In some previous posts we looked at books produced by photographer Valerie Phillips and featuring images of young Swedish model and photographer Armida Byström. Phillips is not interested in the gloss and glamour in her images, but in real lives and the cover of one of her books centered on Byström - Hi you are beautiful how are you - showed the model in a natural pose as she took off her shirt, showing unshaved armpits. When the book came out nobody complained about the cover or its contents that showed Byström going about in her life, dyeing her hair, playing with her plastic jewelry or wearing colourful garments in urban and shabby surroundings. Surely, Phillips was challenging conceptions of beauty and lifestyle in the images, but nothing much happened.
Three years have gone since that book came out, but now Armida Byström's body hair seem to have become a problem. At the end of September the Swedish model starred in an Adidas Originals' Superstar campaign.
In the video, Byström appears with unshaved legs, stating in a voiceover: "I think femininity is usually created from our culture so I think everybody can do feminine things, can be feminine. I feel like in today's society we are very scared of that."
Surely not shaving your legs is not a crime or a scandal, but, according to the model, while the majority of people liked the idea, she got online abuse, negative comments on YouTube and even rape threats.
Byström took to Instagram where she wrote: "Me being such an abled, white, cis body with its only nonconforming feature being a lil leg hair. Literally I've been getting rape threats in my DM inbox. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to not possess all these privileges and try to exist in the world. Sending love and try to remember that not everybody has the same experiences being a person."
The young model has so far always been outspoken: a while back she released a book with artist Molly Soda that featured images that had been banned from Instagram, and contained therefore plenty of female nipples, vaginal secretions and body hair. Yet the reactions she got for her Adidas campaign seems unbelievable, this is 2017 after all and the fuss around Byström's body hair proves there is still a stigma about female body hairs.
Body hair removal was practiced in Greece and Egypt, but shaving became more popular when Gillette popularised razors for women in 1915. And yet in the '50s quite a few actresses appeared on the big screen with unshaved armpits: film fans may remember for example Sophia Loren or Silvana Mangano, posing or dancing with sleeveless dresses and revealing fuzzy hairs under her armpits.
Yet in the last few years bodily hair have become a crime (the rise of pornography helped cementing the trend of pubic hair removal...): an Italian friend told me her teenage daughter's PE teacher keeps on reminding female students to shave their legs as if it was part of the school curriculum. Last July French teenager Adele Labo even launched the hashtag #LesPrincessesOntDesPoils (Princesses Have Hair) on Twitter because she had been mocked at school for refusing to shave.
Those who reacted in disgust at Byström's legs, call to mind the story of writer and art critic John Ruskin who refused to consume his marriage with Euphemia Gray because he was disgusted when he saw her naked body on their wedding night.
Being more accustomed to seeing the female form in classical paintings and sculptures he had indeed imagined women were different from what he saw and did not have pubic hair (some historians say this is a legend and she may have had body odor or was menstruating...).
Looks like it is definitely time to start remembering to people that shaving or not shaving your body hair is a personal choice, even in the age of Brazilian waxes. As for Byström's haters, well, they are causing a furor about something as unimportant as hairs, next time they'd better redirect their anger at more important critical problems and global issues.
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