[Kate]

Although I cannot speak for black women in Detroit since I am white and from New York, I would like to shed some light on this question of women’s body hair and the cultural factors that determine shaving or not. From what I’ve heard from my black female friends (Americans and Jamaicans), body hair is not the big issue for them as it is for whites. A friend retold to me her explanation to someone who asked much the same question as Mike. She said, simply, “Not shaving is part of black culture.”

Granted, this is changing, as I feel that more and more of the beauty pressures of the mainstream culture are being adopted by women of all backgrounds. As a child, I remember many teenage black girls with hairy underarms and legs, but now I hardly ever see this.

I think men and women need to remember that all adult women have hairy underarms and legs, but most of them hide (or attempt to hide this fact) through shaving and other hair removal methods. I think that it is not hair that some people are so offended by, but the choice of particular women to bravely bare their hair – shamelessly snubbing the cultural and beauty standards that ask women to be other than what we are. In short, women are hairy under the arms and about the legs.

I have gone through phases of shaving and phases of not shaving, and can report that none of my lovers present or past (of various races, ethnicities and nationalities, including white American men) have had any issues with this. Of course, some of them dared to ask me about it, and at other times I would say it outright myself (whether they were wondering or not) just to get it out in the open. The French men I’ve known don’t seem to mind underarm hair, and some even prefer it to leg hair, which struck me by surprise though I don’t know how pervasive that feeling is among French men.

User Detail :  

Name : Kate, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 26, City : Long Island, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Teacher, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 

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