Control and The Cool Girl

A lot of my life is about control. As a formerly overweight person, I have to be extremely vigilant about diet and exercise, lest I gain the weight back. As a person with mental health problems, I have to remember to take my medication, and be constantly monitoring my mental state for signs of an imminent bout of self-destructive despair. As a freelancer, I am the only person responsible for when I work, how much I work, and how successful my career is - no one else is going to remind me, nag me or pick up the slack if I don't keep a grip on my work.

Being female, or should I say, successfully fitting the dominant stereotype of what a female should be, also requires a great deal of control. You're expected to control your body - how slim it is, how toned it is, keep it free of hair, marks, wrinkles, sags and yet still have flesh in all the right places. You're expected to control your face - keep it constantly fresh-looking, dewy, unmarked, unlined and of course always smiling, pleasing to others and preferably fully made-up. You're expected to control your hair - even if it's meant to look 'tousled' or 'just-got-out-of-bed', you should still have preferably spent hours colouring, conditioning, applying products, blow-drying, tonging and spraying in order to achieve that wild, devil-may-care look. You're expected to control your body's excretions - cover the smell of your sweat, mask any smells your suspicious lady-parts may emit, and hide the fact you ever menstruate from anyone, even those most intimately acquainted with your body. You're expected to control your emotions, lest anyone assume you are 'hormonal', 'hysterical', or behaving like a 'typical woman' and decides to use this to attempt to discredit the whole female race. You're expected to control your fertility, even if that means increasing your risk of certain cancers, or causing weight gain, horrific depression, migraines, nausea or an array of other side effects - you're simply expected to be grateful that you have any control over whether you have children or not, because your unfortunate foremothers did not enjoy such a luxury, and why should it be down to men anyway when they're not the ones who get pregnant? And, of course, you're expected to control your sexuality - it should be constantly bubbling under the surface and suggestible to everyone while not being 'blatant' or 'desperate' and not intimidating to the opposite sex, it should be apparent from the way you dress and act without, of course, making you come across as a 'slag', it should 'ask for it' without 'asking for it', and of course if you put a foot wrong in how you express it, you should resign yourself to the fact that you'll be labelled either a prude or whore, and if you're a victim of sexual aggression, the way you presented yourself will be the first thing people will focus on, rather than the person who attacked you. Because men's control of themselves and their actions is rarely, if ever, under the microscope the way women's apparent failure to control their wild and tempting sexuality is.

(Think about it. A man who attacks a woman is excused as 'not being able to help himself'; the woman is accused of 'leading him on'. Men are portrayed as passive victims of their own unstoppable, unquestionable sexuality, and the question of them exercising control over their desire to sexually violate someone is never up for debate. It's the woman who apparently should have exercised control - over how she dressed, how she looked, how she spoke to him. Funny how the only times we attribute power to women are the times when they are utterly powerless - just a way to add insult to injury, really. But I digress.)

I got to thinking about control while pondering the concept of 'The Cool Girl', as made famous in Gillian Flynn's psychological thriller Gone Girl (described by some as feminist, others as misogynist - I generally just view it as sociopathic with the odd pseudo-feminist rant thrown in to justify utterly self-serving behaviour, myself). Just a quick reminder of how Flynn describes the mythical 'Cool Girl':

"Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want."

I think a lot of women smiled wryly and sighed with relief when they read this passage. Finally, someone had identified this utterly false phenomenon and called it by its true name, and pointed out that no such person actually exists. Women who were tired of explaining to people precisely why you cannot throw caution to the wind and behave exactly how you want and still expect anyone to find it attractive now had a neat explanation, nestled within the pages of a best-selling novel. Everyone's seen the advert where the woman with jutting collarbones and visible hipbones pretends to get orgasmic over creamy yoghurt or full-fat chocolate and thinks "Yeah, like SHE actually eats any of that - bet she spat it out as soon as the director called 'cut.'" Everyone's seen yet another female character supposedly waking up au naturel when she's clearly in full make-up. And plenty of us have watched One Day and wondered why the makers were happily willing to age the fuck out of Jim Sturgess' character Dexter but could not bring themselves to put even a smidge of ageing make-up on Anne Hathaway who played Emma, even though we are supposed to be watching the character across the timespan of 20 years.

