The Clamour for perfection.

[bikerider]

I was stimulated to write this thread after viewing a thread in Glamour. It was one posted by a prolific poster of nudes and to me was a nice idea well executed. However several responses commented on the body hair of the female model and essentially how repugnent they found it. I also saw a similar response some time ago where a male responder made the comment 'brrrrrrrr' when referring to hair on a woman's arm. These responses prompted me to think about the question-why have we become obsessed with body hair these days, or the necessity for it's removal I should say? This trend seems to have started with women and has extended to men to a lesser degree, with waxing body hair becoming common. I am wondering what people here think about this and what has been photography's role in promoting this idea that 'body hair is ugly'. I would like to know what people think is an acceptable level of body hair on men and women. On one level it is a worrying trend, perhaps encouraging an obsession with youth and ageist attitudes. I look forward to responses!
Roger.

[JCR]

Apart from hairy spiders I have no issue with body hair. Sometimes on a lady the soft downy stuff can be sexy. Wouldn't be sexually turned on by a lady with hairy legs but then I think thats part of my cultural upbringing and personal taste, wouldn't really find it offensive either tho. Overall not much of an issue for me, although with a chest like mine I would have no room to criticise anyway ;)
I guess it's sexuality based and pre programmed definitions.

I was a pretty serious athlete once, I have seen men bald as goose eggs and women with semi beards neither have provoked me enough to give it much thought. Live and let live

I know the thread u mean, I felt pretty much similar to you about it at the time.

[elTwitcho]

Differen't strokes for different folks I guess. Me personally I did find the hair in that image distracting to the smoothness of the curves shown. For me hair has always been associated with masculinity, and I prefer my women to have as little of it as possible.

I can see your position of "is this a worrying trend" and I believe any position can be worrying when the proponents try and push it as "the correct position" as though all women have to be a completely unbroken expanse of smooth hairless skin from the eyelashes down, but then I don't see every person necessarily believing this is so. It's what I like, and it's neither right or wrong it just is as it is so far as my prefferences are concerned.

[rklepper]

I think that many have unrealistic images of what people should look like and have come to expect that everyone will conform to that image. If somehow they do not, there must be something wrong with them.

[bikerider]

Differen't strokes for different folks I guess. Me personally I did find the hair in that image distracting to the smoothness of the curves shown. For me hair has always been associated with masculinity, and I prefer my women to have as little of it as possible.

I can see your position of "is this a worrying trend" and I believe any position can be worrying when the proponents try and push it as "the correct position" as though all women have to be a completely unbroken expanse of smooth hairless skin from the eyelashes down, but then I don't see every person necessarily believing this is so. It's what I like, and it's neither right or wrong it just is as it is so far as my prefferences are concerned.

Okay Rich I agree there is no right and wrong, I don't believe anyone should be pushed either way. I am curious though if when you meet women the hair issue is a critical one, that is it's something you need to know before you find them attractive. I'm also talking about photography here as well in that, would you photograph a naturally hairy woman, pose her and show her in an interesting and or attractive light. It does seem to me that most people today prefer the hairless body, which considering that we haven't genetically changed yet into hairless beings this seems to be a social condition. When I was in my 20's people were naturally hairy and most trimmed to suit individual taste. Todays trend seems to have taken a significant leap and I'm wondering why.....JCR and Doc thanks for your comments.
Roger.

[condyk]

I think you might be 'over egging the pudding' with regard to comments about that shot; I have seen much worse comments in other threads. But I understand the principle you are talking about.

I find all this drive for 'perfection', which is always culturally driven, actually quite ugly. The shots where a model, 95% of the time it is a woman, is 'smoothed' and 'perfected' and sculpted really are bizarre to me. It is just copy-cat shooters trying to emulate what they see in the media rather than developing a unique view. These kinds of shots we see will date quickly. Most unique perspectives transcend mere culture and give a deeper, timeless message that is more lasting than any transient 'moment in time'.

Anyway, in Lorek's shot the model wasn't over or under hairy AFAIC. She was perfectly normal. Nearly all women and men have hair at the bottom of their back. Maybe those who complained have only ever seen porn stars rather than real women :lol: :lol: :lol:

[bikerider]

Very well said Condyk, indeed a lot of the shots on glamour have had the noise ninja or other skin smoothing technique applied creating a flawless or almost childlike skin. I think this creates an unrealistic expectation on how people should look and as you said this seems to be mostly women. There have been studies into this and the evidence seems to point to the porn industry from the 80's as the culprit for promoting the hairless look. Again as you said Lorek's post was of a normal back with very fine hair, I didn't think the posts were over the top, they just made me think and want to ask these questions.
Roger.

