The Brandeis study indicated that most men find body hair on women unattractive. This suggests that men innately find body hair on women unattractive. There is no genetic lottery, the dice are loaded.
Your hypothesis that the attractiveness of tattoos on women is that they are hidden is plausible but is counter intuitive since something beautiful would seemingly want to be shown such as earrings on women.
You contradict your own hypothesis that tattoos are attractive on women if they’re hidden. Consequently, you should have no problem with employers telling employees to cover their tattoos.
The Brandeis study indicated that most men find body hair on women unattractive. This suggests that men innately find body hair on women unattractive.
I don’t know that study or how representative it is, but even if it were, there are two glaring errors here:
The suggested link between stated opinion and some innate tendency overlooks the possibility that this opinion might be a cultural product, rather than some natural state. If we’re permanently exposed to media feeding us a particular beauty standard, that is going to shape our perception.
How people feel about body hair doesn’t have any immediate bearing on how they feel about tattoos. For instance, I could advocate for women shaving their legs so I can better see their leg tattoos. Not that I have any right to tell women (or anyone else) what to do with their body, of course.
In any event, that study also isn’t representative of the cultural environment I move in. I don’t know what culture you’re from to feel so strongly about this, but it certainly isn’t universal.
Your hypothesis that the attractiveness of tattoos on women is that they are hidden
My claim is that, specifically for hidden tattoos (regardless of the wearer’s sex), part of the appeal may be that they’re hidden. This isn’t the only reason tattoos might be attractive, just an appeal a specific subset may have (and not all within that subset either – some tattoos genuinely are ugly, but that doesn’t mean all are).
is counter intuitive since something beautiful would seemingly want to be shown such as earrings on women.
Pussies are beautiful too, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to show them to the world. Some beautiful things are only shown to select people, and that’s fine.
But also, many beautiful tattoos are shown in public, and I love that, and I know many people who love that, and any claim that men categorically find them unappealing in women is just not representative.
You contradict your own hypothesis that tattoos are attractive on women if they’re hidden.
I made no claim that they are only attractive when hidden, or only when public, because attractiveness is generally nuanced and complex and can’t be broken down to absolutes like that.
Consequently, you should have no problem with employers telling employees to cover their tattoos.
How would that contradiction (or either position alone) imply any logical connection to what employers tell their employees or how I would feel about that?
I have a problem with the general expectation that customer service has to be conventionally attractive, but it’s particularly bad for women. Tattoos are just one notch on that tally of things that really shouldn’t matter in a professional context. If my tax advisor is ugly as sin, but gives good advice, they’re a good tax advisor.
The whole topic of tattoos, particularly when it’s straight men talking about women’s tattoos, often veers into men policing women’s bodies. Women don’t exist for your or my viewing pleasure. If you think they’re ugly, that’s your opinion. Even if it was a common opinion, it would still be an opinion.
Announcing “I don’t like this thing some people do” is a dick move in the first place. Let people enjoy things. Let them do with their bodies what they want.
But to make it specifically about women and keep doubling down? Fuck the fuck off. No half-baked attempt at providing scientific backing for sexism is gonna make it less sexist.
I’ve been trying to be charitable thus far, but let me be clear here: Tattoos, no matter the sex, gender, ethnicity, religion or favourite sports team of their wearer, are an expression of individuality. Whether or not they’re beautiful or attractive by any standard shouldn’t matter.
I happen to love them, but that’s incidental to my basic human respect for other people’s dignity.
Yes, whether men’s preference for no body hair on women is innate or cultural would require further scientific studies.
Yes, there is no direct relationship between men’s feeling towards tattoos and body hair on women, but it could indicate that men prefer looking at plain skin on women.
You explained that most men finding tattoos on women attractive if there’re small and hidden is because some things are attractive if hidden. Then there should be nothing wrong with employers requiring women to hide tattoos since they’re attractive only if hidden. Employers are stricter towards up front personnel regarding dress code because they give people an impression of the company. Employers would probably say nothing about tattoos for employees working in nonvisible positions such as stock clerk. Actually, up front men would be required to cover tattoos. You would not tolerate all tattoos. Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Maine was criticized for having a tattoo of Totenkopf, a Nazi symbol. He had it covered up.
