Why are we so scared of women's body hair?

It is an ideal so universally adhered to that it has become unquestionable: men are hairy, and women are not. Other than the superficial but widespread claim that female body hair is ‘disgusting’ and ‘unfeminine’, explanations are never given as to why women are expected to be hairless, even though few of them are naturally so. Neither are explanations ever sought. But whatever else might be behind it, our aversion to female body hair certainly has no basis in logic.

Hair in the right places on a woman’s body is a source of pride, envy and lust. A head of plentiful hair is a benchmark in traditional feminine beauty; it might be preceded by such adjectives as ‘luscious’ or ‘glossy’, or praised for having a ‘sheen’. Countless products, each with the aim of maximising its seductive potential, are available to buy anywhere and everywhere. A lack of it can be cause for shame and stigma, and a woman who has lost her hair through chemotherapy or alopecia is likely to hide this fact as best she can under a wig or bandanna.

But hair in the wrong places evokes disgust and revulsion. It is its presence, not its lack, that is cause for shame and stigma, and the overwhelming majority of women devote significant amounts of time to ridding themselves of it. Too much leg, underarm or pubic hair is likely to be denounced as ‘wild’ or ‘unkempt’, and a hairy woman is considered eccentric, lazy, dirty, ugly or – horror of horrors – masculine. The hair that grows between a woman’s legs or under her arms is the same biological substance as the hair that she lovingly washes, brushes and styles, but its meaning could not be more different.

The average woman is well-versed in the relative merits of this or that method of hair removal. Shaving is easiest, but the hair grows back quicker; waxing lasts longer, but is painful and expensive; hair removal creams and bleaches are effective but might irritate the skin; laser surgery solves the problem forever but costs a small fortune. And while she might complain about the inconvenience, commiserating with her female friends about it ‘not being fair’ and chastising her male ones for ‘having it easy’, the chances of her actually questioning the practice of hair removal, of asking herself why she is doing it, who she is doing for, and what would happen if she didn’t, are slim. Although it is often costly, painful and time-consuming, removing our body hair is not something we ever think about. It is just what we do.

Whether or not this is a relatively recent phenomenon is unclear. According to Dr. Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, editor of The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, the historical evidence for women’s hair removal practices is ‘rather mixed’.

‘There’s a lot of assumption that historically, this is something that women have always done,’ she says. ‘A lot of people assume that even in Egyptian days, women were already shaving their legs, and you can find evidence of that. But on the other hand, there is also evidence which argues that women until quite recently didn’t shave their legs, and that this is something that only came to the fore when they actually started showing their legs.’

Representations of women in art and literature do not help us draw any concrete conclusions about the changing perceptions of women’s body hair. If hair removal is a recent development, as has been suggested, why is it that in hundreds of paintings from countless art movements, the nudes are so hairless as to appear childlike? In Madame Bovary, the down on Emma’s upper lip is given as an example of her beauty, but as Daniela Caselli points out in her chapter in The Last Taboo, Marian’s ‘moustache’ in The Woman in White is described as ugly and inappropriately masculine.

Female body hair, Lesnik-Oberstein suggests, is far more likely to be considered attractive if it is light and soft. If it is coarse and dark, a boundary is crossed – a woman becomes troubling because she looks too much like a man. The distaste with which a woman with an uncommon amount of hair may regard her own body is compounded and confirmed by the hostile reactions of those around her. In the past, ‘bearded ladies’ were put on display in travelling freak shows; today, a woman with hair on her chest, face, stomach, back or hands is diagnosed with ‘hirsutism’ and offered medical help.

Our discomfort with the issue manifests itself in a widespread reticence to talk about it. As Lesnik-Oberstein points out in her own contribution to The Last Taboo, we rarely hear or read anything about women’s body hair ‘other than brief and repetitive instructions on how to remove it’. Even feminist scholars have neglected the subject – The Last Taboo is so far the only academic book to discuss it in any detail. Lesnik-Oberstein initially had difficulty getting the book published, she says, because the subject matter was considered either too marginal or too revolting to be of interest to readers.

‘The idea was that to talk about this, you’re either talking about something totally irrelevant, or you’re talking about something which is so aggressively feminist that no one wants to know about it,’ she says. ‘Either body hair is seen to be trivial [...] or else so monstrous, so threatening, so extreme, that it’s actually dangerous even to raise it, because then you just threaten all of the progress feminism has made.’

But many of those who are prepared to take the issue seriously are nonetheless influenced by the social constructs they criticise. Questioning cultural norms is not the same thing as rejecting them. Even after researching the issue in some depth, I have neither the inclination nor the courage to stop removing my own body hair. Even if I am unsure why, exactly, I am doing it, I will continue to shave my legs.

