Misogynistic men tend to have a rather possessive attitude towards women’s bodies. They often grow quite angry when women deviate from the standards of beauty that these men think they should conform to — by doing everything from gaining weight to getting tattoos and piercings.
It’s as though they believe that women’s bodies don’t really belong to women at all, but to the world’s (heterosexual) men. By “ruining” their looks, these women aren’t just making the straight men of the world sad in their pants; they’re damaging something that these men feel belongs to them.
You may recall the racist PUA Heartiste’s recent complaints that the world’s white women weren’t “exercising good stewardship of their Golden Gashes,” by allowing themselves to get fat and/or sleep with black men. “Stewardship,” is an interesting choice of words here, as the term usually applies to those who take care of a resource that belongs to someone else, or to society as a whole. In other words. all your vagina are belong to us.
Misogynistic men rarely put it quite so baldly, instead preferring to simply attack those women who don’t pay proper obeisance to their notions of what is and isn’t attractive. A lot of this animus is directed at fat women. But it’s also directed at women who break the rules of femininity in more deliberate ways.
Like not shaving their armpits. Some women don’t shave because they don’t really care; some because they’re sick of razor bun; and some because they see it as a small rebellion against conventional femininity — and a way to show themselves and/or the world at large that their bodies are theirs. Regardless of the reasons, misogynists see the unshaven female armpit as an assault on men.
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Yes, that’s right, this mememaker thinks that the best way to stand up for all the men who are allegedly being shamed by feminists for not liking armpit hair … is by shaming women with armpit hair.
And no, dudes, you are not required to like armpit hair on women.
Here’s another meme that also tries to play up the phony “double standard” issue.
Shamed for being a neckbeard? I wonder what that’s like.
These guys also have something of an animus towards hair on any other part of a women besides her scalp and possibly that secret place:
Here’s a sentence that has never been uttered by a feminist ever except perhaps in befuddlement after seeing this meme: “Look at that asshole forcing his man beard on my eyes damn shitlord.”
There is no feminist campaign against beards or beardy dudes. Some feminist women like them; some don’t, because that’s how the world works. Different people find different things attractive, and people who aren’t assholes don’t go around attacking those who don’t appeal to them as if these unattractive-to-them people are being unattractive to them out of spite.
Several years ago, feminist YouTube sex educator Laci Green made a similar point, writing on her blog that
body hair is a matter of personal preference! it’s not a matter of “boys do this and girls do this”, and it’s supermega uncool for people to body police those who have a different preference than they do. pffff. fuzzy or hairless, you’re a friggin babe either way.
Alongside this mini-manifesto, she posted this picture, revealing a small puff of hair under one of her arms:
Naturally, the Great Internet Lady Hate Squad decided that they did need to police her body, or at least her body hair:
If women who don’t shave their legs or armpits are seen as poor stewards of their bodies, which really don’t belong to them, then men who don’t stand up against this terrible misandering are traitors to their gender.
That fellow looks awfully familiar, possibly because it’s me. The quote isn’t anything I actually ever said; up until this post I don’t think I’ve ever spoken out on this particular issue, largely because it’s really none of my damn business what women do with their armpits. (Though in the interest of full disclosure I will add that I don’t really care one way or the other.)
Here’s the most revealing armpit hair meme of them all:
Yep, she’s apparently being “selfish” by denying the men of the world a view of her armpit that’s not obstructed by hair.
Dudes, if you’re that interested in seeing shaved armpits, go shave your own, and take a day off from work so you can spend the day staring at it in the mirror.
You know who else doesn’t like women with hairy armpits (in general) and this feminist with hairy armpits (in particular)? White supremacists.
What a weird coincidence, huh?
What’s so delicious about it anyway? It’s only hair.
If my girlfriend was to say to me ‘Valya, today I am going to grow my hairs’ I would be very afraid because even though she says she’s doing it for feminism really I know it’s because she’s a witch and she’s going to trap me like a fly in web of hair and suck out my insides.
But it’s okay for me my girlfriend only uses her powers for good. So I guss MRA really do have a reason to fear hairy women! 😉
lol, I would love to see them react to this webcomic
http://iamarg.com/2016/03/14/03142016/
I personally can not stand armpit hair. On men and women. I don’t know why but I just can’t. So I shave mine Despite me looking like a young Robin Williams with all my body hair…. I did try shaving my arms and legs once…. I looked ridiculous as a guy with my body type should not be hairless like that.
