If it is a personal choice, hairiness can sometimes hinder a couple. In the show Sans rendez-vous on Europe 1, sexologist and psychiatrist Catherine Blanc answers the question of a listener who does not know how to preserve his libido when he is disturbed by the hairiness of his partner's legs .
Fabien's question
"It's been a year since my girlfriend let her leg hair grow in the name of feminism. She never really asked me for my opinion. In principle I have nothing against it, but that tends to decrease my desire sexual towards her. What should I do? "
Catherine Blanc's response
"Hairiness is a fashion story. There was a time when the question obviously did not arise, and fortunately for Madame de Cro-Magnon. There is of course the culture of hair removal for a long time, especially with sugar or honey that was made. There were even, moreover, periods when we stripped the foreheads in the name of intelligence. So there have always been fashions that have treated hair and hair in the name of "a certain differentiation. There are always political ideas behind, gender claims too. Finally, we split the idea of hair, an expression of manhood for men on the one hand, of the absence of hair, expression of femininity, even if women have hair.
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So the hair would not be considered feminine today?
It's cultural reading, it's not at all a horrible thing. It's just that culturally we do not have the welcoming look of hair in women. Hence, in feminism, some who will claim to keep it for precisely not to be stuck in a duty to satisfy male pleasure, or to 'gender' too clearly, with the idea that there is painful treatment for hair removal.
Is it really a story of struggles?
These are debates that are political. Each will find in her feminine expression the pleasure of being a woman or the duty to claim to be one. Often in this claim, there is a notion of equity which is done in a masculinization. Is it really interesting? Everyone does what they want of course. I believe that whoever we are and whatever our position, it is always interesting to question it for ourselves, to really know what we are playing.
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That she did not ask him for her opinion, we can imagine. His body is his body. Especially if she claims feminism, she is not going to ask for permission, actually. It is conceivable. We can understand it. After, that it inhibits [the] libido [of Fabien], one can also conceive it. Because precisely, in our reading that we have feminine and masculine, we can hear something masculine there and maybe he has the feeling at that moment that he sees legs of men in his bed and that it suddenly inhibits his heterosexuality and that it worries about having something that is similar in one way or another to a homosexual fantasy. That doesn't mean she is male, but in reading it, he may have the fantasy that there is something male coming into his bed, which inhibits his libido.
Why do we accept more hair on the pubic level than on the legs?
Perhaps because there has not been, for a very long time, hair on the legs of women. While the pubis, anyway, there is an idea of fleece. The female sex is not visible as would be a penis, the fleece participates in fact in a staging of a modesty veil placed on a pubis, lips ... But, once again, our modern era has completely removed female hair. These are fashions that have more or less a long time in history; of the spirits or the looks that we posed, which ultimately made law. Again, let us ask ourselves the question of the legitimacy of all this.
What should Fabien do?
He must tell her that for him it's a bit disturbing, that he prefers without. Without denying that she is fully feminine, that she is subject to nothing and that perhaps she could find something else. Is it really in the name of feminism or is it by divestment of her body, which would lead to a 'deseroticization' of the relationship?