On Shaving, Porn, and Anorexia

The Problem with Christian Women Shaving

Early into my husband’s and my courtship, I posted the following on twitter:

Women why do you choose smooth legs when you could have sparkly legs??

The man who would become my husband replied with two pictures of moss and words that would make any girls’ heart melt. He made me feel beautiful in a way that society had convinced me I would never find.

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I remember momentarily wondering if it were normal to have hair on your legs and underarms, and if I'd always had it — I couldn't be sure. I figured it must be natural and okay after seeing a few pictures of Renaissance art in my encyclopedias. I was preoccupied with my novels and arithmetic and embroidery, so I didn't worry about it too much. But one day a friend was visiting. She was maybe three years older than me, so I thought of her as a role model of sorts and held incredible trust for anything she had to say. 

She said, "Keturah, why don't you shave?" 

I said, "I don't know. I'm probably not allowed." 

"You should ask your mother," she told me. "At least to shave your armpits. Most people think that's gross, you know." 

"They do?" I was mortified. So I went to my mother and asked. She didn't see the point — why did I want to shave? But if I wished to do so, I could. She bought me some razors. 

I was sixteen years old the first time I shaved. It felt like I was cutting away anything from myself that was gross or shameful. I felt weird at first — was I supposed to be this smooth? I was embarrassed every time I cut myself — for then people would know that I had shaved and that I had had hair on my legs. It became a focal point of stress for me. Among my many responsibilities, I had to mentally block out times to shave at least twice a week — surely stubble was as bad as hair! — and I would have to make sure that those times corresponded to social events. No good me shaving unless I did it right before I was to be publicly seen. 

I spent the next couple years complying with societal beauty standards as well as I knew how while trying to preserve the parts of me that I didn't want tainted by the world. I would shave if society thought hair was gross. But I'd keep wearing dresses, no matter how much I would get mocked for that, too. 

I remember a year into shaving reading a friend's blog about why she didn't shave. None of her arguments were convincing. To me it looked like she was embracing an anti-message — anti-shaving because being gross is okay, anti-shaving because nobody can tell me what to do, anti-shaving just to defy modern culture. That wasn't enough for me. I commented that I admired her; I was partially envious. However, I said, for me I'd argued for the right to shave with my mother who thought it was silly. I wasn't going to give up something that I'd won. I wasn't going to give up something that made me less gross to my friends. 

I started traveling when I was eighteen. I went to volunteer at a ministry in the south. They are a large family clan that live in a cluster around their grandmother. The grandmother — who I worked for and greatly respect — was always good to me. She compiles and edits a magazine that is designed to encourage mothers and wives and is fairly ideologically tolerant as long as you are pursuing Proverbs 31 lifestyle. ¹ My mother had sent me there thinking it would be a good place for me to have distance from her, that I might learn more about traditional femininity and come to better appreciate it, and that I might be able to make like-minded friends. She could not realize that I would be tormented and ridiculed, instead, and that it would be one of the most troubling experiences of my young adult life. 

Many — not all — of her children and grandchildren make a special point of saying that their own beliefs aren't represented by their grandmother's work. Furthermore, they don't always condone what she does, and as a result, they don't really like the girls who volunteer with her.

When I went there I was vulnerable. I'd never had a sleepover. I'd never seen a movie rated over PG. Despite our family giving home to many homeless and immigrants, my mind was very sheltered. I didn't comprehend innuendos, not even enough to be able to scowl or be appalled. I was uncertain of my beliefs and of myself. I was figuring out a lot of things and was easily susceptible to criticism. I was naive and thought that everyone — especially Christians who are well known in the Christian community — was someone who could be trusted and who deserved the benefit of the doubt.

This was not so. Looking back I can see I was somewhat bullied. Partially because I was viewed as a contrarian, partially because their attacks pulled my contrarian spirit free. I went there willing to experiment, but not willing to do anything behind my mother's back. I would do just about anything with my friends that they asked of me but I would do it in dresses, and after having made a phone call home first.

When I first arrived, I felt like I was everyone's favorite of the volunteers. Things began to change. A friend mentioned to me that maybe I should wax instead of shave — she said it was better and kept the hair off longer, and would be cheaper. (This is actually not true. Women who shaved on average spend $10,000 over the course of their life, while women who wax spend $23, 000).

