Hair

It's just my luck to find myself involved in an argument about armpits. Itka doesn't shave hers (see above image), while our friend Maya had her own armpit hairs perpetually removed. Who's more of a woman?

As the argument erupted today, Itka quoted Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth". Wolf claims that the requierments of feminine beautification are a form of opression inflicted on women. Maya doesn't feel opressed. She feels beautiful. Itka does too. However, as Maya points out, Itka has a boyfriend who doesn't mind her hairy armpits, whereas Maya is single and can't afford to lose a good guy simply because he's somewhat fond of the common concepts of beauty.

"Do you really want to date a guy who's not a Feminist?" Itka asked.

"Well, now we'll have to define what's a Feminist."

"A Feminist is someone who believes that men and women should be seen as equal and be treated by eqaul measures."

I interfered by saying that I think Feminism is like Judaism. that it's about what you do, more so than what you believe. Men and women are not treated as equals. if you find something to do about this and do it, then you're a Feminist.

Fine, but what do I do to better women's situation? I accept my girlfriend with her hairy armpits, but That's too easy, since I find them sexy. I once wrote a single op-ed dealing with trafficing in women and the police's failure in dealing with the problem. That's not much.

If the little I can do at the moment is discuss bodily hair, so be it. In a Book written in the 70s, Israeli author and notorious Casanova Dan Ben-Amotz bemoans the fashion of shaven feminine armpits. He attacks deodorants on the same breath, seeing in them an assault against the body's natural odors, which for millenia were a tool in sending erotic signals among humans.

It seems that whenever a woman's bodily part is permitted to catch some sun, there instantly follows an assault on the down covering it. Once the miniskirt was introduced, so were feminine razors. Tanktops were invented soon thereafter, and the blades went after that charming, barely visible bit of hair gracing the underarm. Such hair grows quickly, so keeping a bald axilla is an extra demanding requierment burdoning the well groomed lady; extra demanding, and completely unneccesary.

The same proccess continues with the pubic hairs. True, those are not yet commonly exposed to daylight, yet the masterminds at Gillette have somehow found their way down there too. After being married for seven years and then divorcing, I returned to courting pretty women, only to discover that they have changed. On my first round as a bacholer, I never even encountered a shaved groin. Now I found myself startled again and again to find that something was missing, a little bit of furry womanly warmth.

Then it hit me, I've read them! All the articles I read over the years, praising the "Brasilian" as the new way for a girl to be, they all led to something. I could see how consumerist media promoted this further stripping of a woman natural appearence, and simply had to agree with Wolf. it's a conspirecy.

Being a guy, I won't preach to women not to shave. I completely respect Maya's decisions as I do those of any of my readers. But as a symbolic act of protest, and a call for the return of all hairs, including the faint, not at all uncommon feminine moustache (which actually becomes some girls, I dated one and loved catching a glimpse of it just before we kissed), I sacrificed my own oxter to a sharp piece of metal. If that looks ridiculous, imagine half of humanity being requiered to do so.

Women

There were about thirty guys at Hamooda's Nargila place tonight, all cheering for Turkey, which played beautifully against the invincibly determined Germans. In Palestinian-Israeli Jaffa it's typical to side with the team wearing red, be it Hapo'el Tel-Aviv, associated with left leaning (i.e. pro-Palestinian) Israel, or B'nei Sachnin, which is Palestinian-Israeli to begin with. Tonight too I felt that the support stemmed from a sense of cultural connection. The Arabs of Jaffa look more like the Turks then like the Germans, they share the Turks' cuisine and follow the same religion.

What most of them don't realize is that there's a deep gap in culture between them and the Turks, one that displayed itself strongly tonight. I've been to Nargila joints in turkey and they were full of women. There were religious girls wearing Hijabs exhaling white, apple scented smoke next to modern girls in jeans. In Hamooda's place girls are welcome. I've sat there with Efros, with Osnat, with downtown lover and with several feminine out-of-town guests, but I've never seen a woman there that I did not know and tonight there were indeed none.

There's no shortage of female football fans. The cameras in Basel showed bleachers full of ladies wearing both white and red, waving the German tricolor and the Turkish crescent. Angela Merkel jumped up in joy when Klose opened a 2:1 advantage on the 79th minute. At her parents home near Jerusalem, downtown lover was meanwhile biting her nails in hope for the Turks to get even. When the game ended at 3:2 for Germany, my only condolance was the notion that the biggest football fan I know, Anna Kemper, is rejoicing somewhere in Berlin.

So why was the Jaffa crowd so homogenous? Arab society in Israel and Palestine is just too patriarchal. Living so much within this society, this is one thing I find difficult to come to terms with. I remember being envious when seeing how sexually diverse Istanbul's cafes are. Though I'm sure things are far from perfect for Turkey's women, It turns out it's possible for a Middle Eastern, muslim nation to be more open towards the place of women in society. In Turkey this can't be blamed on occidental, colonialist influence. There's some form of homegrown acceptence of women being out and about there and too little of it at Hamooda's tonight. This may or may not change eventually. In the meantime it's Germany 3, Turkey 2, Jaffa 0.