Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules
272
Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules
272Paperback(New Edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826517876 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Vanderbilt University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/16/2011 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Samantha Kwan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Houston. She has published in Qualitative Health Research, Sociological Inquiry, and Teaching Sociology.
Read an Excerpt
Embodied Resistance
Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules
By Chris Bobel, Samantha Kwan
Vanderbilt University Press
Copyright © 2011 Vanderbilt University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8265-1788-3
CHAPTER 1
The Specter of Excess
Race, Class, and Gender in Women's Body Hair Narratives
Breanne Fahs and Denise A. Delgado
Hairy.
Manly.
Dirty.
Animal-like.
Women face these accusations when they choose not to shave, because traditional gender roles have made the body a source of political contention. One recent study states, "Far from being the inevitable outcome of a biological imperative, femininity is produced through a range of practices, including normative body-altering work such as routine hair removal. The very normativity of such practices obscures their constructive role" (Toerien and Wilkinson 2003, 334). Thus, body hair removal is one way women obey social norms dictated by patriarchal expectations. Though over 99 percent of women in the United States reported removing body hair at some point in their lives, few studies have addressed this phenomenon in detail, particularly in light of social identity categories such as race, class, and gender. The few studies conducted on body hair have found that women overwhelmingly construct body hair removal as a normative and taken-for-granted practice that produces an "acceptable" femininity (Toerien, Wilkinson, and Choi 2005). Shaving and plucking—labor women invest in their bodies—constitute practices adopted by most women in the United States, with women typically removing hair from underarms, legs, pubic area, eyebrows, and face. Departure from these norms often elicits negative affect and appraisal for those who rebel; women who do not shave or remove hair report feeling judged and negatively evaluated as "dirty," "gross," and "repulsive" (Toerien and Wilkinson 2004). Further, women rate other women who do not shave as less attractive, intelligent, sociable, happy, and positive compared with hairless women (Basow and Braman 1998).
Research on Body Hair Norms
Historically men's hair has been linked to virility and power, while women's body hair has been associated with "female wantonness" and the denial of women's sexuality (Toerien and Wilkinson 2003). Some accounts, however, eroticize hairy women as desirable, powerful, and highly sexed; for example, some tribal cultures in central Africa embrace women's body hair as a source of power. Typically, female body hair has been linked to insanity, witchcraft, and the devil, while male body hair (particularly facial hair) has been linked to power, strength, fertility, leadership, lustfulness, and masculinity. Feminist scholars have noted that women pluck and shave in order to appear more sexless and infantile and that, in cultures that feel threatened by female power, hairlessness norms have become more pervasive. Lack of pubic hair, for example, may represent the eroticization of girlhood rather than womanhood, a fact that concerns those interested in full gender equality (Toerien and Wilkinson 2003). Some prominent feminists, such as the folk singer Ani DiFranco, have resisted shaving norms publicly and defiantly.
Body hair removal is normative in a variety of cultures, including England, Australia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Uganda, and Turkey (Cooper 1971; Tiggemann and Kenyon 1998). Within these cultures, over 80 percent of women consistently comply with hair removal, typically beginning at puberty. Before the 1920s, however, few Western women ever removed body hair. Historians suggest that U.S. advertising campaigns in the 1930s ushered in body hair removal, with advice by "beauty experts" and changes in typical fashion (e.g., outfits revealing more skin, celebration of prepubescent female bodies), helping to establish hair removal as a new social convention (Hope 1982). Body hair removal, though relatively recent as a historical development, has spanned the globe: recent studies of Australian women found that nearly 97 percent of women shave their underarms and legs (Tiggemann and Lewis 2004). Research on American women has shown that 92 percent removed their leg hair and 93 percent removed underarm hair, indicating that women comply with body hair norms at rates much higher than those for other dominant body practices (e.g., thinness, long hair, makeup, manicured nails) (Tiggemann and Kenyon 1998).
Not all women are equally eager to remove body hair. For many decades, women in Europe shaved less often than U.S. women, yet this divide is narrowing. There is some evidence that feminist identity, lesbian identity, and older age may predict decreased likelihood of hair removal (Basow 1991; Toerien, Wilkinson, and Choi 2005). The 1960s and 1970s saw women growing underarm hair as a political statement attached to bohemian identity and leftist politics, suggesting that hair may also signify political, regional, and national attachment.
Still, researchers have found "strong evidence of a widespread symbolic association between body hair—or its absence—and ideal gender: to have a hairy body is a sign of masculinity, to have a hairless one a sign of femininity" (Basow 1991, 84). Emphasis on women's hairlessness emphasizes women's differentness from men and highlights that, unlike men's bodies, women's bodies are unacceptable in their natural state (Basow 1991). Women learn to associate their hairlessness with ideal femininity, in part because of mass media and marketing campaigns (Whelehan 2000). In particular, women shave their legs and underarms to achieve femininity and overall attractiveness, and they shave pubic hair to achieve sexual attractiveness and self-enhancement. In addition, women with partners—male or female—reported more frequent pubic hair removal (Tiggemann and Hodgson 2008).