I looked up the article you alluded to earlier. As an aside, articles are generally referred to by author and year, not just the institution. Given that it’s the only relevant paper I found from Brandeis University, I’m going to assume you mean Azevedo, L. (Fall 2021). Male Stigmatisation of Female Body Hair.
It refers to a previous study by Prokop that had a sample made up of 96 students from a single Slovakian university, which is most certainly not a balanced and representative sample. It also refers to an entertainment video made by a fashion magazine with three participants, which is about as unscientific a source as you could come up with.
Azevedo then proceeds to acknowledge that, besides these two sources, there is “not enough evidence […] on men’s opinions regarding female body hair.”
I will note here that Prokop at least specified the source of his 96 participants, while I fail to see any indication how Azevedo’s 21(!) participants were selected. That is a smaller sample size, less transparent and if I’m reading this right, the survey consisted of three pairs of pictures.
This “study” is, put mildly, worthless filler, and has the gall to call that “confirmation”. It might indicate a potential direction of research by suggesting a the tendency to perceive shaved women as younger, but that is all it is. Any results you might see in it wouldn’t require “further scientific study”, but rather “actually scientific study”, because this sure isn’t.
The article does cite plenty of other sources, which is the more valuable thing about it. These sources are, among other things, used to cement the impression that men seem to find younger women sexy. Specifically, “a hairless body is a direct representation of a pre-puberty body”.
As for the question of natural or cultural, the article actually answers that by stating that women try to fit in with patriarchal expectations and by citing these other sources to illustrate that hair removal only really became “an important part of femininity between 1915–1945”, started in part by Gillette trying to sell a razor and accelerated by pornography sexualising youth.
It concludes that, as a result of easy access to said pornography, men “form the wrong expectation of how the female body should look”.
Frankly, I had my doubts about your claim before. Now I’m very much convinced you didn’t even read the source you cite, just made up a conclusion and grasped for anything to support it.
it could indicate
This is a wonderful way to isolate yourself from any accusation of having implied a claim. Your mention of scientific studies could indicate that you’re actually interested in the point. It could also mean you’re just trying to double down on the assertion that women are objectively more attractive without tattoos by reaching for the closest thing you get to a confirmation that plain skin could be more attractive.
You know the worst part of all this? Even if you were right, even if there was some measure proving that they’re objectively more attractive and all the people who actually like tattoos are just freaks of nature, it still wouldn’t give you, or me, or anyone else any right to tell women what to do with their own fucking bodies.
Then there should be nothing wrong with employers requiring women to hide tattoos since they’re attractive only if hidden.
Look, I get that you’re not big on reading, but I’ve already disambiguated that “only” is misplaced here, because there are multiple ways tattoos can be attractive.
And even if it was the only way, an employer has no right to demand attractiveness from his employees, regardless of their gender or presentation. Women don’t owe sexiness to anyone, period.
Employers are stricter towards up front personnel regarding dress code because they give people an impression of the company.
And that impression is…? Whether their employees are willing to submit to arbitrary, antiquated and pointless social standards about attractiveness?
That was my point: Customers having a stick up their arse is the only justification to demand conformity to that arse-stickery. Whether your clerk or cashier is ugly or attractive or the hottest person to ever walk the earth has no bearing on their competence. Bodily hygiene, sure, that has health and olfactory implications. But personal appearance shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
You would not tolerate all tattoos. Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Maine was criticized for having a tattoo of Totenkopf, a Nazi symbol. He had it covered up.
I wouldn’t tolerate Nazi symbols in graffiti either, or any other medium. That has nothing to do with tattoos or visibility, but with my general sense of ethics being fundamentally incompatible with their ideology. Covering it up doesn’t make the problem go away either if the ideology persists.
I posted the link; you didn’t have to spend time looking for the article.
The article said that women also find a hairless body more feminine and attractive. Also, the rise of feminism didn’t change this. This suggests that it’s innate. The author believes in evolution. Consequently, he attempts to reconcile a contradiction. Female body hair indicates a girl has reached puberty and can reproduce. Therefore, it would seemingly be a selective advantage for men to be attracted to body hair on women. He explains the contradiction by saying that society is the cause. As I pointed out above, the explanation is wanting. Also, if there is an evolutionary advantage for men liking body hair on women, why would a patriarchal society want women to remove body hair? Since I believe that humans were created, I can simply say that humans were designed to find women without body hair more attractive just as humans were designed to find earrings on women attractive.
