Gross. Dirty. Monstrous. Manly. Authentic. Beautiful. Natural. Powerful.

Body hair, especially on women, provokes, disrupts, and, at times, offends. It is tangled up with culture itself--in art, families, workplaces, relationships, sex, the beauty industry, governments, and capitalism. From Chinese activists challenging the Communist Party, to students in Arizona rejecting their family and workplace ideas about grooming, to high-art feminist photographers boldly featuring hairy women, Fahs deftly explores the volatile and ever-changing landscape of women's body hair politics. She showcases an underground movement of artists, zine-makers, rebels, and activists who have used women's visible body hair as a declaration of freedom from patriarchal norms.

Fahs presents body hair not just as a personal grooming choice but as a connection to broader cultural stories about women's reproductive rights, feminist battlegrounds about autonomy, neoliberal intrusions into beauty regimens, and even global tensions around women's place in society. Ultimately, Unshaved shows the collision between the mundane and the extraordinary, the everyday and the revolutionary.

Author: Breanne Fahs
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 06/14/2022
Pages: 308
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780295750286


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/18/2022
Shelf Awareness 05/20/2022
Choice 07/01/2023

About the Author

Breanne Fahs is professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University. She is the editor of Burn It Down! Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution and author of Firebrand Feminism; Out for Blood: Essays on Menstruation and Resistance; Women, Sex, and Madness: Notes from the Edge; and several other works.