Another woman, who is one of the authors of a best selling diet, suggested I stop eating bananas with peanut butter as a snack, that it might help me lose five pounds. I had not asked for weight-loss advice and had simply been standing in the kitchen having an afternoon snack before going out. Comments like this would be common — it was simply assumed that all women might be trying to lose a few pounds, or so it felt.

I was told, "You'd look so beautiful if you dyed your hair black." This comment wasn't mean-spirited,, but it further corroborated that these people didn’t believe that one could simply be beautiful. They were always having to do something to themselves in some form or fashion. A woman could never rest, or her husband might grow bored!

I was told my complexion was lovely, but I should try makeup anyway just to know how to use it. I wasn't interested, although eventually I let them pressure me into it. I felt I looked like a clown and washed it off immediately.

Nevertheless, the men would joke, "If a ship needs painting, paint it." And I'd react, "But I don't need painting." Then they'd notice a pimple — "what is that? Is that a bug bite? You know makeup could conceal that"

As things progressed, one of the women told me she didn't want me over when her sons were around, because, "I want to be honest with you, Keturah, Because I love you. You stink, and boys just can't stand to be around girls with B.O."

"I do? But I shower every day and wear deodorant and perfume," I said. 

"Shower twice a day, then," she suggested. "Or at least plan your shower before you come over." 

And so I did. I would shower every time before going over, and wear everything I possibly could. I'd come over and be asked, "Did you shower before coming over?" 

"Yes," I said. 

"Did you run when you came over?" 

It was a two hundred foot trek through the woods. I might've walked fast. I was certainly stressed . . . I was sent back to shower again and told, "Next time, walk slowly. Don't build up a sweat." 

Others told me none of their sons would be into me because of how I wouldn't wear pants or shorts or makeup. Another friend told me, "You know that when you get married you're going to have to shave your private parts, too, right?" 

"Really?" 

She said it was necessary, so I thought I'd give it a test trial. It was terrible. It made my periods worse. I told her that — she said I should wear tampons. But I wasn't about to stick something up myself. I tried shaving there one more time just to be certain — yes I hated it. But, it was preached among them, "It doesn't matter how you feel about it, if it's what your husband wants it's what you have to do." 

I was convinced, and I began to dread the idea of marriage. 

Another friend told me how she was thinking of tattooing mascara on her eyelids so she wouldn't have to apply it anymore, and of getting a boob job. I asked her, "How is that any different than changing your gender?" 

Looking back, I realize out of the dozens of people there I thought of friends, only two or three of them were ever true friends. The rest would come to hate me and label me as argumentative and rebellious. I was forbidden indirectly by one of the fathers to stay away from his daughter because he was afraid I’d encourage her to be disobedient, and because I was friends with the ex of one of his nephews, and had posted a selfie of myself with my friend.

It all came to a full stop when I was bucked off by a horse and knocked unconscious. This group of Hilltop people are supposedly very much into prayer — if their child had a cold they gathered around her, praying the cold away. But nobody showed up except two or three of my sincere friends. Some even suggested that I was exaggerating the pain. I'd broken or fractured ribs and was still forcing myself to go up and down stairs to work — the back pain would linger and affect me for years after.

When I left that place I left with a bad back, with an eating disorder, and with the belief that no man could or would ever love me. I was convinced that something was wrong with me and that I was inherently gross. All the lies that I'd accepted and believed to be Bible-based would play through my head for years and years after. Even my fashion was watered down — I no longer could dress in a way that was beautiful and I didn't want to wear dresses. I would wear skirts and shirts that looked as normal as possible. I felt ugly and whenever I looked in the mirror I saw no true solution. 

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“Lie to Yourself Until It’s True”

These lies would be echoed by other communities that I would visit. My first boyfriend had just broken up with me — because I wasn't attractive enough, or something like that. His porn addiction was so severe that he, too, had an eating disorder, and encouraged my own. I went to visit a Christian family in the West to recuperate emotionally. The parents were the pastors at their little home church. All the children — five grown men with wives — lived nearby, and they gathered regularly. However, they weren't the best place for a broken-hearted girl to be if she wanted to heal.

They repeated the same mantra as the previous community I’d lived with. It is important for a wife to be attractive for her husband, and for her to dress and act accordingly. They talked about how honesty is important — so the husband was sure to tell his wife that he didn't find her attractive at all while she was pregnant.

I remember saying, "Then lie to yourself until it's true! You can't just tell her she's ugly for nine months."

