Shaving, Sex, and Stereotypes: My Battle with Internalised Misogyny
By Lucy Chapman
Misogyny is everywhere. I witness it when I cross the road and get catcalled, I see it in gender pay gaps between female-presenting and male-presenting individuals, and I only need to take a brief look at the unequal gender make-up of Parliament to see how misogyny and sexism impact our institutions. As a feminist, it’s easy for me to condemn misogyny and take an active stance against any person, institution, or legislation that allows misogyny to thrive. It is by far less easy to take an active stance against the personal actions that I take, unintentionally, to enforce harmful misogynistic attitudes.
Internalised misogyny is sexism enacted by women onto themselves and other women in a subconscious manner. “No! I’m a feminist! I am actively against sexism and the patriarchy!” we might tell ourselves, and both of these statements are probably true. Although we support gender equality and equal rights, sometimes we can simultaneously fuel sexism because, deep down, misogyny is ingrained within us all. It is hard for it not to be ingrained in women when we have spent our whole lives learning how to be deemed worthy by men, how not to be, and that the level we are deemed should determine our self-confidence and self-esteem.
Women have grown up watching films and TV that portray women in ways that cater to the ‘male gaze’. Captain America? Transformers? James Bond? These films are some of the best-rated films of all time, and yet it’s painfully obvious that the women in them are there as nothing more than sexual objects. As feminists, we are aware of this shallowness and are, of course, actively against the objectification of women in media. But after a day of fighting against this type of representation, we go home and feel unworthy when we look in the mirror. We don’t look like Megan Fox or Scarlett Johansson, stereotypically ‘hot’ women that we have grown up being told are the definition of attractive. Do I want to have big boobs and a slim waist for myself, or do I want them so that men find me more attractive? This is an argument I have with myself regularly when I am picking apart my body. Do I genuinely dislike my body, or do I just dislike that my features are not the stereotypical features that men find most appealing?
The same goes for shaving. Like most girls I know, I’ve been shaving since puberty. After realising that body hair on women is considered ugly and disgusting by men (and many women themselves), who thought this way because they had only ever seen hairless women in porn, I began to remove it. Growing up, I eventually came to the realisation that body hair is natural and that women should never be shamed for having it; I am in awe of women who don’t feel the need to shave. However, because of all those years of social conditioning, I personally still feel like I need to shave to feel sexy. I tell myself that I don’t shave for men and that I shave because I feel cleaner and nicer when I’m hairless, but the entire premise of the feeling comes from preconceived notions about how women need to shave to be clean. Why don’t men shave to feel hygienic, but women do? It does me no good to deny that a lot of the time, I shave in order to please men. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shaved when I really couldn’t be bothered, but because I was going to meet a guy, I did. I’m trying so hard to undo destructive and negative thought processes like this and only shave when I feel like it for myself. Body hair is not unhygienic or disgusting, and we need to start shaving for ourselves rather than for men – that is, if we want to shave at all!
The internalised misogyny that is forced upon us and our bodies gets even more insidious when it comes to sex. Until I was 17, I was your average naïve, sexually inexperienced teenager. At the time, I was very embarrassed about my sexual innocence. Looking back, I’m so sad that I felt that way so young and that the boys of my age group that I went to school with pushed the agenda that in order to be attractive, a girl had to be sexually experienced. Paradoxically when I got to university, I was shamed for having regular (and safe!) sex with different boys. I was finally sexually experienced, just as I’d always wanted to be, and now I could finally feel good enough. But now, for some reason, I was unattractive because I was so experienced. It made no sense. For a while, I began to have internal conversations about not letting my body count go over a certain amount because if it did, I’d never be taken seriously by boys. This was, in retrospect, ridiculous, and there is such a double standard because it’s completely encouraged for boys to have a lot of sex with different women. Women should have complete sexual freedom to sleep with as many people as we like or, if we prefer, to not sleep with anyone. We should be able to do what we want with our own bodies without being shamed for our choices.
There’s also a notion that in order to be considered good at sex, women have to be ‘freaky’ in bed. We should enjoy undergoing borderline abuse, or else we are boring and not sexy enough – no one wants to admit to being ‘vanilla’! Of course, enjoying kinky sex is great and it can be super fun, but only if it’s something that you genuinely enjoy and that you aren’t convincing yourself you enjoy just to keep men happy. I fell into the trap of convincing myself I enjoyed something in bed that I didn’t. For me, that something was hair pulling. I have always hated hair pulling and found it painful, but I never used to say anything to any of my past sexual partners because I didn’t want them to think I was boring. Over the years, I have become good at realising what I enjoy and what I have pretended to enjoy for the sake of men. This is something that we girls should all take the time to consider.
It’s so important that women learn the difference between doing things because we want to and doing things because we think that it is what we want after a lifetime of misogyny being forced upon us. We must begin to scrutinise ourselves and take back control over our own bodies. This taking back control involves empowering other women rather than bringing them down in order to bring ourselves up. There is space for us all to rise together.