[elTwitcho]

Okay Rich I agree there is no right and wrong, I don't believe anyone should be pushed either way. I am curious though if when you meet women the hair issue is a critical one, that is it's something you need to know before you find them attractive. I'm also talking about photography here as well in that, would you photograph a naturally hairy woman, pose her and show her in an interesting and or attractive light. It does seem to me that most people today prefer the hairless body, which considering that we haven't genetically changed yet into hairless beings this seems to be a social condition. When I was in my 20's people were naturally hairy and most trimmed to suit individual taste. Todays trend seems to have taken a significant leap and I'm wondering why.....JCR and Doc thanks for your comments.
Roger.

It would be a critical one if she had what I would think of as alot of hair, absolutely. The caveat to that is that I don't think the model in question had alot of hair by any means, but photographic technique can be everything, and in that case the photographic technique caused the light to catch the hair just so, and it looked unnatractive. Is it unattractive on that particular model in real life? I strongly doubt it. Is it unattractive the way it was photographed in that picture? In my opinion, yes.

The closest analogy I can come up with at 8:30am is blinking. Everyone does it, it's a normal human function and is by no means something anyone "shouldn't do". Nonetheless, if someone blinks when that photo is taken, it ruins the shot.

As for would I shoot a model that didn't conform to the norm... yes. My personal tastes have a fair bit of bias away from the standard model of beauty and for instance I have a membership to suicidegirls but not to playboy. Nonetheless, if I didn't have some kind of interest in the model, and didn't find them beatiful or interesting I don't know how I would present them in a beatiful or interesting light.

Keep in mind however, that this is coming from someone who has had the benefit of having not worked professionally yet, and I can still feign some sort of (naive perhaps) sense of artistic integrity ;)

I think this creates an unrealistic expectation on how people should look and as you said this seems to be mostly women.

I think here the problem is with people and not art. In many kinds of art (those kinds not related to photojournalism essentially) there is what should be a very obvious motif of transcending reality and reaching a fantasy world of perfect beauty, heroic archetypes, drama, magic and whatever else. This isn't something new to art, you can look back as far as you want and you see hairless women in renessaince paintings despite the reality that most people rarely bathed let alone owned razors at that time. I would certainly hope that in Botticelli's time no woman had ever despaired that not only did she have hairy legs, but she would also never make an entrace via clamshell rising from the frothy ocean tide. Somewhere along the lines that pragmatism or common sense appears to have been lost, but I don't think the problem is with artistic license, the problem is that somewhere along the way people started accepting this as reality.

[Claire]

elTwitcho,well said. Yes, I do belive there will always be fashion and beauty ideals. As time changes our threshold goes up and in order to push new buttons, new things will be invented. Maybe not "new" as such, but things that feel "different" from the current norm will appear.

As a woman I can definitely see the hairless trend, but as Condyk said, it's also very culturally oriented. And even within this, it's very individual, as well as the reasons for keeping or removing hair.

I have a male friend who LOVES a shaved woman when it comes to the genital area. I know guys who love it if their woman shaves or trims that area, but would NEVER do it themselves. (Equality, eh?:rolleyes: ) I know men and women who find hairy legs a total turnoff, or sexy and want it that way all the time, or just to make things feel special. I know Scandinavian women used to be more laisee fair (sp) about armpit hair, and I believe it was a running joke when I grew up that Scandinavian women were gorgeous, but damn they won't shave!

An Indian friend of mine said she began waxing body hair very early as that's what her mom taught her to do. She waxed her arms etc. I have friends that won't touch a razor at all. I have friends who will care about one area of body hair, while not giving a damn about another area. I found it amazing one girl actually goes to the salon to have her eyebrows waxed. I know a Pakistani guy who was amazed when he saw my Cosmopolitan magazine with it's Naked Male Centerfolds. Why he was amazed? 'Cos the men seemed to have hair "down there". He told me many muslim men (in Pakistan ?) trim or shave. I know African men who will shave the same area because of the heat. Of course we also have the men who want to show off their muscles and shave/wax their chest hair to show it all off better. And then we got the men who do the same with the public region in order to "make things look bigger..." and of course there are those who do it for sexual reasons.

There are so many reasons why people remove or keep body hair. And frankly, I doubt many remove it ALL OVER. (Damn, what a hassle!)