I remember watching the women there starve themselves, too, even while they were nursing and pregnant, so that they would be attractive to their husbands. They also told me how they'd watch porn together to have better intimate relations. It was then that I began to put things together in my mind. 

They kind of knew that I was not eating properly or enough, but they encouraged it. I was addicted with seeing the scale go down. I wondered how far down I could get it to go. I would go on long walks in the city in the midday sun — over ten miles. One day, I decided to walk to church. I showed up with my backpack and ran into a guy. He knew who I was, but we hadn’t met in person, yet. He turned up his nose. I hurried to the bathroom and washed up and applied deodorant. But my polyester shirt clung to my sweat. While I sat in the Bible study I was sure that the AC was blowing my stench deep into the room. 

I was right. A few months later he married a friend of mine, and he told her to tell another friend of mine that I was not invited to their wedding because I obviously didn’t use deodorant. 

I'd never felt so ashamed of myself. Why hadn't I thought to bring clean clothes in my backpack? Now this guy would forever think of me as the slovenly girl who stank and there was nothing I could do about it. 

Around that time, that family tried to convince me to come live with them so they could teach me how to dress to catch a man. Something snapped in me when I remembered how they wore short shorts, watched porn together, starved themselves, and in honesty degraded their wives’ looks.

"I will not become a whore. I don't want any man that you all think I should catch." 

They demanded that I apologize, but I was angry. Instead I began working on my passport application, and went to Germany to be an Au pair for six months.

I was fighting more than either of these evangelical families. I was fighting the entire world for telling me that being a woman is not a beautiful thing. I was fighting the idea that I had to become and look like a prostitute or porn star in order to be loved. I didn't know it, but intuitively I felt that there was something deep and dark about both of these Christian communities. And I knew it had broken me, but I had no idea of how to find recourse. I wasn't going to look to the world for answers — I knew they were just as broken, if not in other ways.

I spiraled, eating less, shaving and waxing more, toning down my style and choices to be as normal as possible. It was never enough. I still would share my thoughts with my Christian friends, and because I was odd and unorthodox, what I said was rarely received well. I was still the contrarian — the person who was easy to mock for a myriad of reasons.

I simply didn't know how to fit in. 

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My eating disorder healed when I Stopped Shaving

I shaved for ten years before I questioned the narrative, and it was I who was questioned. 

I was sitting on the floor of my brother's house. A man who was courting me was visiting with my siblings and me. I was wearing a knee-length pink skirt and my legs were smooth and glistening with lotion. I felt like I must look fine, and it had been ages since I felt like this. I’d just gotten back from my stint in Germany — where everyone had been kind and accepting of me just as I was. Nobody had tried to talk me out of wearing my dresses or of using makeup.

The man said, "Keturah, you shave your legs? Out of all people to do that, I'd never expect that from you!" 

I wanted to slap him! How improper of him to mention my legs in front of my siblings. But his criticism also rang true. Why did I shave? Maybe I should think about stopping if it were truly out of character for me.

I decided on one thing. I was tired of doing things because of what others said I should or shouldn't do. I kept shaving for another month or two. However, I began to have honest conversations with several friends who shaved and didn't shave. I asked them all, "Why do we do this? Is it really healthy for us?" 

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I had to wean myself from my razor.

It was hard to stop. I used to be self-conscious about my legs and armpits. I was not more self-conscious. People would judge me — they did judge me. Also, I'd groomed myself into thinking it was truly gross to have hair.

I had to deprogram myself and I did it in increments.

I wouldn’t shave for a week. And then I shaved. I tried leaving my legs unshaven for two weeks, and then a month. I wore leggings under my dresses though so nobody could notice. And then I stopped wearing leggings, but wore really long dresses so only my hairy ankles were visible. Slowly it felt natural and healthy to be a woman with hair. Slowly I didn't notice other people's condemning stares anymore. I was able to go three months without shaving, and then I shaved because I'd gotten muddy and felt icky. And then I was able to not shave even then, I learned that soap washed hair as well as skin. Before I knew it, I was able to wear sleeveless dresses to my knees. I was no longer ashamed to be a woman. If anyone had anything unkind to say, I was strong enough to glare.  

I no longer starved myself, or watered down my wardrobe to look acceptable. I didn't feel like I had to appease anyone by wearing makeup or nail-polish or jeans or polyester blouses. I even stopped wearing a deodorant, and oddly enough found that my B.O. was completely gone. Nobody has ever mentioned it as offensive since, either. For the first time in my life, I felt wholly beautiful, and I didn't care what anybody had to say. Perhaps this isn't just because I'd discarded the lies I was fed. Perhaps I was maturing and stabilizing.

