So, I was in the shower just now and I thought about shaving legs. Not in the sense that I should really shave my legs (although I’m sure some people would think I kinda should…, that’s beside the point), but in the philosophical sense. Why do people shave their legs? Hell, why do I shave my legs?
I came to the conclusion that I shave my legs for one reason: my boyfriend.
Now before all the feminazis jump up and come to early conclusions, shouting ‘That’s oppressive!’ Hold your horses, shut up and read on.
It’s not oppressive at all, and I’ll tell you why. I shave my legs for my boyfriend, but I don’t do it because he asks me to or because he expects me to. He doesn’t. Whenever I shave my legs (which really isn’t very regularly, to be fair) I do it because I choose to do it for him. I make that decision and I do believe he likes it, but he will never ask it of me or expect it of me.
I think that is what feminism is, what freedom is: that choice. The choice to do something that may please someone, but only because you want to do that. If I choose to shave my legs every week, that’s fine. If I choose to do it only once every few months, or hell once a year, that’s fine too.
1) You shouldn’t use the term “feminazi.” You shouldn’t be calling people nazi unless you are talking about actual nazis. It’s an insensitive and inaccurate comparison.
2) Have you considered why your boyfriend might want you to shave your legs? Or if he even does? Have you even asked him if he actually cares? Why does his preferences get to influence what happens to your body?
Like you said, your hygiene habits are entirely up to you. Whether or not you shave is your choice, and your feelings about it are valid no matter what, but I think it’s important to examine why we make the choices that we make fully.
My fiance has never expressed any real opinion whether or not I shaved. He was very supportive when I shopped shaving. If the only reason you are shaving is because you think it is something your boyfriend likes, maybe you should find out whether or not that is something he feels strongly about, and consider what that really means that he has such strong feelings about the way your body is groomed?
Okay but I think she was very clear as to why she shaved her legs do we need to go over that again
Yeah, here’s the thing.The OP boiled down to “Listen up feminists: I spend time, money, and effort altering my body to conform to traditionally gendered beauty norms SOLELY because I think my boyfriend wants me to, not because I personally want to in any way. But that’s ok right? Because I’m choosing to do it.”
And, all I’m saying is that maybe we should examine that logic a little more closely.
Ok seriously fandomsandfeminism spends so much time and energy patiently and gently explaining stuff to soo many people even when their intentions are dubious and there aren’t enough reblogs with comments testifying to how amazing that is so here.
No, I’m serious, if women all got together and went into electrical engineering or automotive repair en masse, then ten years later people would be talking about how it was a “soft field” and it would pay proportionately less than other fields.
Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.
None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine; none of these things inherently elevate you or drag you down. But whatever women are seen to do is automatically seen as being inherently more frivolous than anything men do. And shaming women for not pigeonholing themselves into a narrow range of acceptable “masculine” behaviours is just going to result in the goalposts getting moved once again.
This is literally what happened to basically every field women have entered. The opposite happens when men enter. Computers used to be a “woman thing” until the guys who did it got really mad about how badly their job was viewed and realized they could fix it by forcing out women.
Also happened/ is happening with the fields of biology and psychology….
I honestly wonder how much of the backlash against public education in the last generation has been due to teaching becoming a woman-dominated profession.
Fashion used to be a men’s thing. Then women got involved in the late 17/1800’s, so men went the other way because it came to be seen as “frivolous” and “anti-intellectual” to care about how you looked. Add in the homophobia that arose around that time, bam, staid bland dress. Ditto leggings/tights, that are now called attention-whoring when on men they were required to show you cared about your figure and had the money to pay for such a fitted item.
People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”:
Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity.
Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.
Love and romance are highly valued in eastern countries, because men are interested in it too—of course they would be, surely you want to share your life with someone? Here, it’s strictly a women’s subject.
The field of anthropology as a whole illustrates this.
Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.
This has already occurred with linguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology in particular went VERY quickly from being seen as a manly, scientific discipline (e.g., Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski) to being seen as a touchy-feely female thing.
What I get from this is that we should equally distribute ourselves among all fields until we’ve ruined absolutely everything.
i wish there wasn’t such a stigma around being proved wrong, bc it’s a part of life, no one can be right all the time. if we didn’t feel as much shame about it i think a lot of things would change a lot faster
we all need to practice saying “I hadn’t thought of it like that” “I hadn’t seen it that way before” “I must have misunderstood the first time I heard about it” “if I had known those facts I wouldn’t have thought like I did”
By the time you’re my age you should be really used to saying, “OH MY GOD I WAS SUCH A FOOL.”
How could you be against free college. Like if I think about student loans for more than a few minutes I think about jumping off a cliff have some pity damn
Because hundreds of thousands of people have already paid for their tuition. Should they be reimbursed? It’s not fair to the people who have already paid/ are paying for college. That’s why.
Yeah I love thinking how my kids are gonna cry and have panic attacks because of the heavy student loans they’re gonna have just because they want to go to a good school. Yeah I really want them to suffer just like I did bc yknow I paid why should they have it any easier than me?? I don’t want America to be better than I found it. Fuck future generations.
lots of people have died from whooping cough. better not vaccinate anymore; it’s unfair to people who have already died from it.
