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agonyaunt2015-03-26 03:49 pm
inlovewithnight) wrote in agonyaunt2015-03-26 03:49 pm
oh, Emily Yoffe
Q. Kindergarten Leg Hair: Our daughter is in kindergarten and is very conscious of the fact that she has hair on her legs (she is not hirsute, but it shows) and refuses to wear shorts to school. We are of Asian Indian origin, so the hair on her legs stands out. We also feel that she is too young to remove the hair and have tried convincing her that it is OK to wear shorts and not care what others say (we think that some kids in school are mildly teasing her about this). Any tips on how to convince her to accept it and ignore any teasing?
A: Recently, I had a similar letter from the mother of an 11-year-old. I told that mother to let her verge-of-puberty daughter shave. I don’t want to define depilation down, and I feel that a 5-year-old is too young for this, but my heart goes out to your self-conscious, hairy-legged sprite. I agree that it’s important to be able to ignore teasing and stand up for oneself. But your daughter doesn’t want to stand up on such hairy legs. I think it’s possible to make clear to her that her legs are lovely and strong and that the hair on them is nothing worth focusing on, while also recognizing it has taken on outsize importance in her life. I think it’s worth, on an experimental basis, to say you’re going to do something about it and see how all of you then feel. Shaving her legs is a tiny, temporary cosmetic fix that could bring her major relief.
And a bonus follow-up:
Q. Re: Kid With Leg Hair: As someone who works in pediatrics, I feel that the possible emotional and self-conscious issues that will arise from teasing/bullying for which children are so famous must outweigh our own social feelings about “feminizing/objectifying” women. Obviously, we don’t want the kid to feel that her appearance is the most important thing to her, but at the same time, you don’t want her to have a terrible school experience due to something that’s simply fixed. If mom does decide to let her shave, she needs to be very careful, however, to remind her daughter that while many people in the world care about appearances, she’s so much more than that—and the shaving is simply to make her school experience a bit more fun and a bit less stressful.
A: I agree with you and only reluctantly suggested shaving. Even if the mother shaves the daughter’s legs, she has to also give the message you are expressing here.
A: Recently, I had a similar letter from the mother of an 11-year-old. I told that mother to let her verge-of-puberty daughter shave. I don’t want to define depilation down, and I feel that a 5-year-old is too young for this, but my heart goes out to your self-conscious, hairy-legged sprite. I agree that it’s important to be able to ignore teasing and stand up for oneself. But your daughter doesn’t want to stand up on such hairy legs. I think it’s possible to make clear to her that her legs are lovely and strong and that the hair on them is nothing worth focusing on, while also recognizing it has taken on outsize importance in her life. I think it’s worth, on an experimental basis, to say you’re going to do something about it and see how all of you then feel. Shaving her legs is a tiny, temporary cosmetic fix that could bring her major relief.
And a bonus follow-up:
Q. Re: Kid With Leg Hair: As someone who works in pediatrics, I feel that the possible emotional and self-conscious issues that will arise from teasing/bullying for which children are so famous must outweigh our own social feelings about “feminizing/objectifying” women. Obviously, we don’t want the kid to feel that her appearance is the most important thing to her, but at the same time, you don’t want her to have a terrible school experience due to something that’s simply fixed. If mom does decide to let her shave, she needs to be very careful, however, to remind her daughter that while many people in the world care about appearances, she’s so much more than that—and the shaving is simply to make her school experience a bit more fun and a bit less stressful.
A: I agree with you and only reluctantly suggested shaving. Even if the mother shaves the daughter’s legs, she has to also give the message you are expressing here.
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Because sure, the ideal situation goes something like: a strong, body-positive anti-bullying initiative is enacted at the child's school discussing different aspects of physical appearance and how they're all okay and how some aspects of that tie into race and ethnicity of origin and so on, and between that and the support of the parents the child's self-worth and confidence is bolstered and everything is great.
The reality is, that's super unlikely to be what happens. And the thing about even a child's ownership of their body means they actually do have the theoretical right to alter it in a way that makes them more comfortable, more confident and less afraid, and the implication (tho it is not stated outright) is that this is something the child wants - that, or to wear things that cover this part of her, because as a part of her body it makes her uncomfortable.
And in this case we're talking about something that causes no physical damage and reverses itself in roughly a week. Meanwhile I gotta tell you, the psychological damage of genuinely believing you're ugly for some feature of yourself all the way through your childhood, never mind being actively teased about it, lasts a whole hell of a lot longer.
I don't like that, on a cultural level, we have an anti-body-hair stance that goes this far.* And to opine on specifics one has the usual problem with agony aunt letters, which is that they're short on some of the details I'd think are super important (does the child WANT to wear shorts to school badly? No? Then just leave her alone she's got her own solution. Has the child HERSELF jumped to "I really want to be able to wear shorts to school but I won't do it because I'm hairy can we get rid of the hair" or is this a next-step assumption the adults are making on their own? What are we defining as "mild" teasing here? Etc), because my first inclination is just " . . . so let her wear long pants and stop making a Thing of it", but if it's the child making the Thing, that's a different matter.