But I believe it was a little more than that. 

Here I am with my sister and a dear friend - who stopped shaving around the same time I did and encouraged me greatly in my journey toward embracing my femininity through God’s eyes rather than the world’s.

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Although I'd grown confident being hairy, it was with a little trepidation that I returned to visit my friends on the Hilltop. I knew they'd see, and they'd have something to say about it. 

Sure enough, one of my friends said, "What crazy thing are you up to now? Why aren't you shaving anymore?"

"Because it's influenced by the porn industry, and it's perfectly natural for a woman to have hair." 

I didn't realize until way later that I'd offended her. Somehow she assumed I was inferring that her husband was addicted to porn, therefore he wanted her to shave because I'd said that shaving was a byproduct of the porn industry. 

Although I felt there was bad blood between me and all my friends there, it seemed to matter less to them as the years went on. I could move past it, if they could, I convinced myself. And so I continued to travel their way for extended visits. They seemed to forget that they disapproved of me, and began to act amazed at my stories and endeavors and ambitions.

Although, there was always a little smirk and a, “I wonder what weird thing Keturah has been up to”.  

They noticed I had lost weight, and they made sure to compliment me for it. Some of them knew it was because I wasn’t not eating properly — but, hey, at least I was slimming down (I was never fat, but slimming down was always a net positive). A couple of my friends were concerned by my eating habits. They could only say so much to me about it, though. Everyone there was obsessive about their bodies, and unless a doctor diagnosed it they weren’t going to pontificate. 

When news spread that I wasn’t shaving anymore, they made sure to ask on every visit, "Are you still not shaving? You do know, you’ll have to start once you’re married.”

“Plenty of men like women as God made them.”

“I don’t know about that . . . we have a friend who just broke up with a girl because she only shaved below her knees, which is so weird. Like why wouldn’t she shave her knees and above, too?”

“Because it hurts and is pointless,” I said. “Honestly that sounds really shallow of him.”

“You think so? I think it’s fair for a man to end a relationship if he finds out something about her that is repulsive to him.”

This friend of mine also believes that a woman should break up with a man if he is addicted to porn. However, she couldn’t seem to see that the side-effects of his porn addiction — expecting a woman to look like a porn model — could be his problem. A woman must look however it is a man wished for her to look regardless if his wishes had been induced by porn. When I explained this to her, she said, “I think I see what you mean . . . but I don’t know that it means that to any of us anymore.”

The more I traveled, the more I found that most people were not like these christian groups — not even most Christians. I started to realize that it was kinda odd to make such comments about someone else's appearances. And that the only person in a bubble was them, not me. Outside of these evangelical enclaves I was respected and ran into plenty of others who shaved — and didn't shave — and it really wasn't something one noticed, or would feel a right to vocalize an opinion over. 

I had been set on not finding answers in the world among “fornicators and deceivers”. But as I traveled, and got to know people, I found solace and answers by accident outside of Christian communities.

I discovered a world where men found me attractive as I was — with my dresses, my Christian values, unshaven and no makeup. Few of them were Christian men, though. I remained disheartened that a good, christian man actually might be able to love me. It seemed to me there were two sorts of men: Christian with secret porn addictions who wanted their women without hips or hair, and worldly men who liked me just as I was (or they would, until they moved onto the next girl). I persevered. I reconciled myself to spinsterhood and instead looked for ways to lead a life that might help other young women. 

That’s when I met my husband — a man who was a perfect mix of the Christian and worldly man. 

How Porn Influences Women’s Interactions with Each Other

If you’re an American, it’s impossible to not be influenced by porn. 69% of men and 40% of women view porn yearly, and 91% men and 60% of women view it monthly on average. The numbers are shockingly high in the Christian community: 77% of men view porn monthly and 36% of them view it daily. The stat is even higher for women: 87% of American Christian have or regularly consume pornography.

A few years ago, a group of my christian friends and I were talking about how hard it is to find a suitable man to marry these days. “So many of them are addicted to porn,” one of them said. “And I’m just not interested in getting mixed up with a man who’s into that.”

I shared the above statistics with her and the others. “It’s not just a man issue,” I said. “A lot of women view porn, too.”

