Fitting into stereotypes doesn’t inspire me, but if I can pick an archetype I choose the goddess. Not a single goddess in monotheistic style, but a goddess amongst many goddesses, all divine. And with many gods, all divine too. Celebrating together how wonderful it is to exist in this impressive world.
That is why I am going to stop shaving my armpits. Being a hairless goddess doesn’t quite fit. A hairy goddess has much more strength and je ne sais quoi. Further, since I casually read one or another postmodern feminist and had a daughter, I question much more the everyday actions that little by little define who we are. We become the acts that we repeat. Besides, I never found shaved bodies, female or male, particularly attractive. As an aesthetic it is asexual and boring. With a slightly unpleasant paedophiliac side to it.
Perhaps the connexion between the goddess, hair and power is not as strange after all. Because if we think a bit in historical terms, who are the hairy and who are the shaved? The hairy stereotypes are hippies, feminists, primitives and rockers, for example. And the typically shaved groups are business men, monks, prisoners, soldiers and punished women. Hairy people have a relationship with authority and shaved have another. Shaved people conform, hairy people don’t. What if shaving makes us submissive? What if removing our hair also removes our independence?
I haven’t made the calculations but, is the increase in hairless surface both on women and men inversely proportional to the loss of civil liberties that we have been suffering during the last thirty years? Does hair removal promote the loss of freedom or is it just a reflection of the situation? What is the relationship between the new fashion of having a beard and the politics of transition?
Since I have become esoteric I don’t want to run unnecessary risks. If my hairs are freedom defending antennas without me noticing, the least I can do is to let them grow in peace. Freedom starts with the most trivial things. And in this time of conformist resignation, I sign in for any form of freedom, even if it is by the hair.
Illustration from the Feminist Gooseneck Barnacles Series.
“Hairy and free!”