Even in elementary school, Franziska Setare Koohestani was concerned with her body hair and how to remove it. She didn’t question this fact for a long time – until she met women at a festival in France who wore their body hair untrimmed and confidently. In her book “Hairy Queen: Why Body Hair is Political” she explains what body hair has to do with discrimination, migration and beauty standards. In an interview with stern, she talks about our social obsession with smoothness, shaved feminists and their search for social recognition.
Why are we humans so obsessed with getting rid of our body hair and removing it? Philosopher Byung-Chul attributes the obsession with smoothness to “today’s positive society,” which is equally obsessed with smooth smartphone surfaces and smooth bodies. This is very much in keeping with the times, because nowadays beauty is meant to please and not shock like it used to. Hair removal practices have been around for as long as human history can be traced back. Even in the Stone Age, hair removal was carried out using sharp-edged shells. But it only became the norm later. Racial theory and evolutionary thinking of the late 19th century played a central role, when heavy body hair was associated with a “primitive ancestry” and resemblance to apes. This association served to legitimize exploitation, oppression and colonization. At that time, the idea that hairlessness had something to do with beauty was also becoming established, especially in Western countries – as a Eurocentric beauty norm and demarcation from non-white groups of people.
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