Afterward one of my friends drew me aside and said, “Thank you for saying what you said — I’ve just gotten out of a porn addiction, and it’s affected my image and self-worth and how I’ve eaten for years.”

Like it or not, we’re all under the influence of the porn industry. If it’s not you or a close relative, it’s your friend or pastor or teacher or coworker or boss. It’s in the films we watch, and it’s stitched into the lines of the garments we buy. Even our food commercials are reminiscent of porn videos. You may be spiritually aware enough to defy aspects of porn culture, but most Americans — especially Christian Americans are snared deep in porn thought. You literally can’t say “well, I’m not influenced by it, I do what I want.” There’s no such thing for any of anyone unless one is raised in an extreme sheltered bubble. We are the product of our society, and our society is saturated in porn ideology.

Your intentions might be right, and you might have other reasons for doing whatever it is you do, but most modern American beauty expectations are the aftermath of prostitute hygiene standards and pornographic models.

When I say that shaving is influenced by the porn industry, I am not saying that a woman who shaved is being forced to by her porn-brained husband. It is plausible neither of them view porn. However, when she started shaving, it was because either her aunts or mother first handed her a razor, or because she stole a razor form her aunts or mother because she noticed they shaved, or because she secretly bought a razor because she saw that everyone else shaved and she didn’t want to be gross like her aunts or mother. Whoever handed her the razor did so because somehow they — either directly or indirectly — were influenced by the porn industry. Furthermore, the man who requests that his wife shave may or may not not have viewed porn, but whatever it is that taught him about what it is he should desire in a woman — Hollywood, Instagram, or his father — was likely what influenced the shape of his attraction for the female body.

And yes, these cultural norms do affect our attractions. We can see this by looking at how different cultures shave due to their respective values, “secret” sins, etc.

As in the United States, Germany, the U.K., and Australia all abide by hairless standards — if it’s not on your head it goes. Whether it’s waxing, laser removal, or shaving, women will remove the hair on their legs, underarms, pubic hair, forearms, peach fuzz above lips. Of course none of these countries have stats as high as America, but they are in the top fifteen countries who traffic Pornhub, and all rate high for eating disorders.

Japan and Brazil also have high rates for porn viewership. However, they do stylized shaving — in Japan it is “sexy” to sport pubic hair while wearing a bikini, and in Brazil you leave a “landing strip” and decide how much you want left. Despite its revolutionary reputation, most women in France still shave unless they are “alternative”.

It’s interesting to note that many countries who don’t put much emphasis on shaving, or have low percentages of women who shaved — Chile, Mexico, Ghana, the Netherlands, Columbia and other similar countries in Asia, South America, and Africa. They often also have lower rates of eating disorders.

The exception to this is with Islamic countries and India. It’s just starting to become a norm in India for women to shave, however the porn stats are high. While the porn stats appear to be low, or vary, in Arabic speaking countries (they are high in Iran and low in Egypt), it is common for women and men to both remove all body hair for “hygienic” reasons, though I’d infer that it might have something more to do with their history with polygamy and child-brides.

Shaving is for Degenerates and Degenerates in Fancy Dresses

Women’s razors have only been around for about 104 years. It is commonly believed that women didn’t generally shave before a volley of razor advertisements infiltrated American papers. They had easy prey. Women wanted to be sexier, and they didn’t want to be gross. They wanted shorter, chic hems and to bare their shoulders. If shaving their pubic hair meant they could wear a bikini — they’d do it! No armpit hair meant no body odor? Well, that was a no-brainer then! It was all hype and shame, and no facts or dignity. And before they knew it, it was weird to not shave although hardly anybody had done it before.

An unpleasant body odor is actually caused by eating unhealthy foods and wearing synthetic fibers.

There are some who like to defend a woman’s duty (or privilege??) to shave by pointing out that some women did shave before 1915.

Some certainly did shave. However it wasn’t your common peasant woman — she didn’t have any time to be sneaking her husband’s razor sharp stones out in the barn, or boiling wax with chemicals.

Both priests and priestesses shaved their entire bodies in ancient Egypt for ritualistic purposes. In Greece and Rome, prostitutes also shaved themselves to distinguish themselves from respectable women². Supposedly some Native Americans also shaved, though I can find little information on this or on how much body hair they actually removed.