Hair removal practices also correlate with other body modification practices; women who shave more often report unhealthy dieting, cosmetic surgeries, and general body dissatisfaction (Tiggemann and Hodgson 2008). That hair removal seems trivial and relatively unnoticed makes it all the more potent as a means of social control, because women adopt ideas about idealized femininity without considering the ramifications of those ideologies and accompanying practices. Hairlessness norms mark femininity as clearly different from masculinity; femininity becomes associated with "tameness," docility, and immaturity, while masculinity is associated with power and dominance (Toerien and Wilkinson 2003). Women with negative attitudes toward body hair more often felt disgusted with their bodies in general (Toerien and Wilkinson 2004). Also, women who shaved described feeling that their bodies were unacceptable and unattractive in their natural state (Chapkis 1986). Paradoxically, women recognize the normative pressures placed on them to shave but generally cannot accept these as a rationale for changing their specific behaviors around shaving (Tiggemann and Kenyon 1998). Though few studies have asked women why they remove body hair, some studies have indirectly and unsystematically included women's rationale for hair removal. Women said they removed body hair to feel cleaner, more feminine, more confident about themselves, and more attractive. Some women liked the "soft, silky feeling" of shaved legs, while others enjoyed feeling sexually attractive to men (Tiggemann and Hodgson 2008).
To date, no studies have directly and systematically addressed the race, class, and sexual identity implications of body hair practices, even though some research has identified female subjects by these categories (Tiggemann and Hodgson 2008; Weitz 2004). Feminist scholars have argued that femininity is a white, middle-classed signifier against which women of color and working-class women have been defined as deviant, thus requiring that they meet the standards of white, middle-class femininity "to avoid being positioned as vulgar, pathological, tasteless, and sexual" (Skeggs 1997, 100). Nonetheless, most body hair studies ignore race and class. One study found that whites, on average, have more body hair than most other "races" (Cooper 1971). Though no systematic studies exist about body hair and social class, some researchers have offered compelling theoretical links between these factors: "Given that the presence of hair on a woman's body may be taken to represent dirtiness, poor grooming, and laziness, by retaining her body hair, a woman may risk being negatively positioned by representations of the 'unruly,' 'out of control,' 'vulgar' working-class woman" (Toerien and Wilkinson 2003, 342). Still, direct analysis of how conformity to, or violation of, hair removal practices relate to social identities of race, class, and sexual identity remain relatively absent from the current literature.
Methods
The central research question of this chapter asks, How do women from different identity categories react when temporarily rejecting the social norm of shaving? In response, this chapter analyzes the role of body hair in the construction of women's raced, classed, and gendered identities. Our findings emerge from a content analysis of a class assignment undertaken by women enrolled in a course on women and health at a large southwestern university.
During a recent semester of Fahs's Women and Health course, students were invited to participate in an extra-credit assignment that asked them to grow out their body hair (underarm, leg, and pubic) for twelve weeks. Students kept weekly logs of their personal reactions to their body hair, others' reactions to it, any changes in behavior noted, and thoughts about how changes in body hair affected their health and sexuality. The twenty enrolled students included nineteen women and one man; as such, the man performed the opposite social norm by shaving for twelve weeks, though he did not turn in a paper and is excluded from this analysis because of the difficulty of generalizing from one person's experience. The sample for this study included nineteen women (35 percent women of color, primarily Latina; 65 percent white women), nearly all of whom were under age thirty (only two students were over age thirty). Students turned in their weekly logs and a reflection paper based on the body hair experiment.
This chapter draws from those narratives to illustrate the compulsory qualities of body-hair-norm adherence and to illuminate the more specific elements of race, class, and gender norming related to depilation. The narratives discuss the following issues:
1. Misinformation that arises when women violate social norms (e.g., belief that hair is dirty, abnormal, and bacteria-laden)
2. The race, class, and gender implications of growing body hair (e.g., violation of raced and classed norms with their Latino/Latina family)
3. Confrontation of social responses to growing body hair (e.g., partner refusing sex; friends' teasing)
4. The relationship between social norms and social policing, particularly as it relates to postexperimental reflections (e.g., the difficulty of purposefully constructing one's body outside of "normal" body standards)
This chapter considers the perceived positive and negative outcomes of challenging body hair norms for these students, including the gendered, raced, and classed impact of social rejection as it affects different women. Additionally, the social psychological dynamics of reproducing social conformity and obedience to authority in the classroom is a secondary subject of inquiry. Despite the assignment's being extra credit and worth a mere two points, women who initially resisted participating eventually gave in to social pressures to grow their body hair as a way to join group dynamics. Finally, we consider two abstract themes: how challenging body hair norms forges new communities at the margins of pervasive social norms, and how women use their bodies as mechanisms for resistance and rebellion.
"Hiding in the House": Mythologies and Disgust about Body Hair
As expected because of the literatures on body hair removal for women, many women described strongly negative feelings about the process of growing out their body hair, noting, most prominently, several "facts" that indicated widespread misinformation and distortion about body hair. Women reported initial feelings—internally driven and communicated by friends and family—that not shaving would lead to razor rash, extreme bacterial growth, and excessive amounts of sweating, and that body hair was fundamentally unsanitary. Repeated discussions of cleanliness and hair as "dirty and gross" appeared in women's narratives of their body hair.