@hugseverycat
I was informed that you could not in fact hug every cat!
A few years ago, I traveled to San Diego to see Adam Lambert at the state fair there. It was hot-ish, so I wore a sleeveless dress. One of my fandom buddies noticed my underarm hair and said “So you’re going French today?” I laughed and said yes.
That was it. Nobody really cared. And this lady was a breast cancer survivor who had opted not to get implants. “I’m over 60, nobody is touching them anyway.” I didn’t even notice until she mentioned it.
I’m pretty sure any MGTOW who mistakenly went to an Adam Lambert concert might freak out, even before the homophobia got them.
I wonder if these dimwits obsess to the point that they’re looking at random women on the street, working up a bit of paranoia over whether they shave or not? Because that would amuse me. That woman there might be violating your bizarre arbitrary rules! But you’ll never know, and will have to lie awake, fretting and wondering, hahahaha!
As the boss of my armpits, I said ‘screw it’ about ten years ago and just let them go wild, because having my delicate skin regularly sandpapered raw by blades and stubble hurt like a bastard. Says a lot about these guys that they feel entitled to impose something on others that can be painful.
In my youth, I looked rather like the “Nationalist”, at least when I wore a sarafan for my folk music group. I was and am a feminist. Just now, I look old, which I would have done anyway. And I rather think *men* should shave their armpits, which are too often at the level of short women’s noses.
@EverythingIsRidiculous
Speaking of painful, there is a weird fetishizing thing with misogynists and women’s pain. They fetishize women’s pain for the purpose of looking “beautiful”, and sometimes even women’s death if they have died in a “tragically beautiful way”, like an eating disorder or dying while still young and beautiful, never having had the chance to age or live a full life. I hate that shit. It’s sickening, but it is something I have noticed among a lot of misogynists. They want women to suffer to be beautiful for them, and they get off on it. I guess cause we aren’t people and apparently don’t feel pain like they do, it doesn’t matter. Our lives or our joy or our peace doesn’t matter.
Sorry OT I know, just a thought that came to me. I’m not in a great place today.
I notice that ‘Nationalist woman’ is wearing makeup, as well as other cosmetics – something dear old Adolf was an avid campaigner against. I wonder if the white supremacists have any idea? (It’s just occurred to me that that last sentence was a rhetorical question.)
@Scildfreja: I’m going to make a petition to make that the official WHTM theme song.
I would like to add that ‘Easter’ was the first album I ever bought (while holidaying with my folks and brother in Brussels), and you’ve just inspired me to play it again now.
+1 to Patti Smith, also PJ Harvey!
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdy65z2AE91qbe95zo1_400.jpg
Growing up in France but living in America, there’s this bizzare stereotype that French women all have hairy arm-pits. I have no idea where the hell that comes from, are french women too feminist-y?
Personally, I hate my facial hair. I don’t like how it looks on me, it’s extremely itchy and I get ridiculous amounts of neckbeard to the point where if I tilt my head downwards I get poked by a thousand stray hairs going in every fucking direction. The only reason I’d even let it grow is to get that cathartic release of shaving it off. Feels soooo good.
Meanwhile, “Look at that asshole forcing his man beard upon my eyes damn shitlord” has to win some sort of award for the stupidest straw feminist argument ever put forth. It’s not even trying, it’s patently obvious it came from the fevered imagination of some MRAsshole.
Clearly you need to review your evo psych, WWTH! Women were totally hairless back in prehistoric times, just like they were in the 1950s! Only when feminism came around did women start growing body hair!
(as sarcastic as I am being, I can easily imagine some Manospherian using this train of thought and/or claiming that women who have body hair are somehow ‘unnatural’)
Also, related to the whole ‘all women should look pristine and virginal’ complaint by sexist douchebags, I can’t help but bring up the ‘alternative’ pin-up site Suicide Girls. (link is NSFW, also any lurking MRAs should probably avoid that link at all cost as it contains nothing but sexy and beautiful models with tattoos, piercings, green/purple/blue/magenta/pink/cyan hair, etc…)
Good grief, who cares?
All of the nonsense going on in the world, and people are focusing on pit hair?
Having read a bunch of Victorian porn, back then they thought armpit hair was sexy, and only tarts would shave it off. Which tells me that hair is only the McGuffin. What it’s really about is finding a pretext for policing women. If we were all to grow it out so that furryness was re-normalised, then all the misogynist control freaks will be whingeing about the ‘unfeminine’ rebels who dare to shave.
