A vigorous discussion with my cousin about body hair on women and on the men’s swim team at his college.

My cousin and I began speaking about body hair on women. I went to a very liberal arts boarding school and had a girlfriend with both arm and leg hair. We spoke about women having had armpit and hair leg hair. My cousin discussed that he found it bizarre or arbitrary when a woman would have armpit hair but would shave her legs. Stating that “This seemed like an arbitrary line to draw”.

 Lots of women at his college did this.  While this was true, in my experience as well, to me, this line was not so arbitrary.

Armpit hair is less prominent and visible a good amount of the time. I would put it on different tiers of visibility and sacrifice.  I also think women tend to like smooth legs more than smooth armpits but this is beside the point. In the end, the stance to remove body hair is rooted in not allowing a societal norm to dictate your beauty level or what your grooming routine is to look like. I equated this situation with Muslims or members of other religions that must obtain from eating pork.

Many Muslims I know do not eat pork but drink alcohol. 

The reason being, pork is much easier to give up than drinking. In fact, oftentimes not eating pork is the sole thing a Muslim person does “by the book”.  There are many people who don’t pray, go to the mosque, yada yada all the things that I can definitely list by heart… but do not eat pork. It is kind of the one remaining thing they do.

So while hairy legs may have not been as popular as hairy armpits on the Swarthmore campus, this may have to do with the degree to which women enjoyed their own legs to be smooth, the perceived visibility or frequency that hairy legs would come up versus hairy armpits.

The other thing that I noted was that: the presence of hairy legs or armpits didn’t mean the individual couldn’t choose to shave, when they wanted, even for aesthetic reasons. The problem lies in the imposed upkeep as the universal standard norm regardless of particular body hair presence.

This segway-ed nicely into the more heated components of our discussion. 

When we discussed the men’s swim team. A division 3 team (least competitive division in college sports).  My cousin argued that it was ridiculous that  they shaved all of their body hair to shave a paltry .3 seconds off of their time while continuing to drink and party all through college nights

This got into a bit of a philosophical debate.

My cousin called this hypocritical. I understood this stance. Fully. I get it. However I  did not find it to be hypocritical, rather a demonstration of 1)a  lack of sacrifice 2) non-optimization 3) a different degree of priorities 4)  OR ability to execute on their priorities.

1. They didn’t have what it took to not party 2. They didn’t care about swimming enough to not party. 3. They valued partying over not but still valued enhanced swim times over body hair 4) They wanted to be excellent and just couldn’t keep from drinking.  This is an essential number one repeated again.

It’s easier to give up body hair over partying similar to pork being easier to give up than drinking alcohol.

His argument was, do not shave yourself to make your swim times better if you are drinking and smoking. I get it. I really do.  While we both fundamentally agreed that being up all night and partying was a horrible thing to do as an athlete for your performance.

 We differed on the rest. I believed that if you were going to do damage to your peak potential through partying, you should not ALSO leave your body hair create more friction, and slow down your time.

My cousin, however, argued that you should just double down on the negative facets. When asked “what would you do as a swimmer,” he said, He’d stay up all night and party and not shave his body hair, and just lube up for races.

To me, this struck me as two negatives instead of attempting to neutralize with a positive. Which I understand because I’m an all-or-nothing person to a degree. But my strategy on this particular issue is the following.

Even if the partying added .4 seconds to someone’s theoretical race time and shaving only eliminated .3 seconds off… why would you not try to mitigate the impacts of the damage you’d done to your “peak potential” through shaving.

I then discussed how partying is a big part of college and humans in general drink and do drugs for a plethora of reasons. 

 This gets away from swimming and more philosophical but I think its important to trace why it may not be hypocrisy but something else

These are to lower inhibitions, access mindsets unavailable to them through sobriety, self-medicate (misguided or not), or just to cope with pain. This is not to justify the use of anything or to pass judgment. But there is a reason other college kids do it, and it’s appealing to college kids who swim competitively as well.

My argument was, whatever benefit there is to those activities, has some value to the swimmer. This value and the level of their commitment to competitive swimming meant that they weren’t willing to sacrifice partying. Had they been “Jordan-esque” in their commitment and drive towards swimming, They would have NOT partied AND shaved their body hair. 

However, as it stands, they partied because it was worth it and decided that keeping their body hair was not worth it. 