You dislike the Totenkopf tattoo on Platner because of its meaning but if you were an employer, how would you know what tattoos are offensive? Platner said that he didn’t know Totenkopf was a Nazi symbol. It would be simpler for an employer to have employees cover up tattoos at least for upfront employees.
I posted the link; you didn’t have to spend time looking for the article.
I didn’t see it in our conversation, sorry if I missed it.
The article said that women also find a hairless body more feminine and attractive.
…because they are pressured by social factors to conform to a certain image of beauty, which the article states to be a fairly new phenomenon.
“However, it has only become an important part of femininity between 1915–1945, especially in the Western world (Basow, 1991). Before this time, by looking at beauty books and catalogs, it is noticeable that most women didn’t remove armpit and leg hair (Hope, 1982).”
Also, the rise of feminism didn’t change this.
“With the second feminist wave and the spread of hippie culture, pubic hair was neither uncommon nor seen as unnatural (Cerini, 2020). Unshaved female genitalia even started to be represented in Playboy (Cerini, 2020).”
It certainly did. That change just didn’t hold up to the pressures of media that wanted to sell a certain aesthetic:
“This completely changed in the following decades, however, as full body hair removal became not only preferred, but the norm. […] [Brazilian waxing] exploded in the market as the media and celebrities began to support and advertise this completely hairless look (Webb-Liddall, 2019). Research associated exposure to certain magazines and TV shows with pubic hair removal (Bercaw-Pratt et al., 2012, as cited by Li & Braun 2017).”
This suggests that it’s innate.
“By understanding the history behind female body hair removal, it is possible to see how it started as a way to generate profit through the development of a new market. […] It is interesting to see that the association of a hairless body with femininity grew over the course of decades to become what men see as ideal when looking for a mate today.”
If it was innate, why would it not be an issue for millennia, then suddenly explode within decades?
Consequently, he attempts to reconcile a contradiction.
As an aside: Lígia is usually a girl’s name. This is most likely a woman investigating why her sex is subjected to certain pressures.
Also, if there is an evolutionary advantage for men liking body hair on women, why would a patriarchal society want women to remove body hair?
Evolution works on far greater spans of time than a century. It doesn’t have any bearing on this trend. But if you want to bring that into the discussion, the advantages of hair (cited from Bergman, J. (2004). Why mammal body hair is an evolutionary enigma. via the article) are "retention of heat, sexual dimorphism, attraction of mates, protection of skin and reflection (or absorption) of sunlight”. To reflect on their bearing on humans in order of mention:
Clothing has made retention of heat less critical. Most mammals don’t skin or shear other animals or harvest and prepare flax for the sake of crafting artificial heat retention covers. Most mammals also don’t intentionally start fires to warm themselves. Humans have done both for thousands of years.
Breasts, hips, general presentation provide plenty of dimorphism. Our ability to communicate age explicitly also removed the necessity of body hair to indicate fertility.
The attraction of mates is exactly the subject of this discussion, and as stated, has only become associated with hairlessness in the last century, for reasons mentioned before.
Again, clothing. We need less skin protection because we can compensate (and have done so for thousands of years). We also fashion various lotions to help protect the skin.
Do I need to repeat the role of clothing as a fur substitute? We also build covered housing, which helps reduce sun exposure. Most animals don’t build tents from hide or fabric or assemble a shelter from stones, bricks and mortar, concrete and steel.
The lone evolutionary advantage to hairlessness cited is that “Ancient Egyptians also shaved their heads to prevent lice infection”. Other primates have mutual removal of parasites as a social ritual. They also generally don’t have the technology to depilate. And again, they are more dependant on their fur than humans.
This is just one of many ways humans have removed evolutionary pressures from our lives. Hence, however important it might have been a hundred thousand years ago, body hair is just no longer a strict necessity for us. That doesn’t strictly mean that we’d evolve away from growing it, if there also is no pressure to the opposite, just that it stops being as strong of a selection criterion.
