“No Shave November” has become a trend where guys do not shave for the entire month of November, growing their victorious beards and basking in their masculinity. Well guess what boys, I’m participating this year.
I usually don’t shave my legs often in the fall and winter, maybe once or twice a week. What’s the need? I wear pants anyways. I like shaving because I feel clean and smooth. I like getting out of a warm shower and putting lotion on my newly smooth skin.
However, I want to challenge myself. I like the feeling of shaving, but I also feel the need to shave, socially. I wish we got to talk more about the chapter on manscaping because, while it was interesting, I feel that women have those pressure ten fold. I read a blog by a man who was giving his “honest opinion on behalf of all men” that said most men like their women well kept and clean shaven. Well guess what? It’s not your choice. If I want to shave I will and if I don’t want to then I wont. Learning so much from this class and taking everything in, I want to learn to become fully comfortable with myself, make no apologies, and love myself fully, hair and all.
I will try and remember to report back in December and tell of my “No Shave November” adventures and take the experience to learn to love myself better and love others, regardless of their body choices.
Unruly Bodies 
The comment about that blog seems to echo a lot of patriarchal statements about how women should keep their bodies… I was at work and talking to a couple fellow employees about No Shave November, and both the people in the discussion asserted that it’s “gross” for women not to shave, and that women are “supposed” to stay clean and shaven. This took place in a mostly conservative town, I will say, but even the women participating in the discussion were of the mindset that you appeal to and follow standards set by the guy in your life which is bogus. I tried to point out that expecting girls to shave their legs isn’t something that “girls have to do” because girls naturally grow hair on their legs, but they wouldn’t listen.
Girls definitely do have the pressure tenfold to conform to male-set expectations and standards of beauty. Good for you for participating!! I think more girls should try it and set a standard that it’s their body, no one else’s, and that they can do what they want with it.
While I am completely on board with you about enjoying the feeling of your skin directly after shaving, the act of shaving and keeping up with the maintenance is honestly a nuisance. I’m not about to pretend that I’m above caring about society’s perception of me as a woman if I don’t opt to shave regularly (despite how gross I find popular sentiment to be), but I enjoy the liberation of the winter months. The only people who see my unshaven legs frequently enough are my family, who mostly consist of women and also can’t be bothered to follow a rigorous shaving regimen when it’s cold out. It’s great to feel at peace with your own body when no one is holding you accountable for your choices (especially when they’re as inconsequential on society as a whole). Honestly, I feel as though as long as everyone bathes or showers regularly and washes their hands after they use the bathroom, that’s good enough. Shaving has very little to do with overall cleanliness. I actually recently discovered that body hair removal for women in the western world is a relatively new phenomena. All of this just to get us to buy some razors…thanks, capitalism.
I shave regularly (well kinda), but only because personally I don’t like hair, and even so I pretty much only shave on weekends or less in the winter because it’s a pain in the ass. “eh my legs are hair, I’ll wear leggings for the fifth time this week” it’s my choice to shave or not shave and what I’m comfortable with.
I went to an all girls high school and played basketball, every November we celebrated no shave November but kept it going until the last girl cracked and finally shaved. It was hilarious to us to see our coaches, parents and friends reactions to our hair as we all pulled down socks and compared to see who had the longest that week. Most of the girls even had boyfriends and they were told to deal with it because it was a ritual, we didn’t like to bother shaving, and that was that.
As a young woman who is insanely hairy (thanks Dad), I understand how trying to be completely hair-free is such a huge nuisance. Armpits, arm hair, leg hair, mustache, belly hair, toe hair, and even the few beard hairs I grow, all of it. I even have an at-home laser hair removal kit. I’m someone who considers themselves super feminine, I wear dresses weekly, heels almost every other day (when I’m not in class), along with various articles of clothing that show quite a bit of skin, and I always thought it would be mandatory for me to just get rid of any bit of visible hair except for what’s on my head. Mainly because I don’t want to be in a social environment then lift up my arms for whatever reason then the person I’m talking to cringes at all my cavewoman-ness. Lately though, I just haven’t been keeping up with it because my whole shaving regime takes entirely too long. Sure, I’ll remember to shave my armpits when absolutely needed but my legs will just have to deal with being stubbly for weeks. I came to realize that in those other parts, no one really is looking all that close except for me so in actuality, no one is really bothered by it at all. However, I wouldn’t allow myself to completely wolf out but I’m so glad I learned that I don’t *need* to shave weekly anymore.
As soon as my mom deemed me old enough to shave, she taught me how to use a razor and I started shaving my legs and armpits regularly. I remember feeling bad for one of my good friends at the time because her parents wouldn’t let her shave. Shaving was the norm in my eyes; it was default, something all women just did. Looking back, I realize how insidiously pervasive beauty standards are. I started to realize that I wanted to stop shaving when I began to get annoyed at having to shave all the time and when shaving began to irritate my skin. And thanks to Tumblr, for the first time I was exposed to photos of women showing off their hairy armpits, and drawings of women proudly showing off their leg hair. I was exposed to the idea that it was okay to not shave your legs.
I’ve come to think of shaving as just another means of control over women’s minds and bodies. Thanks to advertising (yay, capitalism! *cough* NOT) shaving has become an unquestioned necessity in popular culture.