I saw the shot referred to and seriously, even if some people naturally aren't very hairy, there's bound to be hair somewhere. It may not be visible from normal viewing distance, might only be visible really close up.

Hm, and personally I do like my men smooth all over, but for me that means that the guy shouldn't have body hair like Robin Williams or David Hasselhoff! And yes, I'm not keen on hair on male backs, but once again, that depends how much hair, and I probably wouldn't care as much if I liked the person. At the same time though, if a guy makes a comment about a girl's hairyness, I seriously think he should look at himself as well...

[EllenC]

I ventured over to the glamour section, which I usually avoid to check out the photo in question. I thought it was kind of interesting. It showed texture which a body has.

One of the reasons I don't go to the glamour section is out of sheer boredom of the subject. Everyone looks so plastic. It's just not my thing. Now I'm not saying removing that big zit in the middle of his/her forehead is a bad idea, I just like to see the person looking human as oppose to looking like a mannequin.

As Claire showed in her post, there are all kinds of preferences when it comes to what we as humans find attractive. I think those varied preferences are missing in the glamour section as well as mass media.

Somewhere on this site there's a tutorial on smoothing out the skin of your model. I don't mean to offend the person that created the tutorial but I think the finished product is so much worse than the original image. She looks plastic and so very cheesy. Of course this is just one person's opinion.

I'm going to agree with the majority of Condyk's post and strongly agree that people who are overly disturbed by normal amounts of body hair just haven't seen that many women naked in real life. Let's face it, alot of men these days can't even tell the difference between implants and real breasts.

[Claire]

Let's face it, alot of men these days can't even tell the difference between implants and real breasts.

Doesn't that depend on how much the woman has filled them with and how good the surgeon has been? And I'm guessing you mean when they see them naked. With clothes on it's not easy at all (unless it's very obvious). Also, a good bra can do wonders I've heard...

[EllenC]

Doesn't that depend on how much the woman has filled them with and how good the surgeon has been? And I'm guessing you mean when they see them naked. With clothes on it's not easy at all (unless it's very obvious). Also, a good bra can do wonders I've heard...
Certainly a good surgeon will make a world of difference but no matter the quality, fake tits just don't move the same. Think of what happens to your breasts when you lay on your back. They don't just continue to stand up at attention they sort of redistribute their weight. Some guys are surprised by this because in the movies they see something different.

I think fakeys are definately more noticeable on thin women. If you've got a little chunk on you it seems to hide the "seams" and that hideous implant cleavage you always see.

I'm always surprised how some celebrities have really bad boob jobs considering they have access to the worlds best plastic surgeons and can afford it.

Sorry, I think I've gone way off topic here.

[bikerider]

Clare and Ellen, so glad you commented and I think Clare you covered the variety of issues very well indeed. Ellen I agree totally that the glamour forum has too many plastic looking models posted, I do check the forum often and hope to see unusual or interesting posts and am rewarded sometimes. Heavily processed images of women and or psudo-lesbian photoshoots bore the hell out of me. These shoots seem to appeal to mostly men as it presents an unrealistic but appealing ideal of how a woman should look and behave. Referring back to eltwitcho, these ideal women have been presented down through the ages in paintings and I guess because of the accessibility of photography these images are more prolific. For me I like variety in images as much as the people I come into contact with. I would just like to see more variety on glamour and less judgement on the appearance of the models.
Roger.

[queenbee288]

Certainly a good surgeon will make a world of difference but no matter the quality, fake tits just don't move the same. Think of what happens to your breasts when you lay on your back. They don't just continue to stand up at attention they sort of redistribute their weight. Some guys are surprised by this because in the movies they see something different.

I think fakeys are definately more noticeable on thin women. If you've got a little chunk on you it seems to hide the "seams" and that hideous implant cleavage you always see.

I'm always surprised how some celebrities have really bad boob jobs considering they have access to the worlds best plastic surgeons and can afford it.

Sorry, I think I've gone way off topic here.

Okay, it is off topic but let me tell you about a dream I had. I dreamed that I had breast implants done and much later in life I was old and wrinkled but had these big perfect breasts on my skinny old wrinkled body. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Okay, back to our scheduled program. I very much liked the photo that was posted hair and all. I didn't even think about the hair until someone mentioned it but I was trying to figure out if it was a man or woman because of the shape. What I mean is the hair didnt stand out to me because it was such a close up and the way it was lit, you would expect to see fine hair on that part of the body.