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Body hair, beauty standards, and biculturalism
“Eww, no.”
That was my high-school friend’s response when she was asked whether she likes chest hair on a guy.
I sat there, an awkward 17-year old, feeling like my shirt was hiding my chest, which — sure enough — had just started to sprout thick curls. Maybe this is why humans started wearing clothes, I thought. To spare us the embarrassment of moments like these.
Everything else about that casual lunchtime conversation — about that whole day, really — has faded into the obscurity of the past, leaving only that single moment in my memory. Its significance, no doubt, was in the acute discomfort it inflicted, which my brain has apparently decided is important enough to recall more than 5 years later.
High-school, of course, is filled with moments like those. You’re growing into yourself, both physically and emotionally, and this development is accompanied by a certain anxiety about how you’re perceived. But this degree of self-consciousness is heightened when we hold ourselves to a certain ideal: what contemporary culture likes to call the ‘beauty standard’.
You know you’ve hit puberty as an Arab when you can substitute your body wash with shampoo. It’s a simple fact of genetics: most of the men in my family are hairy, and if their appearance is any indication, I…