So why did we start favouring hairlessness a century ago? Per the article: Gilette wanted to open a market to sell a razor. In a word: Greed.
And why does it continue to be considered sexy? “When women shave, they are removing one of their secondary sexual characteristics, and as a result they will look younger, in a prepubescence stage. In popular culture, infantilization of women is often seen as sexy (Sullivan, 2012). […] With this in mind, it is possible to assume that women shave their body hair to look prepubescent, as men feel attracted to youth.”
I’m not sure how much more explicit you can get that it’s a social and cultural phenomenon than saying “In popular culture” (emphasis mine). If anything, we ought to explore whether an attraction to youth is innate. Again, this might not have any evolutionary advantages, but we don’t need to optimise for that. It’s not like resources “wasted” on mating without expectation of procreation is a problem.
Since I believe that humans were created,
By a moron, a sadist or both, given the cruelty our creator would have planted in us
I can simply say that humans were designed
…suboptimally so that we need to compensate?
to find women without body hair more attractive
Why not make women not grow any in the first place then?
just as humans were designed to find earrings on women attractive.
Again, not universal, but there also is an evolutionary explanation if you’d care for Hanlon’s Razor: Display of wealth signals financial stability and an abundance of resources, since it implies being able to trade some of it for ultimately useless, labour-intensive trinkets. Once that abundance becomes less exceptional, the evolutionary advantage falls away, but the cultural connotation remains.
(You’ll actually find that pattern of “was reasonable, became normal, persists even beyond necessity” in many things, by the way, like the sexist mentality that women are less suited for some jobs, just because pre-industrial societies faced pressures to separate duties by “can be done while pregnant or caring for childen”)
You dislike the Totenkopf tattoo on Platner because of its meaning but if you were an employer, how would you know what tattoos are offensive? Platner said that he didn’t know Totenkopf was a Nazi symbol.
Historical education? I’d argue that a politician with high ambitions should be aware of ideological connotations, but also, I think that people in general should be educated. I realise that this is an ideal that reality doesn’t (yet?) attain, but even if you don’t know, once someone points out that something is associated with offensive ideologies it shouldn’t be hard to confirm that against the historical record and respond accordingly.
It would be simpler for an employer to have employees cover up tattoos at least for upfront employees.
I guess we should all hide our hands too, since someone might use them to flip the bird or do the Hitler Salute. And while we’re at it, sew our mouths shut, just in case they’re used for insults. What about our eyes, that might express disgust or leer at children?
Or maybe make less of a big deal out of mistakes. If an employer hires a racist without realising, then sacks that racist once they learn of it, that should be enough to rectify the mistake.
If we’re talking about offensive ideologies, by the way, I should point out that creationism is often associated with certain religions that have historically and predently exhibited bigotry, hostility towards non-believers (variously referred to as gentiles, heathens, infidels and other such terms), even violence motivated by religious exceptionalism.
Particularly in the present, one dominant religion espousing that belief also has a well-known problem with sexual abuse of children across many different confessions. That would actually bring us back to the topic of attraction hairlessness:
“[T]he primary reason for the male preference for a hairless body is the preconceived expectation towards women regarding youth and femininity. There is a socially constructed, artificial link between shaving and attractiveness/femininity. Biologically, sexually mature females have body hair, but society has made femininity more connected to youth and pre-pubescence than to a woman’s ability to reproduce. […] As a result, their expectation is transformed into societal pressure, as women start feeling abnormal for having body hair and decide to remove it in order to be seen as attractive.”
Are you really going to defend “I don’t like tattoos on women” with the justification “We were designed to sexualise children”?
The Brandeis study indicated that most men find body hair on women unattractive. This suggests that men innately find body hair on women unattractive. There is no genetic lottery, the dice are loaded.
Your hypothesis that the attractiveness of tattoos on women is that they are hidden is plausible but is counter intuitive since something beautiful would seemingly want to be shown such as earrings on women.
You contradict your own hypothesis that tattoos are attractive on women if they’re hidden. Consequently, you should have no problem with employers telling employees to cover their tattoos.
