The Bush Controversy: From Politics to Body Hair Stigma
By Tia Waldron, Sexpress Editor
On the 14th of December 2008, former US President George W. Bush had shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a joint press conference with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister at the time. This was done in response to years of outrage over the invasion of US troops in Iraq and the terrible consequences they had on the region. However, this has not remained the only time the presence of bush has upset people. Body hair has remained one of the beauty industry’s biggest enemies - alongside weight gain and aging - for decades. There exist many people in conference rooms whose ability to buy a fifth house and third private jet rely on you, yes you, hating your body and hating the natural bodies of those around you.
The move to stigmatise such a natural thing that your body does begins at a young age. It’s almost insidious in nature. It’s well established that going through puberty is worse than fighting the Battle of the Somme or the 1916 Rising - when you’re that age, every problem you experience feels ten times bigger than you. Things feel monumentally icky, gross, and stupid. With so many rapid changes to your body, waking up each morning feels more akin to being Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis, waking up as a bug rather than a human being. Changing height, weight, skin texture, and of course, body hair becoming more prevalent feels apocalyptic. You don't feel as if you are a mammal dealing with natural body changes. It’s like you are losing all agency in your personhood and becoming the only thing worse than being ten: being eleven.
If you are a woman or a femme presenting person, magazines, advertisements, television programmes, and the media at large sniff out this discomfort like blood in shark-infested waters. Mr. Krabs would feel shocked at the levels of corporate greed involved with the anguish at the presence of body hair. Brands and companies will emphasise the benefits of their razors, waxing strips, or laser hair removal so that you can have perfect skin that is as smooth as a baby. Advertisements depicting razors removing hair on hairless legs. Photoshopped images removing any suggestion of body hair on models. They create these things with nothing but massive currency symbols floating around their skull like the DVD logo screensaver.
The media will also jump to stigmatise this body hair, because if you don’t have any insecurities, why not make the time to start? Julia Roberts famously caused a stir in 1999 when (brace for it) she didn’t shave her armpits before the premiere of Notting Hill. This action, being the equivalent of kicking a homeless puppy in the eyes of some members of the press, was torn apart and dissected. Roberts was labelled everything from ‘lazy’ to ‘feminist’ with both being negatives in the eyes of the patriarchal beauty industry. The backlash had two major motivations: this high-profile actress needed to know she couldn’t just exist in her natural body and anyone who dared be influenced to don their armpit hair needed to know they’d be a topic of scorn.
It would be remiss however to say that stigma and beauty industry pressures are a strictly feminine issue. For men and masculine presenting people, body hair becomes more of an expectation. If you want to be viewed as a real testosterone-oozing alpha male, then you must embrace your body being covered in hair and maybe start a podcast or two. It doesn’t cease at just growing Rapunzel-length body hair, but the maintenance of it with masculine grooming kits becomes an expectation. Beard oils, shaving tools, hair growth oils - it is very similar to the push for feminine individuals to be hairless. At the end of the day, the beauty industry wants profit and will find ways to extract it from people’s pockets. Did you know that you are a mammal? It’s true. If you are reading this, the likelihood is that you are a living and breathing creature and comparable to a lion, tiger, or assorted primate. It’s easy to forget this fact in the endless sea of advertisements devoted to making you alienated from what being a human entails. You don’t need to be a ‘sexy baby’. You can just be a human mammal. Hostilities and stigma associated with body hair are rampant regardless of gender. To remove body hair or not should be an individual choice and one made to affirm your own comfort in your personhood.