Also permeating women's narratives were internalized beliefs about hair as disgusting and inherently unhealthy. Participants claimed that body hair caused germs to multiply on their bodies, and that it posed a serious health risk. Esperanza, a woman of color, wrote, "My sister said it was absolutely gross and out of this world. My biggest problem I had was not shaving my pubic hair. I hated my body during my period. Hygiene wise, it was the worst experience I ever had. I would not stop shaving my pubic hair unless I had a medical impediment that forced me to do it."
Often women described others as reacting in a negative or even overtly hostile manner, such as Latina-identified Ana: "My mom said it was unsanitary and disgusting and that I needed to stay away from her because the look of it grossed her out, and if my leg or underarm hair touched her, she'd have to take a shower."
Consequently, women altered their behaviors to avoid negative social penalties. The substantial list of behavior changes women made included refusing to wear certain kinds of clothes (e.g., dresses, shorts, Capri pants, tank tops, and bathing suits), hiding in their houses rather than going out with friends, avoiding exercise or the gym, having sex with their partners less often or not at all, not going on job interviews, taking more showers, putting on more lotion, wearing excessive amounts of deodorant, and avoiding the sensation of the "wind blowing through the hair." Women also reported emotional reactions to the exercise: developing fear that strangers (e.g., mailmen, servers, gynecologists) would ridicule them, having nervous reactions when visiting family members, and feeling general unease.
In addition to these behavioral changes, women reported that others accused them of not being womanly enough or of conforming to stereotypes of women's studies students as hairy and manly. Cecilia, a woman of color, described this heteronormative patrolling:
My sister called me a women's studies lesbian and said I needed to change my major because it was messing with my mind and turning me into a man. My male relatives were name-calling me lesbian, he-she, ape, mud flaps, and they were laughing. My partner explained that I had been doing it for a school experiment. They could not understand why I would even do something like this for school or why my partner would allow it.
Mariah, a white woman, said, "My family and my mom said I looked like a feminist dyke and I looked disgusting," and Samantha, a white woman, said, "My boyfriend made a joke about how I might as well go as a werewolf for Halloween because I already have a costume. I feel like a man."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Embodied Resistance by Chris Bobel, Samantha Kwan. Copyright © 2011 Vanderbilt University Press. Excerpted by permission of Vanderbilt University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Foreword - Rose Weitz
Introduction - Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan
Rewriting Gender Scripts
The Specter of Excess: Race, Class, and Gender in Women's Body Hair Narratives - Breanne Fahs and Denise A. Delgado
"Is That Any Way to Treat a Lady?": The Dominatrix's Dungeon - Danielle J. Lindemann
"Cruisin' for a Bruisin'": Women's Flat Track Roller Derby - Natalie M. Peluso
Becoming a Female-to-Male Transgender (FTM) in South Korea - Tari Youngjung Na and Hae Yeon Choo
Living Resistance: From Rapunzel to G.I. Jane - Samantha Binford
Living Resistance: Funnel as Phallus - Sara L. Crawley
Challenging Marginalization
"Give Me a Boa and Some Bling!": Red Hat Society Members Commanding Visibility in the Public Sphere - M. Elise Radina, Lydia K. Manning, Marybeth C. Stalp, and Annette Lynch
Fat. Hairy. Sexy: Contesting Standards of Beauty and Sexuality in the Gay Community - Nathaniel C. Pyle and Noa Logan Klein
Belly Dancing Mommas: Challenging Cultural Discourses of Maternity - Angela M. Moe
"It's Important to Show Your Colors": Counter-Heteronormativity in a Metropolitan Community Church - J. Edward Sumerau and Douglas P. Schrock
Living Resistance: An Accidental Education - Hanne Blank
Living Resistance: The Pickup - Catherine Bergart
Defying Authoritative Knowledges and Conventional Wisdom
Anorexia as a Choice: Constructing a New Community of Health and Beauty through Pro-Ana Websites - Abigail Richardson and Elizabeth Cherry
Public Mothers and Private Practices: Breastfeeding as Transgression - Jennifer A. Reich
"It's Hard to Say": Moving Beyond the Mystery of Female Genital Pain - Christine Labuski
"What I Had to Do to Survive": Self-Injurers' Bodily Emotion Work - Margaret Leaf and Douglas P. Schrock
Living Resistance: Intersex?: Not My Problem - Esther Morris Leidolf
Living Resistance: Doula-Assisted Childbirth: Helping Her Birth Her Way - Angela Horn
Negotiating Boundaries and Meanings
The Politics of the Stall: Transgender and Genderqueer Workers Negotiating "the Bathroom Question" - Catherine Connell
The Everyday Resistance of Vegetarianism - Samantha Kwan and Louise Marie Roth
Menopausal and Misbehaving: When Women "Flash" in Front of Others - Heather E. Dillaway
The Transformation of Bodily Practices among Religious Defectors - Lynn Davidman
Living Resistance: Crossing the Menstrual Line - David Linton
Living Resistance: Myself, Covered - Beverly Yuen Thompson
Afterword Barbara Katz Rothman