Should YOU be removing all the hair from your forearms?
As M&S model is pilloried for the light down on her arms...
Every woman knows only too well the tyranny of t he modern- day beauty regime. After all, the average female is said to spend nearly two years (722 days) during her lifetime exfoliating, shaving, waxing and plucking her body to perfection.
A new trend may be taking our pursuit of hairlessness to extremes, however. Arm shaving — of the upper and forearms, rather than the armpit — is on the rise.
Beauty experts have reported a soaring demand for arm hair removal services, from waxing to de-fuzzing with lasers, and in a recent global survey, 28.6 per cent of women admitted to regularly removing forearm hair, even though it is barely visible, at home.
Not only is the procedure becoming routine but it has also led to an alarming surge in ‘body shaming’ of women who have noticeably hairy arms. Last week, Courtney Adamo, a 35-year-old mother-of-four from London, was criticised after posting a photograph online in which fair, downy hair was visible on her arms.
‘Is it that hard to shave?’ one commenter wrote on social media website Instagram. ‘At least laser the hair off . . . your arms would look much smoother and more feminine.’ Another said: ‘you have a lot of hair on your arms. Gross.’
Meanwhile celebrities, from models rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Cindy Crawford to actresses Keira Knightley and Amanda Seyfried, have dared to flaunt their hairier-than-average limbs in public. One photo of HuntingtonWhiteley (above right), who models for M&S, has been viewed 28,200 times in an online forum devoted entirely to her ‘hairy arms’.
SOSHOuLd women now be shaving their arms too? Why has having body hair somewhere as innocuous as the arms, come to signify ugliness and masculinity? Mark Prager, Professor of evo- lutionary biology at the university of reading, says removing body hair is part of sexual selection.
‘While a man can have as many babies with as many women as he wants, a woman can have only a certain number throughout her lifetime,’ he says. ‘She is genetically programmed to make herself sexually desirable, to show off her worth.
‘removing all hair, a procedure associated with cleanliness and eliminating parasites from the skin, is one way to do this. Smooth skin has become a sign of health, like a peacock’s tail.’
Hair on a woman has come to be associated with a lack of personal care. Prof Prager says smoothskinned, shorn women in magazines and online have increased pressure on women.
‘They see these flawless, hairless creatures and think they have to look like them. Women have got rid of hair everywhere else; arm hair was the only thing left.’
diane Hillary, 38, a receptionist from Southend- on- Sea, essex, knows only too well the pressure to look like such women as reality star Kim Kardashian, who shaves off the dark hair on her forearms. diane started removing her arm hair three years ago, after a cruel comment from her boss.
‘I had always known I had hairy arms, as I have pale skin and dark hair, but until then it never bothered me,’ says the mother of four. ‘One day I was wearing a short-sleeved top in the office and one of my directors turned to me and he said: “you’ve got arms like a gorilla.” It was said in jest but it really hurt. I took it to heart.’
That night, diane snuck into her daughter Hannah’s bedroom and borrowed her hair removal cream. ‘I put it all over my arms and waited. When I washed it off, the hair was gone. I liked how it felt,’ she says.
Since then, diane has used hair removal cream on her arms every two weeks.
Her daughter, 17, de-fuzzes her arms because all her friends do it but she uses a razor, which makes the hair grow back stubbly. ‘I feel cleaner and fresher without hair,’ says diane. Indeed, hygiene is a reason often cited by women who remove arm hair, especially those with thick er, darker growth.
Therapist Christina Christoforou, who offers a full arm wax for £20 at her salon, Goddess Health and Beauty in North London, says it is one of her most popular services. ‘It depends on your skin and hair colouring. I’m Cypriot; we tend to be hairier, so it is just as normal to remove hair on your arms as it is your legs or bikini line,’ she says.
dr Barbara Kubicka, a Knights- bridge-based expert in aesthetic medicine, says arm hair removal is a ‘growing trend’ in Britain: ‘Women find it embarrassing to talk about forearm hair but the tendency to think about women as completely hairless is increasingly common so forearms are starting to be targeted.
FOreArMhairs are more visible with darker skin; there is more pigment in t he f ol l i cl es. These women tend to have coarser hair, which can be problematic when the skin is not tanned and the contrast between skin and hair colour is significant.’
Not all women adopting this trend have dark hair or complexions. Tanya Sheeran, 28, a motherof-three from Plymouth, is a paleskinned blonde and has been removing her arm hair since her teens. ‘I started feeling conscious of my hairy arms at school. When I was 15 I got a razor and took it all off,’ she says. ‘Sometimes the hairs are so long my watch and silver bracelet get caught. It can be painful.’
Ancient egyptians and romans removed all hair, considering it unhygienic and uncivilised, but the habit fell out of fashion in the Middle Ages.
There was a brief revival early last century — a 1915 edition of Harper’s Bazaar ran an advert for a depilatory powder to remove ‘the humiliating growth of hair on the face, neck and arms’.
Trends targeted legs, armpits and bikini hair. Now nearly every spa or clinic offers arm- hair removal. In 2014, razor brand Gilette made a youTube video on how to do it and it has been viewed almost 250,000 times.
There are advantages to hairless arms; shaving is akin to exfoliating and removes a layer of dead cells, leaving skin feeling fresh. It is also said to encourage production of collagen, a natural protein that prevents wrinkles.
There are downsides — not least the irritation and redness that can develop. Arm hair is a particularly fine type of hair, which we have retained to help keep our bodies warm, so getting rid of it can be painful.
Shaven arms are also particularly vulnerable to sunburn, as the pores are left exposed and they lose the protective barrier hair provides against uv rays.