‘Being aware of these issues, even being very theoretically informed about them,’ says Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘doesn’t equate with what people actually feel about being attractive, being feminine, feeling good about themselves.’

It is this that lies at the heart of the issue. However illogical our obsession with hairlessness, it is so deeply embedded in the collective psyche that it goes unnoticed, unquestioned and unchallenged. But whether or not it will always be so remains to be seen, because what is perceived as beautiful or ugly has always been subject to change – perhaps shaving or waxing will seem as bizarre a practice to future generations as whitening the face or wearing corsets seem to us today. Before we can stop feeling ashamed of our body hair, however, we must first stop pretending it does not exist.

The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, is now out in paperback, published by Manchester University Press.

Never Let Me Go: too tasteful for its own good

It is my personal view that any film described by the Daily Telegraph as 'beautiful, uncompromising and heart-stoppingly moving' should be approached with caution. It was with this in mind that I went to see Never Let Me Go, expecting something average that I could enjoy on a superficial level, maybe have a quiet cry about, and forget as soon as I left the cinema.

Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro and set in an alternate reality in which terminal illness is a thing of the past, it tells the story of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, childhood friends growing up at an apparently idyllic boarding school in the heart of the English countryside, which is later revealed to be an institution for organ donors. The students are all clones, created as sets of spare parts and hidden away from the rest of society until called up to start donating their vital organs, a process that means none of them survive beyond their late twenties. It's none too believable but it’s a good premise for a weepy, especially when there is so much potential for a pair of star-crossed lovers to be brutally robbed of their futures by forces beyond their control.

But in the event, the film not only left me cold – it grated. Predictably, one of its major flaws is the presence of Keira Knightley, who, demoted to a supporting role for a change, plays the domineering Ruth. To her credit, Knightley does appear to have spent some time updating her catalogue of facial expressions, and I will even be so bold as to suggest that her pouting days are behind her. The jutting chin, however, is as trusty a standby as ever, as is the pre-sneeze-like twitch of the right nostril, and although she flaunts a set of newly-minted, never-before-seen emotions, none of them are quite as convincing on the silver screen as we must assume they were in her bathroom mirror.

Otherwise, the acting is perfectly acceptable – even commendable. Andrew Garfield gives a convincing performance as the awkward but charming Tommy, while Carey Mulligan’s Kathy, though she wears a concerned frown the entire way through, nonetheless commands respect – a pillar of sad strength, she is natural and very likeable. Unfortunately, however, they are not enough to redeem the film of its many faults. Visually, it can justifiably be described as beautiful. But it is a very generic, irritating kind of beauty – precisely the same kind, in fact, as in The King’s Speech, The Duchess, Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, and others of that ilk: soft-edged, pleasant, and terribly, terribly British. Above all else, this film is a benchmark in middle-class Good Taste. There are more wet leaves, narrow lanes and windswept beaches than in an issue of Country Living magazine, and the costumes might have been ordered from a Toast catalogue. There is soft focus in abundance, wintry sunlight that bathes everything in a wistful but flattering glow, a token helping of kitsch-chic and just the right amount of mud.

The film is far too tasteful to expose us to any real, genuine misery, even though the three protagonists are all to die slow, painful and lonely deaths. Instead it's all about heartbreak, and tragedy – pained glances, doomed love and tormented souls who undoubtedly take comfort in the fact that they look simply ravishing when they cry. Even Mother Nature is sympathetic to their plight, and manipulates the weather accordingly. And just in case our heartstrings forget to be tugged, a mournful cello melody rings out over the most tragic moments of all.

This country has a tradition of producing nice, polite films about beautiful but tortured people, set in a fantasy Britain that is simultaneously glamorous and quintessential. Never Let Me Go is its latest offering, and despite a relatively original storyline, it still manages to feel formulaic. Well-acted (with one notable exception) but replete with cinematic clichés and mournfully lacking in subtlety, it might be a pleasant enough experience if you can suspend your disbelief, but it is a tedious waste of an evening if you can't.

Hypochondria: a health condition in its own right

 No one gets through life without a health scare. Everyone knows what it is to rush to the doctor in a panic, or to scour self-diagnosis websites with baited breath and sweaty palms. After a trip to the doctor, however, and perhaps a test or two, the majority of us go back to everyday life and forget all about it. But some do not. Some cannot. Some remain so convinced that their symptoms are the sign of a terminal disease that no amount of reassurance can convince them otherwise; others are so scared of what their doctor might say that they are unable to make an appointment in the first place. Hypochondria, now known as health anxiety or illness phobia, is frequently dismissed as needless fretting, a trivial concern of the neurotic and the self-absorbed. But in reality it is a genuine, disabling psychological condition, and it can have a devastating effect on a sufferer's ability to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

When I was sixteen, I spent the best part of a year convinced I was dying of multiple sclerosis. It began when I watched 'Hilary and Jackie', the biopic of the legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose career was cut short by MS when she was in her twenties and who died of the disease at the age of 42, fourteen years after it was diagnosed. By the end of the film, du Pré, played by Emily Watson, is confined to her bed, unable to control a single muscle in her body and dependent on carers to feed, wash and dress her.