Still, it can hard to remember that no one possesses the Cool Girl Secret. We all will have some facets - some girls can eat what they want without gaining a pound. Some girls do genuinely enjoy football, video games, sci-fi and rugby. Some girls have a very high sex drive and are very adventurous in the bedroom, and some of us would rather eat broken glass than spend a Saturday trailing dreamy-eyed around Ikea or a wedding fair (yo!). But we'll all have an Achilles' heel that means we don't quite make the grade. Sometimes I become more conscious of mine when I feel like other girls are more 'fun' than me. I can't eat or drink what I want, because my shitty genes mean that it would not be difficult for me to gain back the 3 stone I worked hard to lose in order to be a healthy weight for my height. It would also not be difficult for me to be even heavier, and therefore even less healthy. If I never had to see another human being again as long as I lived, I imagine I would get obese pretty quickly, because we all have a catastrophic trapdoor that we could fall through if we truly 'lost control', and eating is pretty sure to be mine. But in this life, I would like to be reasonably healthy. I would also like to be attractive. I know I should be musing on higher things and telling myself that it's what inside that counts, but I'm honest. I want a life that includes feeling sexy, and I certainly want a life that includes having sex with people who find me sexy. If I were happy to be celibate and hermetic for the rest of my days, then great - bring on the red velvet cupcakes and deep-fried mac n' cheese balls. But I know where that would lead - so I have to keep exercising control.

There are other trapdoors that I know await me, and they also make me feel like the opposite of the cool girl some days. I can't stay out as late as I want, because sleep is massively important to my mental and physical wellbeing. I also have to take medication to help me sleep, and if I don't take it at a certain time at night, I won't be able to wake up the next morning. Which will in turn impinge on my ability to work, socialise and do the things that keep me sane, such as roller derby. So any night out involves a constant eye on the clock, and the luxury of full relaxation in the knowledge that it doesn't matter what time I get to bed is one I cannot enjoy. Drinking excessively is not open to me for this reason, and is also connected to the weight issue (when I was heavier, a lot of my body was composed entirely of Strongbow). I'm also an introvert at heart, and can only take so much group activity before I long for the satisfying intimacy of a one-to-one with a good friend, or an intense exchange with a small group of trusted people. Those who know me well enough understand this, and won't assume I'm rude or snobby or 'high maintenance' just because I sometimes need to be alone and haven't got the energy to assume a persona that's not true to me. But when I look at other girls drinking and joking and larking as I slope off to take my Quetiapine and read in bed, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a twinge of "Guh, why am I so dull, and how do they manage it?"

I've managed to hang on to enough self esteem over the years to be proud of carving my own path, to know that what I need and what I aspire to are very different from what the majority of women my age seem to pursue. I don't want: marriage, children, monogamy, a career that's 'stable' at the expense of being fulfilling, or pots of money at the expense of having a life. I do want: great friends, fun lovers, travel, adventure, a career that is nothing other than what I want and makes enough money to keep body and soul together, and a neverending supply of good books. Like most of us, I also want to enjoy physical and mental health. I'll probably never manage to balance these demands with the expectation that I be slim, smiley, fragrant, hairless, uncomplaining and 'fun', and in general I couldn't care less, since those in my life like me just the way I am and most of the time, so do I. It's just sometimes hard to remember that those other women, who in my shameful, petty and insecure moments seem to me like shining examples of all the things I can't be because I have to spend so much of my life exercising so much damn control, will also be nursing insecurities and fatal trapdoors of their own.

But that's feminism, innit. Being kind to yourself, and being kind to other women too, however much mental work it takes. Because the most feminist thing you can realise is that none of us are The Cool Girl, nor should we want to be, because she's ultimately just a patriarchal fantasy. What we all are is simply cool girls, every one. 

Holidays are rarely a good time to try challenging sexism. They're not really ideal for defeating any kind of stereotype, as I rapidly realised on the aeroplane when the family I was seated in the midst of started talking about 'foreign doctors making thousands of pounds off dead patients' whilst brandishing The Daily Mail as their document of truth. Still, as I jetted off to Orlando, hairy-pitted and fuzzy-legged, I thought I would at least take the opportunity to see if there were any other women joining me in the sisterhood of the unwaxed and nonshaven.

There. Were. None.

I kid you not. A whole day at Disney World spent scanning the legs of hundreds of women as I queued for rides yielded not one hairy leg amongst them. Pits were obviously harder to check, but in a state where the temperature regularly hits the high 30s, the universal uniform of shorts gave me a good chance to check out everyone's legs. Whilst trying to be subtle about it and not look like a pervert, natch. Was I surprised? Not really. Hairlessness is so unconsciously assumed to be part of the 'costume' of femininity, that even if you're wearing no make-up, a baseball cap, a baggy t shirt and trainers, the legs you display from under your comfy shorts can never be anything but smooth. Disney World, Florida certainly isn't a place where people dress glamorously (unless you're a 7 year old wearing a Snow White dress, obviously), and it's fair to say that casual, comfortable modes of dress are accepted/expected for both sexes seeing as you're walking around in stifling humidity, under a blazing sun, and racking up a fair bit of mileage in a park that covers thousands of acres. I wanted to ask every one of those women why, then, was it so important that their legs were hairless? But I sensed I knew the answer already. It just doesn't occur to women that they even have a choice any more. Picking up the razor or the depilatory cream or booking 6-weekly waxes are something we've come to see as routine and vital as paying our bills or fuelling our cars. We assume the results of neglecting this duty would be negative, and we're not interested in risking it.