But I'm also not comfortable with offering up a child's psyche as a sacrifice on the altar of Shocked Outrage when what we're talking about is literally cutting hair - does the girl have long hair? That's probably also motivated by the patriarchy and attached to ideas of the sexual attractiveness and appearance of adult women. If she has short hair, does she go to an actual hairdresser to make sure it's cut in an attractive and socially aceptable manner instead of a bowl around her head or clippers? That's probably motivated by patriarchy, female objectification and blah blah blah.
It's hair; it grows back. If you use a nice electric razor it doesn't even risk cutting yourself to get rid of it, and it doesn't hurt.
*shrugs*
*I also don't like the stubborn framing of body-hair-removal as inherently sexual: guys get to shave their secondary sex characteristics off their face without it immediately being about sex, and I remove my leg and underarm hair because I have a sensory processing disorder and I fucking hate how it feels, and would get rid of the rest if the itch of even a day's grow-back didn't render the entire operation pointless. The assumption that everything is about what men like and want irks me.
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These are factors, and there are a lot of other options I'd want to try first (including honestly the question "why is it so important she wear shorts?" - like, there might be a good reason! but one wants the answer to that question. If my kid refused to wear a bathing suit without a t-shirt over top I'd definitely be worried about her body-image and start trying to help with it . . . .but I'd also just let her wear the t-shirt, it is not that big a deal.)
I'd ideally prefer another option.
But yeah, in the end . . . it's hair. This is not mega-dieting or surgery or whatever, that actually causes lasting, marked damage. It's hair. Removing it does no physical harm, it doesn't hurt, and it grows back in less than a month. This is not something to subject a kid to bullying and other bullshit kids pull on each other over, if SHE'S the one that's having the problem.
. . . sooo yeah. That's why I used ambivalent, tho I do totes see how the rest of my comment totally went for the defensive on one side (because frankly I expect a lot of AUGH PATRIARCHAL STANDARDS etc . . . with which I sympathise! But not enough to sacrifice the girl's wellbeing on the altar of my activism, over hair)(but I'd really prefer a solution that did not immediately leap to shaving in a kid that young)(etc).
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I just - like, if it were my kid? I'd rather give her the ability to feel confident and not-attacked by her peers now while talking to her about all this stuff - not just telling her that her appearance isn't the most important thing, but (inasmuch as is appropriate at understanding level) why her peers might be teasing her, where those standards come from, how they work - and making sure she knows I'll back her whatever she wants to do and don't agree with those standards, in the hopes that she can grow up aware and alert and you know what, maybe quit shaving later because she decides she doesn't care, or outgrows the bullies, or whatever.
And I'd really rather that a lot more than for it to become the story of "I was always so hairy and felt so ugly and like I couldn't ever wear the things I wanted but my mom wouldn't let me do anything about it and kept insisting that it wasn't important" that turns into active, intense body-hate and sense of unworthiness-of-being-attractive/looking good and shit that I have seen in my peers, and have seen my peers struggle to get over (that I've struggled to get over, altho my problem was acne rather than hair). Especially, again, about something so minor and temporary.
(If we were talking weight-loss surgery, or skin lightening, or dieting, etc - things that come with direct genuine costs and pains and stuff - then everything gets weighted differently as is appropriate.)
Which, I mean - there are still all those questions I'd want answered before I'd weigh in on any specific case rather than just be me running through my thoughts like this, because they make a difference. But for me, here the "worst case" scenario is (if it were my kid) I go out and buy a nice electric razor and I have to start figuring out how to actively discuss gendered grooming expectations and how they are messed up with my five year old so that this DOESN'T just disappear into the mire.
. . . and I am totally babbling and repeating myself, but good god, with all women but especially with kids I'm just . . . I feel that if we are sacrificing the lived experience and well-being of our daughters to the philosophy that is supposed to be about saving them and us from the patriarchal bullshit everywhere and its exploitation, I think we're doing something wrong, and I think we have to find a new way to pursue our goals. (And I think there are a lot of other ways.)
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But so much YES to all of this, and especially your last paragraph. Because... like, how is it any different to tell a girl she has to make a given choice about her body because FEMINISM than it is to tell her she has to make a given choice about her body because PATRIARCHY?
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We all make compromises with the Patriarchy. All of us. My shaving my legs, or this little girl doing so, is pretty damned far down on the list.
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Where is the line between this and a skin lightener, or straightening a Black girl's hair so her classmates won't tease her, or taping back epicanthic folds, and so on? After all, skin lighteners wear off and hair grows back and tape comes off. But being told one should change oneself to fit another ethnicity's standards of beauty (that of the most powerful ethnicity in the country, no less) may not wear off so fast.
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http://agonyaunt.dreamwidth.org/24540.html?thread=204764#cmt204764
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http://agonyaunt.dreamwidth.org/24540.html?thread=204764#cmt204764
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I definitely remember the way that being made to straighten my hair as a child taught me that White beauty standards are universal and non-arbitrary, something I struggle with to this day. I'm really uncomfortable with telling this little girl that it's appropriaite to require her to change herself to look less South Asian in order to be acceptable.