This week, the girlies are hairy on main to address the question: why are we so obsessed with being smooth? From ancient sugaring practices to TikTok lasers, they trace the cultural history of body hair and explore how whiteness, misogyny, hygiene myths, and beauty marketing all converged to make your stubble a moral failing. Digressions include Eliza's ongoing war with air travel, Lena Dunham's latest press tour, and non-qualified med spas that will definitely leave you botched.
This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Allison Hagan. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan.
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SOURCES:
ASU professor encourages students to defy body hair norms
Body Hair Removal: The 'Mundane' Production of Normative Femininity.
Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture
Darker-skinned people urged to take extra precautions as laser hair removal industry booms
From flint razors to lasers: a timeline of hair removal methods
Hair or Bare?: The History of American Women and Hair Removal, 1914-1934
How the beauty industry convinced women to shave their legs
How Much A Beauty Editor's Hair Removal Routine Actually Costs
Male Stigmatization of Female Body Hair
Mapping 'Gross' Bodies: The Regulatory Politics of Disgust
Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca Herzig
'Plucked': Race, gender, science, medicine converge in history of hair removal
Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States
Shaving and fashion: A storied history
The Casualties of Women's War on Body Hair
The Hair-Raising History of Women's Body Hair
The History of Female Hair Removal
The Naked Truth: Why Humans Have No Fur
The Strange Secret History Of Hair Removal Will Blow Your Mind
Trends in body hair removal as depicted through art
UNSHAVED resistance & revolution in women's body hair politics