Pedophilia and its Influence on Body Hair Removal
By Rama Abed, Staff Writer
As women, we have been taught that hair on our bodies and faces is extremely unwelcome, unless it is on our heads, eyebrows or lashes. Each one of us has had our own personal experience with possible hair removal methods ever since that peach fuzz emerged on top of our lips and our mothers to rush us to the nearest salon. We have grown up seeing older female relatives be hairless, always desperate about their next wax or laser appointments. I myself could not be the only prepubescent girl who wondered why hair removal products have always been advertised by hairless women who apply these cosmetics on their bare bodies. For some reason unexplained by society, women live up to a span of eighty years striving to look twenty, with the hair growth deficit of a ten year old.
Historically, women in many societies were praised for the natural growth of hair on their bodies. Names like Frida Kahlo come to our minds when we think of the scandal of having a unibrow and the natural thin mustache that we now call “upper lip fuzz.” These traits were considered to be indicative of an adult woman who had grown out of childhood. Body hair, aside from its natural growth, is quite beneficial for the protection of our skin. Yet, with the rise of pornographic media, even the slightest fuzz has become either an abomination or a sexual fetish.
In the Arab world, it is scandalous to grow arm hair. Meanwhile in the West, it is not something people even think about. We could blame this on colonialism. Arabs were brainwashed by Caucasian beauty standards; women are expected to be fair white, blue eyed, with thin blonde hair and consequently not hairy, or having body hair that is not quite obvious to their eyes. Instead of accepting that only people of the “Aryan race” can look like that, and grow hair in this specific way, Arab society imposes an impossible standard on their own women, who typically grow thicker and darker hair.
In addition to hairlessness, childlike features on women have been a fixation to men for a very long time. With that being said, pedophilia is not a new atrocity. In the Arab world, we have heard our grandmothers’ stories about how they were forced into marriage in their early teenage years to our grandfathers who were in a logically suitable age for marriage. It is also worth mentioning that a number of girls were in that exact same situation at even younger ages than teenagers. Although this kind of behavior is not widespread anymore, it does still happen, and more importantly, the concept of pedophilia is projected through pornography.
As I have mentioned, pedophilia is certainly not new. Yet, physical features like a petite figure, big eyes and more importantly, hairlessness, are not only demographically more desirable by the heterosexual man, but are also extremely popular pornographic categories. That has grown with the normalization of such “preferences.” The concept of femininity is unfortunately related to childlike appearance, along with behaviors such as “baby voice,” and infant-like vulnerability. Child pornography, one would think, is the lowest a human being could go, being such a terrible act of sexual violence and trauma. Yet, for the industry to succeed with no judicial repercussions, the “barely legal” teen category has been created, along with grown up women adhering to certain childlike behavior and appearance for views. The pedophilic media did not end with what we know as “kiddy porn,” it only adapted its traits into slightly older women, for example, the “schoolgirl” fantasy. This industry works hand in hand with human trafficking and sex trafficking, all of which procure women of a younger appearance or girls of a young age who could pass as adults.
Men and women have been brainwashed through the years into thinking that it is a personal preference to want a hairless partner. In actuality, the media we consume that project harmful, childlike beauty standards upon us is the root cause for this desire. Imposing a certain standard on a sexual partner is extremely inappropriate. What made us think that sexual satisfaction depends on our partners’ body hair? What made us think that hairlessness is feminine when until just a century ago these standards did not exist? Femininity is relative and will forever be. That however is a larger conversation to be had.