In society, hair can be tied to power dynamics. It can also be tied to cleanliness, beauty, attractiveness, and status.
Breanne Fahs, a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University discussed this idea in her “Words by Women” speech, hosted by the Department of Women’s, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies.
Her speech “Hairy Subjects: Resistance and Revolution in Women’s Body Hair Politics,” discussed in depth how society ties hair, or a lack thereof, to women’s worth and power.
“It becomes impossible to truly assess how strongly we cling to ideas about proper and attractive hair and by association so-called proper femininity and masculinity,” Fahs said.
In her speech, Fahs discussed how hair removal has historically been used as an oppressive war and military tactic in places like Guantanamo Bay and in colonial exploitation ventures. During the slave trade, many slavers would shave slaves to hide their sexual maturity.
She recounted the history of modern body hair removal for women. Fahs said it was a practice that gained popularity in the 1920s, and was the social norm for women in many countries, including the U.S., by the 1950s.
“This shift happened so quickly, as Gillette razor company decided after World War I to shift from advertising razors only to men, and instead expand that market to women,” Fahs said.
In this part of her speech, Fahs showed pictures of vintage ads encouraging women to shave, with Gillette spearheading with the first marketed women’s razor.
With this revolution of women’s body hair removal came negative impacts, Fahs found.
“Women who resisted shaving body hair often felt negatively evaluated as dirty and gross,” Fahs said. “Some women also judged other women who did not remove their body hair as less sexually attractive, less intelligent, less sociable, less happy (and) less positive compared to hairless women.”
Fhahs has found there is a tie between hairlessnes and professionalism. Increasingly, employee handbooks will have policies that specify body hair removal practices for women.
She talked about several women who have experienced discrimination from bosses and co-workers in the workplace for not complying with the “norm.”
In her studies of white women and women of color, Fahs found that women of color often faced more stigma for growing out their body hair due to notions of respectability.
She mentioned that several women of color in her classes, who have partaken in her studies, discussed their fears to reveal that they hadn’t shaved to authority figures, like mothers, because of these notions.
“Women of color with dark hair also repeatedly wrote in their papers that white, especially blonde, women could not understand them and that they did not experience the same stigma,” Fahs said.
Women are told that their natural state is fundamentally wrong, and that they must alter their bodies to conform.
“The story of women’s body hair removal connects at its core to the story of women’s oppression itself,” Fahs said. “Hair is tangled up with a wide variety of powerful institutions that shape and mold the choices women make.”
Fhas has written and edited several books about the politics of body hair, which can be found at her website.
Wichita State established the women’s studies program in 1971, making it one of the longest-standing women’s studies departments in the country. Words for Women is an interdisciplinary series that brings women lecturers, writers, and community activists from all over the country.
The next Words for Women lecture will be in September 2025