As someone who had, metaphorically, refused to pay this particular bill, I did feel conscious of my hairy, untidy, dry-skinned legs (however much moisturiser you put on them, the hair seems to absorb it all. My knees have never looked so crusty. Now I know why men don't bother with body lotion) but unlike the way I was scrutinising everyone else's legs, no one was even looking. It was more the feeling of transgression, of committing some audacious act. Every other woman in the park was obeying The Rule, and I was breaking it. More than that though, I just felt alienated from my fellow women, because I was acutely aware that my personal experiment wasn't going to be changing anyone's mind, especially since it hasn't even stopped me wanting to remove my own body hair.

Still, perhaps there's some small triumph in simply having done it, having gone on holiday to a hot climate with my leg and armpit hair as God intended, in having lain on the beach, worn a bikini, and walked around in public wearing vest tops and shorts and not really given a shit. There were no comments, no glances. Which makes you wonder - does anyone really, actually care if you shave your pits or not? I think those who care the most are women themselves. But until they're willing to break ranks en masse and force their natural bodies upon the world, we'll never find out for sure.

The hair-brained scheme - an update

So, it's my grandmother's 90th birthday on Saturday. In preparation for the occasion, I've bought a new dress, given myself a pedicure, and booked a hair appointment. However there's one thing I have resolved not to do for the party, much as I want to - and that's remove the hair from my legs and armpits. After 2 months of not shaving, my body hair is about 3/4 of an inch long, and getting longer by the day. My armpits look decidedly European, or at least the way European armpits looked before the pressure to defuzz took over German and Spanish women's lives too. My legs look a little masculine, but mostly as I said before, they just look untidy. I'm not going to be mistaken for a yeti or even a man any time soon, seeing as I'm 5'2", unmuscly, and have a visible bustline and long hair. So far, so many fears allayed. I've been out in public wearing shorts and sleeveless tops, been to the gym in a vest and raised the weights high above my head without shame, gone swimming, socialised, had sex, and absolutely nothing different has happened. No comments, no looks, no partner hiding behind the bed with a rapidly deflating erection at the sight of my body in its natural state.

It all sounds so positive - and yet. And yet, the fact remains, I bloody hate the way my hairy legs and pits look, and am absolutely itching to wax them, to hear that ripping sound, to watch as the hairs are torn out by their bulbous black roots in one satisfying tear, and most importantly, to see my skin smooth again.

But, I'm resisting, because I'm trying to get to the bottom of why I think my legs and pits are only beautiful when hairless. If no one else cares (and even if they did, it certainly shouldn't be the controlling factor in my appearance), then why do I? Because, I suspect, the conditioning that women are only attractive when shaved, waxed and plucked, goes very deep. 2 months just isn't long enough to undo 27 years of smooth-legs propaganda, of watching my mum, aunts, cousins and female friends determinedly and ritualistically rid themselves of body hair, of having preceisely zero role models who have natural body hair, of daily encountering countless images, both in the media and the art world, of idealised, hairless women. Still, I wonder how long I'll be able to stick it before I crack and say I can't be bothered to use my body as the landscape for an experiment.

I think what stops me reaching for the razor though, is the act of asking myself the litmus test question for any action to see if it promotes inequality - Do men have to do it? The answer being that if not, then it's probably part of a set of shitty rules designed to keep women insecure. I can't say I apply this rule consistently - I do wear make-up on occasion, and enjoy it (although I certainly don't wear it every day and don't wear it for work- if you want me in a certain place at a certain time, you get my face the way it is), I wear dresses, the occasional pair of wedges (the only type of heels I'll generally deign to wear, for comfort reasons), and the toes that sit daintily below my hairy legs often sport nail varnish. I grew out my eyebrows til they were back to their natural shape, but found myself unable to leave them like that, so strong was the compulsion to pluck. So on many counts, I'm not winning the 'Do the boys have to bother with this shit?' war. Obviously, I'm taking my battles one at a time with the body hair experiment, and I guess that's sensible as there's so much conditioning to unknit just in this one area of the female beauty myth, that attempting to deal with any other parts would simply require too many resources. Just look at how many reasons I have for hating my hairy legs. Because they look untidy. Because I can't moisturise them properly and the skin underneath the hair is going dry and crusty. Because I've been taught to be proud of my shapely legs but now I can only focus on the hair, not the shape. Because it seems perverse to wear an outfit that shows off your legs when you've only got hairy ones to show off. Because I feel unfeminine.

