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Hair Removal is for Pussies

By Elisa / June 9, 2008

It's kind of odd how this New York Times article on teens battling unwanted facial hair pretty much sidesteps the whole question of ethnic identity (even as it spotlights an Indian girl). We Jews are a swarthy people. It's not hard to be the hottest girl at Jewish Day School: the sixth grader without the full moustache usually wins, hands down. Hair removal is part and parcel of the modern-day Jewish American experience.

It doesn't take a Liberal Arts degree to note that the expensive, humiliating, Sisyphean task of removing our naturally occurring, pretty much universal, and persistent-as-hell hair is something of an attempt to pass as (choose one):

  1. white
  2. pre-pubescent
  3. manufactured-by-Mattel
  4. all of the above

I'd be a huge, hairy hypocrite if I said teenage girls should just, like, roll with their hirsutism—if hair removal methods were drugs, I'd've been the motherfucking Keith Richards of Camp Ramah. But honestly: "excess" hair has pretty much come to mean everything but eyelashes. And that just 'aint right.

Every so often we encounter someone bold enough to own her shit (see: Jennifer Miller, self-proclaimed circus freak); on occasion you'll hear a half-assed defense of the full-brow via mention of Frida Kahlo. But where's the protest? Where's the outrage? Where's the ethnic pride? Where's the New-Jew/hipster/I-Have-Chin-Hair-Like-My-Grandma-And-I'm-Proud movement? Where are the "Hitler Can Kiss My Hairy Jewish Ass" T-shirts?

For the record, and only slightly off-topic, my mostly heterosexual research has shown that adult males who are bothered by standard human adult female body hair are, with no exceptions, abominable lays.

POST A COMMENT

  • By Anonymous 6/21/08 at 11:00 a.m. UTC

    I say go for it! Love your hairy self. I mean whereas true hirsutism is surely extreme, the fact that women naturally have a few hairs here or there is something that only an obsessively artificial and emotionally sterilized community would value to the degree that we do in the states. During adolescence I saw nothing wrong with sexy women in France accepting the fact that hair grows under their armpits and on their legs. But unfortunately America's "see no hormone/feel no hormone" culture has even started to wear off on me over time. 

    Also, very dark hair on very light skin makes the contrast stand out much more starkly. But I don't view that as a woman's fault. On the face, yes. But elsewhere? People just need to get over this stuff.  

  • Craig Leinoff
    By JewcyCraig 6/20/08 at 10:32 a.m. UTC

    I was expecting something different from that subject line.

  • By Anonymous 6/20/08 at 10:10 a.m. UTC

    It is possible that excess facial and or body hair is a Jewish trait, but
    not necessarily an original one nor a desirable one. My wife's doctor told her
    that specifically Ashkenazi women have an excess of testosterone, which causes
    the excessive body and or facial hair.

    Rashi on Devarim (Deuteronomy)  22:5 says that removal of
    underarm and pubic hair is a style of (presumably Jewish) women to the extent
    that a man is forbidden to remove his.

    We are told in the Book of Samuel (Shmuel II Chapter 23) that Amnon raped
    his half sister Tamar. Tamar herself was from an originally nonJewish mother.
    In verse 15, after the rape, it says that Amnon hated her. The Talmudin Sanhedrin
    21a says that he hated her because she had tangled pubic hair which injured
    him. Rava explains the verse Yehezkel (Ezekiel) 16:14 "your name will go
    out among the nations for your beauty" to mean that Jewish women do not
    have underarm hair or pubic hair. The reason that Tamar did have is because her
    mother was a yephat toar (a bride captured in war, i.e. a convert). Whether or
    not most Jewish women at the time of the Talmud (200-500 CE) or Rashi (11th
    century) had lots of body hair or not, it is clear that the classic Jewish view
    of Jewish beauty is to remove it.

    The traditional Sephardi preparation for Mikvah (ritual bath after
    menstruation) requires shaving off all pubic and underarm hair. To this day,
    significant Sephardi poskim (deciders of Jewish Law) posken (rule) that if the
    wife did not remove the underarm and pubic hair before immersion in the Mikvah,
    the immersion is invalid.

    I would think it is obvious that if pubic hair and underarm hair in classic Jewish
    thought going back thousands of years is considered detracting from Jewish
    feminine beauty, then certainly facial hair such as a mustache or beard which
    is universally considered masculine should be considered a detraction from
    classical Jewish beauty, not an enhancement.

    The concept of Jewish women beautifying themselves is also a part of classic
    Jewish thought. When the Jews came back from the Babylonian exile, Ezra made
    special laws to encourage cosmetics merchants to travel and sell freely in the
    Jewish communities so that the Jewish women could compete successfully against
    the shikses.

    In short, going au naturel with excess body and facial hair is not standing
    up for Jewish ethnicity, it goes against the classic concepts of Jewish beauty.
    Beautifying oneself to attract the attention of a potential husband or to keep
    a current husband's eyes from straying is an activity which is encouraged by
    classc Jewish thought and literature going back thousands of years.

     

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