There are few things that can cause a general response of revulsion quite like body hair, something an Irish grad student is learning firsthand after making the decision to let her body fuzz be au naturel. Emer O'Toole told
The Daily Mail
that she stopped shaving 18 months ago to protest the pressure on women to "adhere to artificial gender norms."
On the one hand, we applaud Emer for taking a stand against what she believes is the unfair expectation that women look a certain way, but on the other hand — and we're being totally honest here — all that furriness is really freaking us out. And we suppose that's the whole point. To recondition our understanding of beauty.
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But we just don't know if we could take that plunge ourselves. Sure, it'd be nice not to have to deal with the daily monotony of whipping out the razor, or the awkward experience of getting our below-the-belt follicles ripped out by a total stranger, but there's just something about smooth, fuzz-free skin that makes us feel slightly more well-kept and — we'll say it — hygienic. That can probably be attributed to some deep-seated gender conditioning regarding how a woman "should" look, but that doesn't change the fact that we just feel better after we've jettisoned all that extra fuzz.
That said, we don't think Emer deserves any of the vitriol that is being directed at her. Scrolling through the harsh comments, it's really depressing to us that the majority of the detractors appear to be female. Can't we all just get along? (The Daily Mail)
But you tell us: Is untamed body hair totally disgusting, or totally not anyone else's business?
Photo: Via The Daily Mail