I don’t know that study or how representative it is, but even if it were, there are two glaring errors here:
In any event, that study also isn’t representative of the cultural environment I move in. I don’t know what culture you’re from to feel so strongly about this, but it certainly isn’t universal.
My claim is that, specifically for hidden tattoos (regardless of the wearer’s sex), part of the appeal may be that they’re hidden. This isn’t the only reason tattoos might be attractive, just an appeal a specific subset may have (and not all within that subset either – some tattoos genuinely are ugly, but that doesn’t mean all are).
Pussies are beautiful too, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to show them to the world. Some beautiful things are only shown to select people, and that’s fine.
But also, many beautiful tattoos are shown in public, and I love that, and I know many people who love that, and any claim that men categorically find them unappealing in women is just not representative.
I made no claim that they are only attractive when hidden, or only when public, because attractiveness is generally nuanced and complex and can’t be broken down to absolutes like that.
The whole topic of tattoos, particularly when it’s straight men talking about women’s tattoos, often veers into men policing women’s bodies. Women don’t exist for your or my viewing pleasure. If you think they’re ugly, that’s your opinion. Even if it was a common opinion, it would still be an opinion.
Announcing “I don’t like this thing some people do” is a dick move in the first place. Let people enjoy things. Let them do with their bodies what they want.
But to make it specifically about women and keep doubling down? Fuck the fuck off. No half-baked attempt at providing scientific backing for sexism is gonna make it less sexist.
I’ve been trying to be charitable thus far, but let me be clear here: Tattoos, no matter the sex, gender, ethnicity, religion or favourite sports team of their wearer, are an expression of individuality. Whether or not they’re beautiful or attractive by any standard shouldn’t matter.
I happen to love them, but that’s incidental to my basic human respect for other people’s dignity.
Yes, whether men’s preference for no body hair on women is innate or cultural would require further scientific studies.
Yes, there is no direct relationship between men’s feeling towards tattoos and body hair on women, but it could indicate that men prefer looking at plain skin on women.
You explained that most men finding tattoos on women attractive if there’re small and hidden is because some things are attractive if hidden. Then there should be nothing wrong with employers requiring women to hide tattoos since they’re attractive only if hidden. Employers are stricter towards up front personnel regarding dress code because they give people an impression of the company. Employers would probably say nothing about tattoos for employees working in nonvisible positions such as stock clerk. Actually, up front men would be required to cover tattoos. You would not tolerate all tattoos. Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Maine was criticized for having a tattoo of Totenkopf, a Nazi symbol. He had it covered up.
I looked up the article you alluded to earlier. As an aside, articles are generally referred to by author and year, not just the institution. Given that it’s the only relevant paper I found from Brandeis University, I’m going to assume you mean Azevedo, L. (Fall 2021). Male Stigmatisation of Female Body Hair.
It refers to a previous study by Prokop that had a sample made up of 96 students from a single Slovakian university, which is most certainly not a balanced and representative sample. It also refers to an entertainment video made by a fashion magazine with three participants, which is about as unscientific a source as you could come up with.
Azevedo then proceeds to acknowledge that, besides these two sources, there is “not enough evidence […] on men’s opinions regarding female body hair.”
I will note here that Prokop at least specified the source of his 96 participants, while I fail to see any indication how Azevedo’s 21(!) participants were selected. That is a smaller sample size, less transparent and if I’m reading this right, the survey consisted of three pairs of pictures.
This “study” is, put mildly, worthless filler, and has the gall to call that “confirmation”. It might indicate a potential direction of research by suggesting a the tendency to perceive shaved women as younger, but that is all it is. Any results you might see in it wouldn’t require “further scientific study”, but rather “actually scientific study”, because this sure isn’t.
The article does cite plenty of other sources, which is the more valuable thing about it. These sources are, among other things, used to cement the impression that men seem to find younger women sexy. Specifically, “a hairless body is a direct representation of a pre-puberty body”.
As for the question of natural or cultural, the article actually answers that by stating that women try to fit in with patriarchal expectations and by citing these other sources to illustrate that hair removal only really became “an important part of femininity between 1915–1945”, started in part by Gillette trying to sell a razor and accelerated by pornography sexualising youth.
