Why do women, unlike men, tend to shave their body hair? "That's just how it is"--one of the reasons quoted in Unshaved: Resistance and Revolution in Women's Body Hair Politics--isn't good enough for Breanne Fahs. Engaging, elucidating and occasionally lots of fun, her book looks at the politics of women's body hair, which she calls "the tiniest of subjects with enormous implications."
Fahs (Firebrand Feminism), a women's and gender studies professor at Arizona State University, begins Unshaved with an overview of the traditionally female practice of body hair removal, which became customary by the 1920s, when fashions started to reveal more skin and private bathrooms were the norm in middle-class homes. Fahs proceeds to spotlight zines and photography (images provided) focusing on women's body hair, after which she salutes body hair rebels--women who, for various reasons, skip the razor. But the cornerstone of Unshaved is Fahs's recap of her headline-generating extra-credit body hair assignment, for which she invited her female students to stop shaving for 10 weeks and report on their experiences.
Fahs, who writes in an unfussy style that softens the academic nature of her book, doesn't feign objectivity about her subject: "The better people get at understanding the social contexts in which they make personal choices, the more they can demystify those choices and understand them as complicated and tangled up with structures of power." Unshaved is a gateway to that understanding--as is the body hair assignment, should intrepid readers choose to accept it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer