E. M. Keller’s Reviews > Plucked: A History of Hair Removal > Status Update
E. M. Keller
is 66% done
"For both advocates and critics, unshaven armpits and legs served as a symbolic reminder of women's labor—in this case, the repetitive, expensive, and often invisible labor of maintaining hair-free flesh. The question whether such efforts were a trivial nuisance...or the very embodiment of women's oppression...would shape discussions of women's bodily choices for decades to come [after the 1970s]" (118-119).
— Sep 16, 2025 09:49AM
2 likes · Like flag
E. M.’s Previous Updates
E. M. Keller
is 44% done
"Even as fashion and custom allowed some women unprecedented freedom of movement, new forms of self-regulation and constraint were coming into being. In a remarkably short time...'body hair became disgusting' to middle-class American women, its removal a way 'to separate oneself from cruder people, lower class, and immigrant'" (79.)
— Sep 13, 2025 06:43AM