I had a male shift leader at my last job who claimed to be the biggest feminist who ever feministed. He harassed me for two weeks about wearing white socks with black leggings, because it wasn’t “fashionable”. Even threatened my job over it, even though I was complying with dress code and it shouldn’t have been an issue how “fashionable” my damned WORK uniform was. He also liked to pick a new female employee to bully for awhile, usually among the older women who worked there and usually over their looks or intelligence. He’d had multi-incident reports spanning months filed against him twice, and no one had done anything, because he kissed major ass with the (also male) district manager. I think my favorite* thing he did, however, was constantly bragging about his sex life with his wife and then calling it “sexual harassment” with no irony whatsoever when a 73-year-old lady who was a regular would crack about her sex life–because, of course, she wasn’t appealing to him, so her even hinting at having sex was “harassment”.
Anyway, one day, I decided to forego the leggings altogether and just wear white socks. I also didn’t have the time or the give-a-shit to shave that week, so my legs were pretty foresty. He didn’t even know what to do. He kept giving my legs perplexed looks and opening his mouth like he was going to say something, then shaking his head and walking away. I could practically see the smoke pouring out of his ears as he tried to figure out how to still promote himself as a feminist and also tell me I looked icky. It was fantastic.
*actually my favorite thing, because it was such a blatant double standard that even the not particularly progressive employees talked shit about him over it
Spelling 4 Menzers: It’s UNHYGIENIC, not “unhygenic”. Do you even spellcheck, bros?
This little obsession of theirs is pretty much the entirety of the manuresphere in condensed form, isn’t it?
SJA: A variant on that is how women’s deaths occur in media. Unless the genre is specifically horror-based, even the seemingly horrible deaths never muss up their hair or make-up. Action movies, of course, are the worst at this. Hellsing (which I cannot recommend to anyone, ever) has the female lead spend the entire movie getting punched through walls and doing flying-kick combat and so forth, and then has her die from the equivalent of a bad hockey check from a werewolf. In order for something like that to be lethal, she should’ve been hit with enough force to mangle her limbs and torso, and been coughing up blood–but no, she just makes death look sexy.
Also, i-hugs if you want them. Bad days suck.
Well, that makes two of us, then, because I’m the same way. Misandry, the blade that cuts both ways! Ha, ha.
I also wear my hair long because it’s curly, and shoulder length makes it easier to manage than a short cut (which is higher maintenance due to the need for frequent trims, not to mention can get messy much more easily than it does when I simply tie it back, braid it, pull it off my face with combs, wear barrettes, or put it up in a floofy bun. Oh yeah, and it’s versatile, too!)
So I do all these “prettifying” things for my own sake, and not for the benefit of any man — especially since there’s currently no man in my life to “benefit” from them, anyway. But imagine the shriiiiieeeeking from Menzerland if they knew that women actually do things for themselves, not AT MEN…
Ugh, that reminds me: There are actual MRAs who fetishize anorexic teenagers. Literally anorexic. Literally teenagers. Literally nothing to them but skin and bones. Dying. Of a mental illness. I can’t remember where I saw that report (pretty sure it wasn’t here), but it was the most nauseating thing I’ve read in a long time. And yet, it just so FIGURED. Because as you say, they seriously get off on women’s suffering. And they are so habituated to this idea of unnatural and life-threatening thinness as “beautiful” that it is literally the only female body type they don’t sneer at.
And they are actively offended that any feeeemale would dare to be any other way.
I can cherry pick too! Feminist: http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/kluwe-out/nfl-player-gay-advocate-chris-kluwe-covers-out-magazine-november-2012-01.jpg
Nationalist: http://altoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Donald-Trump-angry.jpg
I’m looking at the garbage bag pic, and I’m thinking… wait, these guys are attracted to literal trash? It takes all kinds.
Cave women smelled like cinnamon buns, Tickle, and servility. It wasn’t until women got the right to vote that their armpits got hairy and started emitting nasssssty tricksssssy pheromones designed to ensnare men and siphon off their wealth.
I shave my legs because everyone here does.
I finally got tired of it, what with the constant cuts and scabs and bleeding and itching and pain and am now paying more than $1,000 for laser hair removal. It’s yet another tax on being female, because there weren’t enough of those already.
Personally, I do feel more comfortable and fresh with shaven armpits, so I’m going to keep doing that.
On the origin of American shaving norms:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/625/who-decided-women-should-shave-their-legs-and-underarms