Women
‘Januhairy’ Is Seeing Women Throwing Away Razors To Let The Hair Grow
Let’s raise awareness for body positivity!
Body hair is normal. Some people are born with more than most, and that shouldn’t be considered weird. It’s similar to how some people are physically taller than most. Body hair should be normal…
Yet, shaving is actually more of a norm than not. Men can grow a beard or facial hair according to their liking, and women can’t have hair anywhere other than the head. “Movember” is a month where men grow facial hair as they raise awareness for men’s mental health.
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For women, it’s Januhairy. Women all around the world let their hair grow normally as it should!
The early 20th century was when businesses began marketing razors to women. After they manage to establish a clean and solid image in ‘clean-shaven’ men, they continued by instilling the idea that body hair is masculine and unhygienic. Once summer fashion of the 1920s that are mostly sleeveless began to rise in popularity, women are even more encouraged to display flawless skin, rid of any hair.
Imagine this: before the early 20th century, body hair on a female body is NORMAL!
When a woman cut herself shaving her leg, she made it to the national news. It was THAT unusual for a woman to ever attempt removing their body hair. It’s worth considering that fashion was still rather conservative back then, concealing most parts of the body except for the hands.
However, it was still considered the standard for performers, such as actresses and dancers.
The marketers were smart to avoid using the masculine word ‘shaving.’ They will attempt to use every other positive, feminine adjective, such as smooth, to sell their product.
Prejudice for body hair, however, seems to have existed before the ads.
Within one to two decades, shaving your legs until they’re smooth turned into the norm. Experts can hardly pinpoint if this rapid change in behavior and viewpoint towards body hair on women could be shifted so fast in just 10-20 years of ads.
To add, experts find the track record of ads seem to hint that women only resorted to depilatory products for body hair when they need to. In other words, they only use it when they know they’ll be somewhere in public with those body parts exposed.
The Januhairy campaign was started in 2018 by Laura Jackson, a student.
Laura told Metro, “I thought of making Januhairy to help women feel they are in a safe space to challenge the embedded norms of shaving.”
Since the pandemic and lockdown, women are finding themselves buying fewer razors and other hair-removing products. The social distancing may have been a huge influence that discouraged women from grooming themselves on those parts.
Laura added, “We’ve long suspected that women mainly remove hair for other people, not themselves, and lockdown proves that.”
Shaving your body hair should not be requirement, but a choice!
It’s similar to how women get to choose if they want to be lean and workout for it, or not. As long as it’s a healthy lifestyle, nobody should have a say on how they choose to treat their body.
Body hair actually might help you catch a date! This is because armpit hair helps trap your natural body odor and strengthens pheromones. The majority of people find natural body odor to stress-relieving.
Your body hair is normal and in fact, they have functions. Try it before the month ends!