It concludes that, as a result of easy access to said pornography, men “form the wrong expectation of how the female body should look”.
Frankly, I had my doubts about your claim before. Now I’m very much convinced you didn’t even read the source you cite, just made up a conclusion and grasped for anything to support it.
This is a wonderful way to isolate yourself from any accusation of having implied a claim. Your mention of scientific studies could indicate that you’re actually interested in the point. It could also mean you’re just trying to double down on the assertion that women are objectively more attractive without tattoos by reaching for the closest thing you get to a confirmation that plain skin could be more attractive.
You know the worst part of all this? Even if you were right, even if there was some measure proving that they’re objectively more attractive and all the people who actually like tattoos are just freaks of nature, it still wouldn’t give you, or me, or anyone else any right to tell women what to do with their own fucking bodies.
Look, I get that you’re not big on reading, but I’ve already disambiguated that “only” is misplaced here, because there are multiple ways tattoos can be attractive.
And even if it was the only way, an employer has no right to demand attractiveness from his employees, regardless of their gender or presentation. Women don’t owe sexiness to anyone, period.
And that impression is…? Whether their employees are willing to submit to arbitrary, antiquated and pointless social standards about attractiveness?
That was my point: Customers having a stick up their arse is the only justification to demand conformity to that arse-stickery. Whether your clerk or cashier is ugly or attractive or the hottest person to ever walk the earth has no bearing on their competence. Bodily hygiene, sure, that has health and olfactory implications. But personal appearance shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
I wouldn’t tolerate Nazi symbols in graffiti either, or any other medium. That has nothing to do with tattoos or visibility, but with my general sense of ethics being fundamentally incompatible with their ideology. Covering it up doesn’t make the problem go away either if the ideology persists.
I posted the link; you didn’t have to spend time looking for the article.
The article said that women also find a hairless body more feminine and attractive. Also, the rise of feminism didn’t change this. This suggests that it’s innate. The author believes in evolution. Consequently, he attempts to reconcile a contradiction. Female body hair indicates a girl has reached puberty and can reproduce. Therefore, it would seemingly be a selective advantage for men to be attracted to body hair on women. He explains the contradiction by saying that society is the cause. As I pointed out above, the explanation is wanting. Also, if there is an evolutionary advantage for men liking body hair on women, why would a patriarchal society want women to remove body hair? Since I believe that humans were created, I can simply say that humans were designed to find women without body hair more attractive just as humans were designed to find earrings on women attractive.
You dislike the Totenkopf tattoo on Platner because of its meaning but if you were an employer, how would you know what tattoos are offensive? Platner said that he didn’t know Totenkopf was a Nazi symbol. It would be simpler for an employer to have employees cover up tattoos at least for upfront employees.
I didn’t see it in our conversation, sorry if I missed it.
…because they are pressured by social factors to conform to a certain image of beauty, which the article states to be a fairly new phenomenon.
“However, it has only become an important part of femininity between 1915–1945, especially in the Western world (Basow, 1991). Before this time, by looking at beauty books and catalogs, it is noticeable that most women didn’t remove armpit and leg hair (Hope, 1982).”
“With the second feminist wave and the spread of hippie culture, pubic hair was neither uncommon nor seen as unnatural (Cerini, 2020). Unshaved female genitalia even started to be represented in Playboy (Cerini, 2020).”
It certainly did. That change just didn’t hold up to the pressures of media that wanted to sell a certain aesthetic:
“This completely changed in the following decades, however, as full body hair removal became not only preferred, but the norm. […] [Brazilian waxing] exploded in the market as the media and celebrities began to support and advertise this completely hairless look (Webb-Liddall, 2019). Research associated exposure to certain magazines and TV shows with pubic hair removal (Bercaw-Pratt et al., 2012, as cited by Li & Braun 2017).”
“By understanding the history behind female body hair removal, it is possible to see how it started as a way to generate profit through the development of a new market. […] It is interesting to see that the association of a hairless body with femininity grew over the course of decades to become what men see as ideal when looking for a mate today.”
If it was innate, why would it not be an issue for millennia, then suddenly explode within decades?
As an aside: Lígia is usually a girl’s name. This is most likely a woman investigating why her sex is subjected to certain pressures.