 I am now thinking that this may even have played a role in their identities as swimmers, aesthetically.

I’d have agreed more with my cousin had he said, they shouldn’t party AND should shave their hair. 

Instead, I believe he revealed a disproportionate value placed upon the male retaining their body hair. Which is consistent with the first stance of females and their body hair. It seems arbitrary but there is a different tier of trade-offs and statements. 

women choices in this instance

For the woman, you have hairy legs AND armpits or just one, or neither.

in the swimming example

You’re a straight edge swimmer who doesn’t party. Or you drink a little but are pretty smooth. 

I for one am all or nothing and moderation is my weakness. So I fundamentally believe that it makes more sense to  NOT PARTY and to SHAVE. 

I would still shave if I partied though. But I also understand the stance I’ll keep my body hair AND party because it’s not that serious, and this isn’t the Olympics. 

My cousin spoke about how they weren’t Olympic swimmers and it wasn’t that serious, just Division 3. 

I then brought up my seemingly radical but the fringe of society diet. 

I eat an all raw diet for hydration reasons. I believe you shouldn’t consume foods that have a water content below 70%. This is our make-up. I also smoke weed profusely which is a very dehydrating and damaging act. It is antithetical to many of my beliefs and philosophies and absolutely undermines many components of what I do and seek to do.

However, the emotional pain I experience living in my head, coupled with the social isolation of this year and a plethora of other factors, make it something that I’ve has chosen to do.

Now, very important. this is not a justification for my smoking. I am wrong and it dehydrates me and is against my interests. HOWEVER, I do not think that eating a more dehydrating diet or adding big macs to my life would then be in order since I already smoke. I do however feel that quitting smoking (which is my plan!) would help me optimize the benefits of my hydrating diet. I also insist that as a current weed smoker, my diet helps me substantially with so many things. Undermining does not mean the total negation of progress and benefits.

As of now, the sacrifice (and resulting benefit) and the vice are working against each other. For me, I’ve found much pleasure in certain kinds of sacrifices. This vice, while damaging, has not been exceeded by perceived value. 

I’m now bringing Floyd Mayweather into the mix., I mentioned him during our discussion as an example of dedication to a sport that included forgoing drinking.

He does not drink alcohol and only drinks water. He is immensely disciplined. I brought this up to provide a supporting argument for my cousin’s stance.  

I agree elite athletes should not drink alcohol or party. If their goals are to win and dominate, they should eliminate every obstacle and hindrance. Drugs and alcohol are clear-cut deal breakers for elite athletes. They must be used in extreme moderation or never. 

But I believe there is a whole spectrum of people who aren’t trying to optimize and aren’t capable. I view Conor Mcgregor as an individual with some exceptional talents who is limiting himself substantially because of how he partakes in whiskey and the other distractions wealth and fame have brought.

We have seen him just this past weekend have low cardio and look tremendously out of shape. Khabib, a meticulous and disciplined legend, has previous called him out for drinking too much and warned of the athletic demise such choices often lead to.

Conor has made a lot of money off his whiskey company but it surely brought with it a plethora of alcoholic and financial distractions that weren’t great for his UFC career. If he values his legacy over his wealth, this is a bad move. If he values the money above the fighting, then he’s doing just fine.

In closing, and back to the swimmers, My cousin said that this was not the way the swimmers thought of it and that I’d put far more thought into it than these swimmers. 

I disagreed, stating that their decision to party and to also shave their body hair alone, said it all. While they may not have broken it down into these points intellectually, their actions show these priorities. 

He thought my view on this was stupid and convoluted and that I gave too much credit to the swimmers. My view was that I wasn’t giving credit to the swimmers. I agreed that strategically they are undermining their efforts. I just think there are a different set of values and trade-offs at play and thought I was looking at the matter more holistically. If I looked at it from merely a strategic place, they undermined their efforts and didn’t optimize full stop,

He disagreed, saying it was merely a matter of tradition, passed down, and that they’d not thought about it because they just did it like those before them. 

My stance is that they must have still thought about it and it’s a reflection of their dedication and identities as swimmers, and seen as a measure they take that improves performance, symbolic and slight as it may be, that goes against the grain of traditional masculine American aesthetic expectations.

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I’d like to write about body hair and the implications of gender roles and how it plays into race and even class! Super interesting stuff that has impacted my life in a number of ways!