It was perhaps not a wise film choice for someone with a chronic fear of disease. But I didn't think of that. I just thought it was a good film, so I watched it again, and again, and as I watched it, something happened in my brain. In the weeks that followed, I began to wonder if I wasn't exhibiting some of the same symptoms du Pré had experienced in the early stages of her illness. The tired feeling I sometimes had in my legs, especially when I climbed stairs – did it mean something was wrong with me? My hands trembled sometimes, too – should I be worried? The tingling sensation I occasionally felt in my back made me uneasy, as did the muscle palpitations that seemed to be occurring with increasing frequency. My concern rapidly turned into fear. Before long I was convinced that something terrible was happening to my body.

Panicking, I googled 'multiple sclerosis'. Reading the lists of symptoms brought me out in a cold sweat; those I had not already noticed I began looking for obsessively. After reading that uncontrollable head or tongue movements were always cause for serious concern, I found myself in front of the mirror, examining my tongue for signs of abnormal movement. I scrutinised my hands and panicked over the slightest tremor. I held my arms and legs in strenuous, unnatural positions and told myself that any resulting pain or muscle fatigue was evidence of something sinister. I even watched my shadow for twitches and shakes. It comes as no surprise to me now to learn that health anxiety is often classified within the Obsessive Compulsive spectrum of anxiety disorders.

According to Terri Torevell of the charity Anxiety UK, some sufferers of health anxiety will go to their doctor 'countless times'. Negative test results and verbal reassurance from medical professionals do nothing to quell their fears. Others, like me, are the opposite – they avoid doctors because they are too afraid to face up to the diagnosis they believe to be inevitable.

I didn't just avoid telling my doctor – I avoided telling anyone at all. For months, I kept my fears to myself. I longed for the reassurance doctors had offered me in the past, but I didn't for a moment believe I would get it. There was so obviously something wrong with me, I thought, that anyone I told would have no option but share my concern. Whenever I considered going to my GP I imagined her recommending, with a grim expression, that I go to hospital for further tests, and I simply couldn't bring myself to make the appointment. However miserable they were making me, I preferred to live with my fears than risk having them validated.

Had it occurred to me at any point that I might be suffering from an anxiety disorder rather than an actual physical condition, I would undoubtedly have been able to move on much quicker than I did. Seeking help might have opened my eyes to the fact that being 'healthy' doesn't necessarily mean being entirely pain- or sensation-free, and crucially, to the possibility that my constant state of fear might not just have been the result, but the cause of the symptoms I was experiencing.

'Anxiety produces very real physical symptoms,' says Torevell. 'With people suffering from health anxiety, they misinterpret these normal physical reactions to anxiety, and believe them to be signs of their feared illness.

'One of the things we often say to people on the helpline, when they're calling in the throes of a panic attack, is that nobody has ever died from a panic attack,' she continues. 'The worst thing that can happen to them is already happening. And panic attacks and prolonged anxiety cannot go on forever. It has its ebbs and flows, it has peaks and troughs and it will ease eventually.'

Calling a helpline such as this might have saved me months of misery. Instead, I let my fear take over my life. It cast a shadow over everything I did. I couldn't bear to think about the future – about going to university, or starting a career, or travelling the world – because I didn't believe I would live that long. I was plagued by a constant, nagging worry, which regularly escalated into panic. Sometimes I was so scared I couldn't think straight. There was no respite, no situation in which I could feel at ease. I simply could not escape it.

Eventually, when I could stand it no longer, I told my mother everything. Just talking to someone made me felt better, although it by no means solved everything. But as the days and weeks went by, I found myself feeling more relaxed. I began considering the possibility that my symptoms were nothing more than my body telling me to do some exercise. The less I worried, the less I noticed them. Gradually, they disappeared altogether, taking my anxiety with them.

But my experience with health anxiety has left its mark. Even now, five years later, I avoid reading, watching or listening to anything that so much as mentions multiple sclerosis, and while I don't fear it like I did, I do fear the appearance of some new and unmistakable symptom. I fear the blind panic that will inevitably ensue. I fear the sinking feeling, the cold sweat, the rising heart rate. Most of all I fear the possibility that next time, my worries will be justified.

Health anxiety is not trivial, and nor is it comic. It can ruin people's lives. It ruined a good few months of mine, and I am fully aware that it might do so again. But next time, at least, I will know that I am not alone, and that help is out there, and that I do not have to suffer in silence.

