As Indians called Harnaaz Sandhu a national pride for winning the Miss Universe crown, body positivity raised some questions. Were we saying that beauty and certain body types deserved a certain stature? Were we okay with judging the variations of the same woman from different countries? Did we come so far only to walk a thousand hundred steps back?
But things are not that simple. If we really look closely at the way we conduct ourselves in our daily lives, we will find our own struggles with our body and our perceived ideals of it. We might want to walk away from pedestalizing – but we are still rolling in the deep.
In this series, I am going to delve into three zones – body hair, skin, and weight every day and see how complex the body positivity situation is for us regular people.
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BODY HAIR
On Sunday I sat in a room with an equal number of men and women. At one point, men in the room started discussing how tedious it was to shave their backs. They took a dig at each other, shared tips, and shuddered as they recalled that one time they waxed. Then someone said, “by why not just leave it as it is. Who cares?”
The women looked at each other and burst out laughing.
It is rare to witness men talk about grooming in a very specific way which is largely leaning towards body aesthetics. For decades and generations, complaining about body hair is a women’s domain. This line now seems to be blurring.
Body hair is where femininity and feminism get complex. If I am a good feminist who does not need to bend to society’s expectations of me, why do I feel uncomfortable with the fuzz? It comes down to conditioning, of course. It is purely a matter of how your personal aesthetic is wired. And it is hard to unlearn a standard. [Also, science does not require anyone to get rid of body hair for hygiene so that argument is moot.]
The person who asked the earlier question also added “we are men, we don’t need to do all this.”
In all fairness, he was right. This isn’t an expectation from men. But it seems over the past few years, this specific insecurity has been nurtured leading us to the point of this conversation. Men have entered the dark side.
But!
Wouldn’t it have been better instead we were all pulled to the brighter side?
This is where body positivity gets complex. Could it be that today we are bending the rules to become inclusive, but are not questioning the rules altogether?