Where do body image standards come from?
In America we have this fixed idea that a woman should only have hair in two places on her body, and if you judge by our pornography that narrows down to one place. Where did this idea come from? Surely Puritan women didn’t spend a lot of time scraping hair off their legs and underarms. So who decided this and when?
Random thoughts as I prepare for the coming spring.
The body image standards come from the military/industrial/entertainment complex. Didn’t you get the memo? :0)
A more interesting question is “who are we trying to please?” For example, I shave my legs in the spring and summer. If asked, I tell my male peers it’s because I “want to avoid road rash in case I take a spill on my bike.” It’s macho, it’s plausible, and it’s totally not the reason. In reality, I want to show off my legs and distract from other, less-perfect areas. Using bizarro-Jim circular logic, there’s more motivation to exercise, nicer legs, etc. My significant other is ambivilant, leaning towards “uh, whatever.” She prefers not to shave her legs. I don’t really have a strong preference, though I always offer to help 😉
It depends on which set of beauty standards you are talking about in a given time period. Ruebenesque beauties were prized at one time as extreme thiness was a sign of poverty. Suntans were also considered ugly at one point because spending large amounts of time working outside was a hallmark of working class labor.
The high fashion world’s love for the crack pipe thin is easy to explain….there’s no better way to display clothes than on a body that looks like a coat rack. However even this long standing trend is finally having it’s backlash with the rise of the celebration of booty in pop culture.
Shaving did not start to become widespread until the 20’s or so, and was marketed as a necessity by companies looking to push razors and the new crop of mass produced deoderants.This tied in nicely with the then risque hemlines of flapper fashion.
By the way, I was reading one of the “The Straight Dope” books by Cecil Adams (*very* amusing bathroom reads, by the by), and the suggested answer to a similar question was as your previous commenter noted: the shaving products companies.