Why does female hair unleash so many passions?

Last February, Angèle posted a selfie on her Instagram account, generously offering her 3.7 million subscribers a bushy armpit.

The singer then received a shower of criticism, some of which was very virulent.

However, his pro-hair position is really in the "hair of the times".

On Instagram, militant accounts like Liberté Pilosité Sororité (@liberpilosite) call for the fight against “pilophobia”.

And on TikTok, Gen Z is also taking over the hair file: the hashtag #bodyhairpositivity has thus gathered more than 16 billion views!

In these viral videos, young girls in their twenties claim their hair and urge to normalize female hair.

Lucile, also 20, has no problem going out with down on her calves, she testifies: "The hair is

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Gender stereotypes?

According to a 2021 Ifop survey, in recent years, the hunt for hair has taken a turn for the worse: the number of women waxing their legs has lost 12 points, dropping to 80%.

For the armpits, it's minus 10 points in eight years, with 81% of the female population.

As for those who decided to leave their jersey fallow, they were 28% in 2021 (compared to 15% in 2013).

The survey highlights a real “confinement effect”, but also a clear breakthrough in the “return to nature”, driven by movements advocating greater acceptance of body hair, and less weighty gender stereotypes – although still present.

For 73% of women, the absence of hair remains "a criterion of feminine seduction".

Photoshop Generation

But finally, why does female hair unleash so many passions?

Juliette Lenrouilly has signed with Léa Taieb

(Massot Editions), a stimulating book that brings together testimonies and analyzes around our practices.

She summarizes: "In the popular imagination, the hair is dirty, it's ugly, and above all it's masculine."

Juliette Lenrouilly deciphers: “After the 1970s, when the hair was synonymous with protest, in the 1980s a form of hairless diktat appeared.

Then society remained more hygienic, more sanitized.

She adds: “We can even talk about the Photoshop generation.”

For those who grew up with razor commercials that show women shearing their oilcloth-smooth legs, hair doesn't exist – it's not depicted.

The ideal Beautiful is often smooth

At the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, an exciting exhibition entitled

retraces, through everyday objects, paintings and contemporary documents, the somewhat complex relationship between humans and their fleece, from the 15th century to the present day.

For Denis Bruna, curator of the exhibition, “hair and fur are materials for the construction of appearances”.

And gender stereotypes.

It was during Antiquity that the “theory of humors” was established, which wants the hair to be associated with the masculine.

It would be due to the "natural heat" of men's bodies.

What is perceived as a characteristic of male biology therefore appears as unnatural in women.

Up to the hair!

If in Antiquity women had recourse to various depilatory stratagems (tweezers, razors, pumice stones, oil lamps, etc.), in the representations,

the Beautiful ideal is often smooth.

Can you imagine the hairy Venus de Milo?

Better, the absence of hair is even sometimes associated with a form of social elevation: the Egyptians of the upper castes thus shaved their entire bodies.

Frida Kahlo, a pioneer

We read in the catalog of the exhibition that “beyond the Beautiful, there is the Good.

If the hair is seen as primitive, no surprise to find that eliminating it is a factor of distinction vis-à-vis the savage and the monster”.

The opposition between hairless (civilized) woman and hairy (barbarian) woman thus develops, being updated at the time of the great “discoveries”, then evolutionist and Darwinist discourse – and finally throughout Western colonial history.

The only way to normalize hair is to show it

Juliette Lenrouilly

If in the 19th century “women with beards” were shown as beasts of the fair, in the erotic images that spread under the coat with the advent of photography, the hair is very present, and even fetishized.

The hair remains linked to the intimate, to the hidden.

Yes, the hair is the animal, it is the sexual.

Thus

by Gustave Courbet, was almost more shocking at the time for its representation of female hair than that of a close-up sex.

The hair is transgressive, and not only since the advent of social networks!

Already in the 1930s, Frida Kahlo represented herself in her “au natural” self-portraits, with bushy eyebrows and above all hairiness above the upper lip.

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Over the centuries, the more the female body is revealed by fashion, the more the injunctions to remove hair grow stronger.

A paradox which therefore wants that with a form of liberation a new alienation is activated, that of tracking down the slightest hair follicle.

For Juliette Lenrouilly, if the hair is thus demonized and "invisibilized", it is because it is a symbol of the liberation of women's bodies: "The only way to normalize the hair is to show it", she advances.

Leave your coat fallow, simple fashion or revolution of representations?

Come to think of it, one wonders if the hair, this "social disruptor", as the catalog of the exhibition notes, is not ultimately the best ally of women to fight against the injunctions to appear.

To meditate while shaving in the morning – or not.