Anxiety UK is the nation's leading anxiety disorders charity. Advice and support for sufferers of conditions including agoraphobia, post traumatic stress disorder and social phobia can be found at www.anxietyuk.org.uk, or by calling the helpline on 08444 775 774. Lines are open Monday to Friday between 9.30 and 5.30. All members of staff have personal experience with anxiety.

The rich world of English folk music

'Try everything once,' goes the oft-quoted one-liner usually attributed to the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, 'except incest and Morris dancing.'

Humorous, perhaps, and certainly an old standby in the national repository of sarcastic wit. But this almost legendary quote speaks volumes about the English attitude towards folk culture. It is an attitude that can be summarised in a single word: disdain.

Unlike in Scotland or Ireland, where it is a source of cultural pride, traditional music in England simply does not have a place in the national consciousness. It has long suffered from bad associations and negative stereotyping, and folk musicians, when they are not ignored, are scorned.

'You could say that folk traditions have been disregarded,' says the award-winning folk  singer, songwriter and violinist, Chris Wood, 'but you could go further. You could say they've been ridiculed.'

Unsurprisingly, the world of traditional English folk music is infinitely richer than the clichés would have us believe. There is more to it than Greensleeves, Scarborough Fair and Somerset guitar-strummers in sandals and Aran sweaters. From the heavyweights of the 1960s folk revival like Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, to younger musicians like their daughter, Eliza Carthy, fiddle and squeezebox duo Spiers and Boden and 11-piece band Bellowhead, folk musicians are keeping alive a colossal body of work. The English folk repertoire is a rich and diverse collection of dance tunes, ballads, shanties, hymns, drinking songs, work songs and seasonal songs, many of them centuries-old. Most of them are wrought with emotions that still ring true today, generations after they were first sung.

Indeed, it is partly thanks to its timeless relevance that folk music endures. For even when the words are archaic, the essence of a folk song is frequently as pertinent to its modern performers and listeners as it was to its original ones.

'The themes of life never change,' says Malcolm Taylor, director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 'Love, sex, death, war, trickery, deception ... People are still suffering the same emotions – people are still jilting each other, killing each other, beating each other. It's all in the songs. They have a resonance down the ages.'

Take 'Hard Times of Old England', penned by an anonymous songwriter sometime during the Napoleonic wars. Come all brother tradesmen that travel along, it goes, can anyone tell me where the trade has all gone? Long time I have travelled and cannot find none, and it's oh, the hard times of old England. It is a line that would resonate with any victim of economic hardship – not just from the era of the song, but from any era. It might resonate with a victim of the credit crunch.

The decks were all spattered with blood, laments another song, and so loudly the cannons did roar; and thousands of times have I wished myself at home, and all along with my Polly on the shore. It is a striking reminder that the pain of war was as deeply felt two hundred years ago as it is today – replace 'decks' with 'roadside' and 'cannons' with 'bombs', and it might have been written by a soldier in Afghanistan. And in case proof were needed that libido has long been a source of musical inspiration, 'Bonny Black Hare' confirms that sex was always high on our list of priorities. Lock your legs round me and dig in with your heels, it goes, for the closer we get, oh, the better it feels.

It is easy to think of our ancestors as being somehow different from us, but these songs are a poignant reminder that they were, in fact, just the same. Their social and political circumstances may have been different to ours; they may have spoken differently, worn different clothes and eaten different food. But they still felt the same things we feel and wanted the same things we want. They were every bit as human as we are.

When the top-down, establishment-approved version of history holds that the extraordinary alone is worthy of remembrance, it is unsurprising that we know more about the treaties, battles and monarchs of yesteryear than we do about the real people. But folk music redresses this balance. It shows us, says Wood, 'how beautiful, how dark and miraculous is the ordinary.'

More than this, it offers an insight into the past in a way the textbooks do not. As the only outlet through which the often-illiterate lower classes could make their voices heard, folk songs offer a different telling of history – one that starts at the bottom. This, says Wood, is one of the reasons they are so important – because they tell us 'the bits of history Churchill didn't bother with.'

'They have our real story,' he continues. 'The people who made folk songs weren't doing it for a living – they didn't have an agenda, there was no reason for them to tell anything other than what they perceived as the truth. Whereas for historians and archivists, it's a lot harder for them to do that. I would argue that folk songs contain the bits of history that we need to know.'

Folk music, he says emphatically, needs to be sung. 'It needs to be sung because it is understood as being beautiful, because it's rich, and it's layered, and it's complex. It needs to be sung because it will teach us who we are.'

The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro has described the English folk repertoire as a treasure chest waiting to be delved into. It is up to us to open it. We are the people, after all. We are the folk, and this is our music. The songs are there in abundance, waiting to be sung and listened to and learned and passed on. They just need us to appreciate their worth.