construction zone

That’s what makes the woman different, her body, I don’t mind uh having hair in certain specific parts on her body um . . . in general I . . . like woman to be clean. Just in certain areas. But like I said, down in the genital, like it’s okay for me.

Hair, for Adam, Musiteli, and other participants, served as the visual representation of the differentiation between “men” and “women.” Further, Adam referred to a woman being hairless not only as “proper” but “cleanly,” as well.

Often, when I asked participants specifically about genital hair, the response was that they did not prefer hair due to cleanliness, hygiene, and other such myths surrounding body hair. The idea that hairlessness is cleanly is reflected in colloquial discourse (e.g., “clean shaven”). Ryan, an Indian American, cis-het man, explained to me his distaste for a “bush” or a large amount of hair genitally:

I just think like it's better to sometimes, maybe, fully shave it, like coordinate with your partner if you're going to do that, because then it could help but like, yeah, if like two people both have bushes then like you don't know what's going on. And, also, it's just like, cleaner. Like in terms of like keeping it clean. It's easier when you have less hair in those areas.

When I asked Liz, a cis-lesbian, Latina woman, whether she cares if a woman shaves her armpits and genitals or not, she similarly responded, “Yes (laughs). Yes definitely. It’s just . . . um . . . how should I call it? Hygiene. Hygiene.”

In Ryan, Liz, and Adam’s discourse, pubic hair is conceptualized as unclean, non-hygienic, and obtrusive. Such ideas, again, are not mere individual preference but are instead shaped by cultural and generational understandings of hair. Herzig highlights that “the normalization of smooth skin in dominant U.S. culture is not even a century old,” with such ideas arising during the same years as the Cold War with individuals in the United States describing “visible body hair on women as evidence of a filth, ‘foreign’ lack of hygiene.” Porn and the framing of sexually explicit material have also shaped cultural understandings of pubic hair. While pubic hair removal for women went out of vogue after the nineteenth century, it became popular once again in the 1980s, in part, due to pornographic depictions largely including hairless vulvas, and more recently, hairless bodies for men, as well. Cultural discourse surrounding pubic and body hair is, thus, shaped by racialized, gendered, and xenophobic understandings of the body and hair. The fact that these ideas are shared by immigrant participants/participants of color does not deny the racialized and xenophobic roots of such discourse, so much as it highlights the internalization of racism and xenophobia by immigrants and/or people of color, as an adaptive response to the racism of society.

As participants conceptualized hair as animal-like, masculine, and/or filthy, they also conceptualized of it as excess or surplus to the human (woman’s) body. Pubic hair shaped their idea of what it means to do womanhood and to be a woman. As such, participant discourse not only was shaped by racist, sexist, and xenophobic conceptualizations of hair that have proliferated in the United States but also cissexist concepts of manhood and womanhood as opposite, different, and biologically based. That which is “improper to manhood/womanhood within White schemas of a gender binary are unnatural, unclean, and undesirable.”]

Liz: Uh . . . this is a wig [on woman B]? [pause] um (laughs) [pause] I don’t know. It’s going to be a [pause] 5 [for woman B]. . . . Because is [pause] she has, I mean she’s a woman. I know she’s a woman, because if she’s dressed up like that and she is, you know, she’s posing like that for the picture, she looks like a woman. So is, she should be considered a woman, but uh in terms of how attracted I am, I’m not because [pause] I see the masculine um [pause; gestures at face]

alithia: Facial structure?

Liz: Yes, facial structure, so I’m not attracted and I also see that it’s obviously a wig. So yeah, but I’m gonna give it a 5, because it’s, I always appreciate and I always uh admire that, you know, they feel like a woman and regardless of what they are, I, I really, I call it bravery. And I love that, but the question is how attracted I am right? Yeah, so I’m gonna give it a 5.

Liz’s response highlights a disapproval of the wig’s visibility as synthetic hair, rather than real human hair. Such a statement points to her desire for a natural look in a woman. Liz’s lack of attraction to a woman due to her wearing a synthetic wig, though, as detailed in chapter 1, is attached to classed and racialized notions of hair and “real” hair. Human hair wigs that use hair grown and harvested from people (mostly women often in the Global South) cost hundreds of dollars, with some even costing up to two-thousand dollars. Transgender women, though, do not always have the financial resources available to afford higher quality wigs that also require higher upkeep than a synthetic wig. Liz additionally highlighted earlier in the interview a desire for a White woman, in particular. While cisgender, White women wear wigs, wigs remain more associated with Black and/or trans women than they do others.

Earlier in the interview, Liz explained to me that education mattered to her in terms of her attractions to women. She preferred “women who have some kind of education . . . They don’t necessarily need to have a bachelor’s degree . . . but at least the intention of pursuing one.” Liz’s lack of attraction to this woman was not simply out of dislike for a particular hairstyle or a particular wig. Instead, Liz’s description of woman B was shaped by raced and classed femininities and notions of desire. Woman B’s wig and aesthetic, in many ways, exemplified what Schippers terms “pariah femininities,” or the embodiment of those characteristics and behaviors that “are simultaneously stigmatized and feminized.” Woman B was hyperfeminine but did not embody hegemonic femininity.

In comparison to Liz, Amanda was a cis-bi, Black woman who lived in poverty, did not have stable housing, and had not completed high school. Amanda was the only cis woman participant to intentionally choose a “more visibly trans” participant. Amanda desired a woman who looks like she parties and goes out to clubs and bars often. She did not find woman B to be more beautiful than the others, but she liked the way woman B dressed. Amanda chose woman B “only because it looks like I’ll have more fun with that person, and then just by the background, it looks like they have that street life like that.” Amanda, then, both chose “visibly trans” women not because of their physical features but more so based off dress in comparison to others who found these women unappealing because of their physical features and clothing. Amanda herself wore clothing like woman B and had brightly colored box braids, and she desired a woman that was a “hustler . . . because you know how to get money.” Amanda’s attraction to woman B because she “looks like [she has] that street life” highlighted her affiliation for pariah femininities. Amanda did not desire a woman who embodied hegemonic femininities nor White, middle-class femininity. “More visibly trans” women like woman B displayed a pariah femininity that, for Amanda, was desirable not because of how it looked but for what it represented.”]

Preacher on an English nudist beach / England, 1974

“Do Dead Malls Go To Heaven?”