All those reasons arise entirely from the narrow version of female beauty we are sold, and the threats of being single, unloved, unpopular, and most certainly unshagged that accompany the refusal to buy into it. I know I'm not any of those things, yet I still haven't managed to love my hairy legs, because the ideal of 'femininity' burned into my subconscious has a pernicious hold, even when I know logically that 'femininity' as it's sold, and actual, real femaleness, are about as alike as Britney Spears and Janis Joplin. So how do I 'unlearn' this unhelpful template? Germaine Greer once demanded that ladies learned to love their cunts - I wonder how her workshop on becoming enamoured with your body hair might go...

Related posts here and here.

I’ve been growing my body hair for about five weeks now. It’s part of an experiment to see if I truly can walk the feminist walk as well as I talk the talk. Those who dislike the idea of having to be all fuzzy before they can truly call themselves feminists will surely start arguing that focusing on a narrow definition of bodily freedom is not what it’s all about – what we fought for was choice, right? Well, I’m suspicious of the language of choice and how it’s been co-opted by those who have commodified feminism into the 'choice' to wear Jimmy Choos, carry handbags that cost enough to feed a family for 3 months, wax one’s genitals and turn one’s body into a performing, man-pleasing, one-woman circus. Whilst we may claim to now be ‘free’ and ‘have choice’, how many women truly feel comfortable choosing to withdraw their financial support for Gillette, Veet, Nair and a hundred thousand beauty salons, and letting their body hair grow as nature intended? A very confident, very small minority, I’ll bet you.

But yes, OK, if we’re arguing about rights and freedoms, technically we are ‘free’ and we do have the ‘right’ to unleash our hairy pits and furry legs on the world. We may have to put up with the odd disapproving or disgusted glance (often, interestingly, from other women, as if we’re somehow ‘letting the side down’) or even a derogatory comment, but it’s possible. However, what I want to achieve through my experiment is not the dismantling of other people’s conditioning – it’s the erosion of my own. I’ve done the easy part by letting my legs and armpits return to their natural state. Now comes the hard part – looking at them and seeing anything except mess, untidiness, and yes, ugliness. That is the battle – not walking through a crowded street in vest top and shorts with my legs and armpits on full display and inviting all and sundry to judge me, but looking at myself in the privacy of my own home, and not judging myself. Until I can look at my completely natural, just-the-way-mother-nature-made-me, body, and not find it wanting, I’m still a victim of anti-feminist, anti-woman conditioning.

And let’s face it, unless you’re a professional cyclist, there is no logical reason to remove bodily hair. It is an entirely manufactured ‘need’, one manufactured both by a capitalist society which realised that the more inadequate it made women feel about their appearances, the more money it could get them to spend, and by a patriarchal society, which realised that for every social or legal gain women made, it was still possible to oppress them with the threat of unattractiveness, and the accompanying unending work and expenditure involved in fending it off. Until women feel that their bodies are fine just as they are, without the intervention of a multi-billion-pound industry which feeds off the exact opposite sentiment, we can never truly claim that the battles of the women’s movement have been won.

All that said, I’m not finding it easy. Every time I look down and see my hairy legs – which, because of our conditioned belief that women should have no body hair, do look quite masculine to me – I still find myself longing for the clean, smooth appearance of a freshly shaven leg. It’s not even that they look manly, so much as they just look Messy – and I think that’s exactly what women are taught to fear the most. We’re allowed to look 'wild', 'dangerous', bed-head or stylishly unkempt in entirely prescribed ways, but we’re never allowed to indulge in the actual messiness that a real female body entails – i.e. body hair, menstrual blood, cellulite, stretch marks and all the wonderful bodily functions that keep us alive. When Germaine Greer talked about female eunuchs, this is what she was referring to – the pressure to rip off, pull out, mask and fade out all that actually makes us real women, and replace it with a grotesque, sexless parody of femininity.

So, if I can be conditioned, as women are every day all over the globe, to despise my body in its natural state, then presumably I can be conditioned to feel the opposite as well. Therefore I’m waiting for the day that my brain frees itself of the blinkers applied to it by beauty myths (which encourage you to ‘find your inner goddess’ by shaving your legs, cheers Gillette Venus & Jennifer Lopez) and I’m able to look at my legs and pits and find them as appealing covered in hair as without. Then and only then will I give myself permission to shave – but if my experiment has truly worked, I won’t feel the need to.

I’ll keep you all posted....