We can all admit that there is an abundance of things different between men and women. Biologically the fact that women can get pregnant and estrogen levels in women vs. testosterone in men. There are also physical, socio-emotional, and occasionally mental differences between men and women. One of the things that isn’t different is that men and women have hair.

When puberty starts hair grows on many different places on the body. We see hair everywhere on men and women and that’s why we shave. But why do men only shave their face/groin area, and women shave pretty much everything? We can see that it started in the early twentieth century when shaving armpits became a thing for women, and in the 1940s when women started to shave their legs on a regular basis.

In the 1960s we had women who decided not to shave and we called them hippies. Hippies who didn’t really care about their hygiene because they were always high. You know to generalize a generation that tried to ensure equality between men and women. The hair thing didn’t do a lot though, because women still feel a need to shave.

I understand that need because I feel it. I feel like I can’t go out in public without shaved legs, unless I am covered from head to toe and it’s winter time. I feel self conscious walking outside my yard if I can see a small amount of hair on my ankle. Also just typing this out makes me feel like I would be considered disgusting because of the hair on my face, ankle and the times when I need to change a razor because it’s not sharp enough.

I have this feeling and I usually don’t wear make-up. I don’t really plan out my clothes, or anything that a woman ‘usually does’. You would think with that fact in mind I wouldn’t care about hair. But I do…and what I don’t understand:

Why don’t men care about their body hair?

Generally speaking men love to feel a smooth leg and see a smooth armpit. They want to see a shaven face on women. Etc. Why don’t they want to feel smooth legs on themselves? Why don’t they want to see a smooth armpit when they raise their arms?

Is the entertainment industry so strong that it dictates how men and women should generally be feeling and thinking? If we finally started to photograph female models with hairy legs/underarms and male models with shaven legs/underarms, would we finally get men to shave their underarms?

Because I really wish we would…