Why I always ask “what if this were being done to men?” (The shaving debate)

My ability to comment is really glitching, so I’m sorry I’m posting this as a separate post but I feel it’s important and I was unable to comment.

Imagine for a moment, if we lived in a world in which every man represented in media was always shown as clean-shaven, and the only men who were ever represented as having facial hair of any kind, were also shown as lazy, disgusting, unhygienic, not masculine, mentally unstable, or other insulting depictions. Imagine if every single man that you saw every day in your life was always clean shaven and it was extremely rare to see a man with facial hair. Imagine if men are only clean shaven at all because about 100 years ago a razor company wanted to sell more razors and so they started putting out propaganda to portray bearded men as disgusting and undesirable so they could profit from mens insecurity. Imagine if little boys grew up seeing all of these representations of bearded men as disgusting and therefore started immediately shaving at puberty before developing a sense of self due to wanting to fit in and not be singled out, and were horrified at missing a spot, or humiliated having somebody point out that they still had a bit of hair on their faces, that they were bullied for having beards by their peers, that women went around shaming and insulting men for having any facial hair. Imagine if little boys grew up never seeing any man with facial hair represented positively, and never seeing men with facial hair in their daily life either among their peers or their elders. Imagine if shaven men mocked unshaven men and defended the cultural pressure by announcing how much they loooovvveee shaving for themselves and how unpleasant it is to be unshaved, even insulting men who don’t shave and men who don’t shave then insulting them back. Imagine if any man who dared to have a social media, post or ad campaign in which he had facial hair was sent death and rape threats. Imagine families shaming, their sons, husbands, and brothers, for missing a spot, or for choosing to have facial hair, and degrading them for their choice not to comply with the social norm of clean shaven men. Imagine if men got as much hate and pressure to submit regarding their facial hair that women get about our body hair. This is the reality for women and our body hair. The reason it got so much pushback is because women have had to fight against an entire cultural norm that has only been a little over 100 years old, and it actually does take strength to fight through that in many circumstances for many women whose environments pressure them to submit to cultural norms. While we can always claim, and genuinely believe that we do all of these things, just for ourselves, there is a cultural narrative that is very very rigid regarding female body hair, and fighting against that is actually an attack on patriarchy. It is an attack on patriarchies push that women all must look younger and prepubescent, it is an attack on patriarchy’s objectification of women, and it’s an attack on patriarchal capitalism which undermines our self esteem in an attempt to steal our money. We can say all we want that “women are allowed to exist without conforming to patriarchal appearance standards,” but can anyone here imagine a woman without makeup and without shaving be elected without issue to a government office? would the first female president be allowed to go hairy? Laws aren’t the only way a population is controlled.

This infighting is yet another strategy of patriarchy to turn women against each other when we are all simply being subjected to the same cultural bullshit, which is intended to harm us, divorce us from our natural bodies, and divide us. Not every action that you do has to be feminist, but conforming to patriarchal standards is never going to be more feminist than rejecting them.