Armpit hair is having a bit of a moment in China this week.
Launched by women's rights activist Xiao Meili, the 'Armpit Hair Competition' on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent to Twitter) is putting ladies' hairy pits back on the agenda as thousands of women have been submitting pics of their unpruned underarms to the micro-blogging site to support Xiao's aim of getting women to take ownership of their bodies.
Speaking about why she started the competition, Xiao said: 'Girls are often anxious about their armpit hair as if it's a sign of being dirty or uncivilized but we should have the freedom to choose whether to accept what grows naturally on our bodies.' She also adds that while body hair on women is widely considered to be 'manly,' the traditional perception of hairy armpits in China is totally out of sync with the ideal image spouted today. According to BBC News, a glimpse of a woman's hairy armpit back in the day, was actually considered 'mysterious and charming.' (Go, China.)
However, the competition isn't the first time this subject has been a talking point in China. In August last year, a similar campaign went viral on Weibo with women submitting armpit hair 'selfies' on to the website. So successful was it in its bid to challenge social norms and encourage natural beauty, it gained over 28million views in under a week.
And it's not just China who's got a history of trying to liberate the much-aligned armpit hair, a few famous faces have been doing their bit, too. In April, Miley Cyrus shared a picture of her pelluous pits on Instagram and shortly after that dyed the hair pepto-pink and then gave no shits when she turned up to an awards ceremony without perfectly groomed armpit hair, too. So there; how's that for challenging ideals about feminine beauty and sex?
But why does armpit hair get such a bad rep? Well, one thing's for sure; women having hairy armpits, or more's the point not having hairy armpits is a beauty ideal – and one that has been perpetuated far longer than you might first think.
While the practise of depilating the pits only gained pace in the UK in the early 20th century, according to the Moral letters to Lucilius by Seneca The Younger (stay with us), it was common for the genteel classes – and both genders – in Ancient Rome to get rid of both armpit and leg hair. (Those Romans, ey, always ahead of the curve.) But that aside and in spite of a recent hipster re-appropriation of armpit hair and Madonna's hairy armpit selfie on Instagram (and lest we forget last year's Hairy Legs Club initiative on Tumblr that saw women upload pics of yep, you guessed it…) helping to raise the profile of hair that's usually shaved off, the point remains; for the most part, hairy pits on women are considered disgusting, there to be denuded and actually distinctly unfeminine.
By way of an explanation to this, a New York Magazine article on the subject last year cited a paper entitled 'Perilous Patches and Pitstaches: Imagined Versus Lived Experiences of Women’s Body Hair Growth,' which it surmised, was positing the idea that 'the compulsion to shave, in other words, is an example of how women have internalised patriarchal ideals of femininity'. Interesting. Be that the case or not, we're calling bullshit on some subliminal consumerist messaging and patriarchal ideals trying to dictate our body hair – in fact, dictate us on anything, at all.
So in the interest of making a stand like those Weibo users, we'll be leaving ours to grow free, too (…well, at least until the sun and the strappy tops rear their head again, when you can bet we'll be right back where we started with an in-shower razor, shortly followed by shaving rash).
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.