Body hair removal: the 'mundane' production of normative femininity

Women's body hair (5) removal is strongly normative across numerous cultural contexts today. Survey research indicates that the practice is currently prevalent in North America (Basow, 1991) and Australia (Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998). However, accounts of women's hair removal from such diverse regions as Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; the Tobriand Islands; Uganda; South America; and Turkey (Cooper, 1971) show it to be neither a modern nor a purely Western invention. Taken together, the long history and the current, documented prevalence of women's body depilation suggest it to be of social significance. Moreover, there is 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 (6) (Basow, 1991; Basow & Braman, 1998; Cooper, 1971; Ferrante, 1988; Firth, 1973; Greer, 1970; Hope, 1982; Simpson, 1986; Synnott, 1993; Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998; Toerien & Wilkinson, 2003, 2004). Indeed, the depiction of the female body as depilated, with "smooth unwrinkled ... skin" (Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998, p. 873), is part of the current, dominant, mass media image of ideal femininity (Whelehan, 2000).
Yet hairlessness is not the inevitable state of the female body; to be hairless typically requires work (Synnott, 1993). Thus, women's practices of depilation--the work required to produce themselves as hairless--may be understood as one means of transforming the body such that it more closely resembles the feminine ideal. As such, hair removal may act as a "structuring device ... reflect[ing] larger cultural conceptions of masculinity and femininity, of sex roles, and of changes in social-sexual status" (Ferrante, 1988, p. 220). This article, in which we highlight the normative status of hair removal in a cultural context not researched before--the UK--presents the results of an investigation of the work of hair removal; we argue that this is a significant facet of the production of a socially acceptable femininity.
Few social scientific studies have concerned the practices of women's routine hair removal (Basow, 1991; Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998). Somewhat more common are psychological investigations into the impact on women of so-called 'excess' hair growth (e.g., Barth, Catalan, Cherry, & Day, 1993; Kitzinger & Willmott, 2002; Rabinowitz, Cohen, & Le Roith, 1983). However, Basow and Braman (1998) have demonstrated that negative evaluations of women's body hair are not confined to 'excess' growth. In their study, participants, who were randomly assigned to watch a video-recording of the same bikiniclad woman either with or without visible body hair, judged the woman as less attractive, intelligent, sociable, happy, and positive when hairy than when hairless. The presence of hair on a woman's body, then, may be symbolically--and, importantly, socially--problematic irrespective of whether or not it may be defined as a medical concern. As Ferrante (1988) concluded: "Perhaps it is because the division between masculine and feminine hair growth is physiologically arbitrary yet socially and psychologically rigid that any amount deviating from hairlessness is threatening. A woman never knows when she may have crossed the boundary" (p. 231).
Coupled with socio-cultural emphases on feminine 'beauty' (see Wolf, 1991), the above findings suggest that most women within cultures that view body hair as masculine will remove at least some of their hair. The only two published social psychological surveys on women's hair removal strongly support this hypothesis: Basow (1991) found that 81% of the professional North American women in her sample reported removing their leg and/or underarm hair; and Tiggemann and Kenyon (1998) found that 91.5% of their Australian university student sample removed their leg hair, and 93% removed their underarm hair. Tiggemann and Kenyon also surveyed a group of Australian high school students, and found similar results: 92% reported removing their leg hair, and 91.2% their underarm hair. Industry reports provide similarly high statistics (Hope, 1982); for example, Chapkis (1986) cited the "Epilator 2700" estimate that between 85 and 90% of women have body hair that they would prefer to be rid of. Hair removal, then, may well be "[s]tatistically ... one of the most frequent ways women alter their bodies to achieve the ideal of youthfulness and attractiveness" (Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998, p. 874). As such, women's depilatory practices not only contribute substantially to the cosmetic industry, but reinforce the view that underpins all the body-changing procedures, from make-up application to cosmetic surgery: that a woman's body is unacceptable if left unaltered (see Basow, 1991; Chapkis, 1986; Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998).
This study, together with two previous surveys (Basow, 1991; Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998), provides baseline data on women's everyday hair removal practices. We expected that a majority of participants would report removing at least some body hair, thus providing empirical support for an understanding of women's hair removal as a powerful social norm within the UK. Because norms are seldom monolithic, we also expected some participants to report never having removed any body hair. Thus, we investigated one possible explanation for women's non-removal that has not yet been explored: age. Basow (1991) reported being surprised by the number of women (around 20%) in her sample who did not remove their hair. And, indeed, Tiggemann and Kenyon (1998) found a higher rate of removal in their study. Both Basow and Tiggemann and Kenyon suggested that the discrepancy may be because the former study specifically maximised the number of feminist and lesbian participants. An additional reason might be that Basow's study included participants from a much wider age range (20-81) than did Tiggemann and Kenyon's, which focused on undergraduates (mean age of 22.3 years) and school-goers (mean age of 14.3 years). If the norm has become, as may be inferred from Hope's (1982) analysis, increasingly powerful over the past 90 years or so, then we might expect that younger women would be more likely than their older counterparts to have grown up with an understanding of hair removal as virtually de rigueur. Thus, we investigated whether older participants were more likely than younger participants to report never having removed their body hair.