Evolution works on far greater spans of time than a century. It doesn’t have any bearing on this trend. But if you want to bring that into the discussion, the advantages of hair (cited from Bergman, J. (2004). Why mammal body hair is an evolutionary enigma. via the article) are "retention of heat, sexual dimorphism, attraction of mates, protection of skin and reflection (or absorption) of sunlight”. To reflect on their bearing on humans in order of mention:
The lone evolutionary advantage to hairlessness cited is that “Ancient Egyptians also shaved their heads to prevent lice infection”. Other primates have mutual removal of parasites as a social ritual. They also generally don’t have the technology to depilate. And again, they are more dependant on their fur than humans.
This is just one of many ways humans have removed evolutionary pressures from our lives. Hence, however important it might have been a hundred thousand years ago, body hair is just no longer a strict necessity for us. That doesn’t strictly mean that we’d evolve away from growing it, if there also is no pressure to the opposite, just that it stops being as strong of a selection criterion.
So why did we start favouring hairlessness a century ago? Per the article: Gilette wanted to open a market to sell a razor. In a word: Greed.
And why does it continue to be considered sexy? “When women shave, they are removing one of their secondary sexual characteristics, and as a result they will look younger, in a prepubescence stage. In popular culture, infantilization of women is often seen as sexy (Sullivan, 2012). […] With this in mind, it is possible to assume that women shave their body hair to look prepubescent, as men feel attracted to youth.”
I’m not sure how much more explicit you can get that it’s a social and cultural phenomenon than saying “In popular culture” (emphasis mine). If anything, we ought to explore whether an attraction to youth is innate. Again, this might not have any evolutionary advantages, but we don’t need to optimise for that. It’s not like resources “wasted” on mating without expectation of procreation is a problem.
By a moron, a sadist or both, given the cruelty our creator would have planted in us
…suboptimally so that we need to compensate?
Why not make women not grow any in the first place then?
Again, not universal, but there also is an evolutionary explanation if you’d care for Hanlon’s Razor: Display of wealth signals financial stability and an abundance of resources, since it implies being able to trade some of it for ultimately useless, labour-intensive trinkets. Once that abundance becomes less exceptional, the evolutionary advantage falls away, but the cultural connotation remains.
(You’ll actually find that pattern of “was reasonable, became normal, persists even beyond necessity” in many things, by the way, like the sexist mentality that women are less suited for some jobs, just because pre-industrial societies faced pressures to separate duties by “can be done while pregnant or caring for childen”)
Historical education? I’d argue that a politician with high ambitions should be aware of ideological connotations, but also, I think that people in general should be educated. I realise that this is an ideal that reality doesn’t (yet?) attain, but even if you don’t know, once someone points out that something is associated with offensive ideologies it shouldn’t be hard to confirm that against the historical record and respond accordingly.
I guess we should all hide our hands too, since someone might use them to flip the bird or do the Hitler Salute. And while we’re at it, sew our mouths shut, just in case they’re used for insults. What about our eyes, that might express disgust or leer at children?
Or maybe make less of a big deal out of mistakes. If an employer hires a racist without realising, then sacks that racist once they learn of it, that should be enough to rectify the mistake.
If we’re talking about offensive ideologies, by the way, I should point out that creationism is often associated with certain religions that have historically and predently exhibited bigotry, hostility towards non-believers (variously referred to as gentiles, heathens, infidels and other such terms), even violence motivated by religious exceptionalism.
Particularly in the present, one dominant religion espousing that belief also has a well-known problem with sexual abuse of children across many different confessions. That would actually bring us back to the topic of attraction hairlessness:
“[T]he primary reason for the male preference for a hairless body is the preconceived expectation towards women regarding youth and femininity. There is a socially constructed, artificial link between shaving and attractiveness/femininity. Biologically, sexually mature females have body hair, but society has made femininity more connected to youth and pre-pubescence than to a woman’s ability to reproduce. […] As a result, their expectation is transformed into societal pressure, as women start feeling abnormal for having body hair and decide to remove it in order to be seen as attractive.”
Are you really going to defend “I don’t like tattoos on women” with the justification “We were designed to sexualise children”?