SOME grooming choices are so brazen that not even an A-lister can make them palatable.
Take leg hair. It doesn’t matter if a celebrity sports the palest, least conspicuous fuzz imaginable, as, say, Alicia Silverstone did once to a store opening in Los Angeles or Céline Dion did for a performance in Tokyo. Cameras zoom in, and the Web makes the moment live forever.
On the red carpet, if a woman has hairy legs or armpits, it is assumed to be an accidental misstep — a failure of time management, if you will. But that hasn’t been true lately. In January, at the Golden Globes, Mo’Nique, who won for her portrayal of a gruesome mother in “Precious,” lifted her floor-length dress to reveal her unshaved calves, abundant in their hairiness.
This did not go over well. The New York Daily News crowned her “the least superficial actress ever.” On Web sites like TMZ.com, people posted comments like “I have to HURL now ... Disgusting is an understatement.” It would seem that a collective ewww rang out nationwide, one designed to make every ’tween girl snap to attention and realize that leg hair is not allowed.
Confusion set in when it became clear that Mo’Nique didn’t forget to shave her legs. No, she doesn’t ever shave her legs. She tried it once, bloodied herself and decided Band-Aids weren’t her thing. Mo’Nique was not the only red-carpet walker this awards season to just say no. Amanda Palmer, who used to sing for the punk-cabaret duo Dresden Dolls, attended the Golden Globes with her fiancé, Neil Gaiman, whose novel “Coraline” was made into an animated film. Ms. Palmer, wearing a see-through 1920s dress, raised an arm to show the world the hair underneath. Later she tweeted, “hopefully between me & Mo’Nique, we’ll change the cultural beauty & shaving standard this year.”
In a phone interview, Ms. Palmer, who doesn’t shave her legs, either, said, “People assume you’re making a statement, but I’m not.” Say what?
Yes, she conceded, she likes reminding her younger fans that they have a choice. According to Ms. Palmer, women sometimes strike up conversations with her on the topic of body hair and tell her that they aren’t particularly wedded to shaving. But they “don’t want to deal with the stares, and it’s the path of least resistance,” she added.
Some groups of women have deliberately swum against the tide. Mo’Nique has called her au naturel legs “a black woman’s thing,” referring to some African-American women who used to be non-shavers. Danielle C. Belton, creator of blacksnob.com, a blog of politics and culture, said that when she was growing up, her Southern-born parents would not let her shave her legs. Their response circa 1992? “That’s something white people do.”
Ms. Belton, who is 32, argues that Mo’Nique — who hasn’t shaved in all the years she has been a comedian, talk show host and host of “Charm School” on VH1 — has garnered more criticism lately, now that her fan base is bigger, than she did when she was mostly loved by black audiences. “Things that are an issue in the mainstream aren’t necessarily if you keep it in-house,” Ms. Belton said.
This movie awards season, Ms. Belton said she had heard from other African-American women who wished Mo’Nique’s appearance had not entered the picture. She joked of this dirty-laundry airing: “I thought we had a vote: ‘We are all going to shave our legs. How dare she bring this old, nasty, crusty issue to forefront?’ ”
How we depilate is a function of time and place. Lee Friedlander’s 1979 photograph of Madonna spread-eagle, which appeared in Playboy in 1985 — with no sign that she had recently used a razor anywhere — drew cheers and not jeers from readers. Lest we think that hairiness doesn’t sell these days, a print of that nude went for $37,500 last year.
Sometimes a woman will just temporarily give up on shaving. At the premiere of the 1999 movie “Notting Hill,” Julia Roberts turned heads — or, more precisely, her underarms with months of growth did so. Sometimes a lover finds it attractive; Mo’Nique has said that her husband likes her legs.
That raises the question: Is the fear that no man will want you and your hairy legs valid?
Bojana Anglin, 33, who grew up in the Bronx and Yonkers, said that her hairy legs had never stood in the way of a fling or relationship. She is now a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, which one might assume has a permissive attitude toward grooming. But a student of hers — a member of the manicured, plucked generation, as she sees it — once made a veiled reference in a performance review to how she found Ms. Anglin’s unshaved armpits “distracting.”
Ms. Anglin, who is studying environmental planning, shrugged it off. She said it was too easy to think “Oh, there’s so much pressure, women don’t have a choice.”
“Women have a measure of freedom that they aren’t exercising,” she said.
For Ms. Palmer, the singer, the point is to free yourself from caring what others think. (Easier said than done.) Still, she tells young fans who mistake not shaving for authenticity: “You know what’s really cool? Wake up every morning, decide what you feel like doing, and do it.”
So ladies, what are your thoughts? Are you a free spirited unshaven woman?
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