shave the pits!" to which I replied, "you first, assholes!"
I find the "necessity" of "women" removing body hair a little
offensive, but mine is blond and sparse, and I might feel different
if it weren't. I shave my legs because i am a bike racer and I like
the way it looks, but my boyfriend shaves his legs too (he is a
messenger and racer). Shaving your armpits, to me anyway, hurts, is
irritating, and seems to make me sweat more. I think this should be
a personal choice, not something imposed by society. I rejoice when
I see "women" who keep their facial hair or don't shave their furry
dark leg hair. Their choices are based on what they want to do, not
what Cosmopolitain tells them to do!
: the Greek philosophy of Masculine vs Feminine in the
: cosmos, and adherence to gender identity. Men were encouraged to
be as furry, virile, aggressive and rugged as possible, women were
: encouraged to be furless, pregnant, submissive, and if possible, a
: little dumb. That was part of what made the universe make sense to
: them .... was to have identifiable polar opposites.
And a LOT of this underlies our society. To the point that women who
ARE smart, or virile, or muscular, or hairy, etc. are sanctioned for
it, teased, ridiculed, etc. Not all the time but enough to, for
example, make adolescence harrowing.
However, in
: reality, people come in all sorts of bodies and behaviours that are
in
: between the ideal opposites.
That's the crux of the matter right there. Why such insistence on
the differences between "male" and "female" ? It's present here and
now in the whole "men are from Mars, women from Venus" school of
thought. This bothers me tremendously!
From what I understand, fur removal was absolutely a gender issue,
: cleanliness being sort of laid over the top
Yep, and I'm glad to see people talking about it!
Anna
