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I’d be interested to read comments from non-Caucasian people.  In the mean time, I’ll tell you a little story.  It may be filed under TMI, so you have been forewarned.

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It all happened waaaay back, when I was a teen and still forced to do such barbaric self-mutilating things as scrape hair from pit ‘n legs.  I was in Checkoslovakia with my sister-in-law.  We were staying in a small hotel in Prague that had sex-segregated communal showers, like in a locker room.  My sis-in-law and I and other women present acknowledged each other with smiles, and attended to our personal ablutions.  For sis ‘n me, this eventually required whipping out the razor.  The moment we started shaving our legs, the women gathered up their girls and hustled out, giving us uncomfortably disapproving glares.  It wasn;t until some time later that we learned that leg shaving was, in that time and place, the realm of prostitutes.

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if so, just how important of a social norm is it?  how severely would you limit a relationship with a woman who didn’t shave her legs?  friendship?  relationship?  sex?

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this year, try shaving the face of a werewolf onto your chest.    you’re giving me ideas.  maybe i’ll shave lightening bolts down the outside of my calves.  will have to turn up the heat in the house, though!

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*some people do prefer lots o’ fuzz.  i hope you’ve already found this out.

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And for the record, the part about your calves creeped me out to the max.  I’m sorry but like…I don’t even want to picture that on a woman.  Maybe I’m a little old fashioned like that.

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But my observations are that it is not just Caucasian women in the US who shave their legs.  It seems almost universal.  However, there are many US ethnicities that I never come into contact with, so my personal observations are biased.

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But, if I examine my standard of beauty, ie the qualities that I find physically attractive in a female, they are informed by (but not limited to) the dominant culture’s idea of beauty. I would not go for a woman who did not shave her legs and under arms. 

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I imagine if I grew up in a time and place before razors and no women shaved their legs that I would not give a second thought about it. But this would not happen for me today, though. It’s ingrained. Perhaps I could evolve, but it would take a long time. I’d never rule it out and perhaps if a long term partner decided one day to stop shaving her legs I could learn to adjust – after all I wouldn’t stop loving her.  But I’d prefer not to cross that bridge.

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Based on conversations with my friends, I do feel I have a wider and more diverse standard of beauty than many caucasian men and I appreciate that the current constructed beauty ideal (constructed by a misogynist, white patriarchy) is ridiculous and harmful to women’s bodies.  But I do appreciate many aspects of western modern femininity (as well as masculinity in my own identity) that I’m not yet willing to give up. I know there are certain feminist philosophies that promote androgyny in both physical appearance and in social customs as the best method by which to achieve an approximation of gender equality, but I disagree – a hot woman is a hot woman. I’m too selfish to break my conditioning and give up on my beauty standard, a standard that does include the grooming of a woman’s body hair.

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philosophy-wise, mine is that all individuals, male and female, should be able to make such choices without repercussions.  of course, as per your example, there can be justifiable repercussions on a personal level because we all have individualistic preferences and tastes.  however, there should be no societal repercussions or finger-pointing (it happens a lot) when individuals ignore the norm.  in fact, there should be no norm.  the idea of having a norm on such a meaningless thing as leg hair is truly silly in my book.

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On a society-wide basis, I agree – whatever floats one’s boat and people shouldn’t get shit for a personal choice.

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HOWEVER, have you noticed when you go to a hotel, and they have the little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, et al, and you try to read those little bottles in the shower.  No glasses, 4 point type, mouthwash in the hair again.