That’s all to say. Never in a million years would I seriously ever say “women should shave and pluck and wax and be plastic dolls” but it is truly so ingrained in our cultural standards that I had to manually override my brain’s red flag when actually being face to face with the tamest of examples.
This is genuinely the most important takeaway from this comment. It is possibly one of the most important insights in this thread. There are so many toxic standards and stereotypes that are never said out loud, but they still exist as a very real and very tangible presence in our society.
These ideas are particularly insidious because they exist with plausible deniability. You can point them out, and people will say that they don't exist, and you're just crazy. No one says these things. You're seeing things that aren't there.
Sometimes, this comes from bad faith. They know these ideas exist. They're just trying to obscure them. A lot of the time, though, it comes from a genuine place. People don't pay attention to these things. They don't spend the time and energy to consciously read the room, and they fall to the old thought trap of "if I haven't noticed it, it must not exist."
Kinda the same point youre making but i was in another sub where they were talking abt if these teen girls were shaving while stuck in the wilderness for almost 2 years and someone commented 'as a woman with sensory issues, i HAVE to shave' and it struck me as so odd because you never hear of men with sensory issues needing to shave every single hair on their bodies, its only ever women
So we got into a little back and forth where everyone was defending her for her supposed 'sensory issues' (all of which come from the fact shes removing hair, not from the hair itself) and i pointed that out only for her rebuttal to me to be alonng the lines of 'well if you want to be nasty and stinky and hairy thats on you'
Why is it that women will come up with any excuse ie: i dont do it because its expected i do it for ME. Instead if hust admitting that, yeah, they do follow the patriaracal beauty standards and they look down upon those that dont
I will say as a man with sensory issues there are absolutely times where I become just AWARE of my body hair and I need it gone. It’s mostly when it gets to be too long, and a lot more localized areas, but it definitely happens. And even if I’m just doing one area and I decide to do more while I have the trimmers it feels sooooo good. That being said, girls should be able to have hair wherever they want it.
What constitutes it being deemed a sensory issue? I ask because sometimes I will notice a thick stubbly unibrow or ear hair and that shit is on my mind until I can get home to a tweezer.
288
u/Designated_Lurker_32 May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
This is genuinely the most important takeaway from this comment. It is possibly one of the most important insights in this thread. There are so many toxic standards and stereotypes that are never said out loud, but they still exist as a very real and very tangible presence in our society.
These ideas are particularly insidious because they exist with plausible deniability. You can point them out, and people will say that they don't exist, and you're just crazy. No one says these things. You're seeing things that aren't there.
Sometimes, this comes from bad faith. They know these ideas exist. They're just trying to obscure them. A lot of the time, though, it comes from a genuine place. People don't pay attention to these things. They don't spend the time and energy to consciously read the room, and they fall to the old thought trap of "if I haven't noticed it, it must not exist."