However, the concept that a woman didn’t possess natural beauty and that she must carve or modify herself in order to be beautiful really began to emerge with Greek and Roman art of smooth, marble statues of both women and men that were hairless. Undoubtedly, many of these statues were modeled after prostitutes who shaved for hygienic reasons (in order to prevent offending clients, prostitutes would shave their pubic area to neutralize lingering odors from previous clients’ semen), and to prevent a spread of diseases among those that were sexually loose.

Body hair simply got in the way of serial orgies, and hygienics were formed to accommodate their lifestyle, and art represented this.

One could argue that Greek and Rome were Sodom and Gomorrah incarnate, however not all art represented the perfect woman — or man — hairless.

It was an unorthodox desire, unless you were like King Solomon 970 - 931 B. C., the king with 1000 wives and concubines, who according to one legend, thought of women as animal-like heathens who could be subdued, feminized, and converted. For the king who collected women as a hunter collects trophies, any woman was novelty once groomed with slaked lime and ash.

Much of art represented a woman’s beauty by her fertility instead of hygienically. Such art would put emphasis on her hairy armpits — a foreshadowing of what was promised between her legs. Ironically as art changed, the less hairy she became the slimmer a woman’s hips were drawn.

Shaving started to popularize in the female aristocracy during the renaissance era. ³ However, it wasn’t something that was publicly discussed even among women — hair was seen as a bodily excrement, a thought believed to be induced by some of art of the day that pictured women as creamy white, hairless goddesses. If one bothered removing the hair — mostly from the facial and pubic areas — they would do so secretly as in shame. There were “secret” recipe books for depilatory creams made of alkaline, arsenic, quicklime, and other such chemicals, a step up from sharp shells and rocks. These women would take extreme measures to wax or burn the hair off their bodies in secret, sometimes burning off too much and having to lather their private parts with butter — no wonder some of those aristocratic women are depicted as being grumpy and haughty. They had probably just done the you-know-what!! But hey, now they could wear a showing cleavage, a shorter sleeve, and their husband wouldn’t be repulsed when he crawled into bed later. They would grimace the pain nobly, without uttering a word of complaint.

The overarching theme here is that a regular, proper western woman didn’t shave until 1915, and then men of one wife didn’t expect for their wives to look like anything other than how God had made them. It was mostly prostitutes or aristocrats (who are basically prostitutes with nice clothes) who championed the idea that the perfect woman is not organic.

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Hairless Nudes and Starving For God

I do not mean to imply that society ever viewed women’s natural beauty as integrally perfect. The Greeks’ and Romans’ proselytization of hairless, nude prostitutes didn’t materialize out of nowhere. The culture already predominately valued polygamy and juvenile brides — the perfect woman was young, so young that she was basically a child, or maybe she was a child. Her baby-soft skin and prepubescent body (that lacked hair) were prized. A real woman of twenty or more years old was no good — virgins were prized until they were consummated. And then, unless they were cherished wives, they were not desired, not as a child or a prostitute might be desired.

Until the Greeks and Romans devised a brilliant strategy to prolong a woman’s sexual appeal: turn all women into prepubescent girls by having them adapt the hygienic practices of a prostitute. The child-bride-prostitute hybrid was born. It was a revolutionary thought that would be possible only through art and pornography. It would have devastating consequences for the romance of men and women, and their mental health.

The beginning of the decline started in the sixteenth century:

The first published pornography was in 1524. Books with recipes for removing hair were published as early 1532. And while anorexia nervosa wasn’t medically described as an illness until 1689, Mary, Queen of Scots, is believed to be the first known person to experience anorexia (it was described as an unknown illness) as a teenager in 1556. I don’t think it’s coincidental that female shaving, pornography, and anorexia emerged all at once during the sixteenth century, and I believe that someday there will be a stat to support my thesis.

Over the next couple hundred years, pornography, hairlessness, and anorexia were mostly luxury products that didn’t really affect most normal people until 1915, and even then the rise was slow until the classes merged into the middle class in the 1950’s. Mini skirts and bikinis followed, and the stats for anorexia, porn, and razor sales excelled.

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Anorexia is Good, Actually

Anorexia wasn’t regarded as an actual condition until 1873, however it is interesting to note that it has only increased in etymological use along with the rise of female shaving norms and porn use. Anorexia is somewhat of a hot button. Nobody really wants to talk about why it happens, even though it has a nonnegotiable corollary to modern beauty expectations. However, unlike porn and shaving, anorexia’s historical roots are not degenerate and are entangled in something more mystical.

Anorexia mirabilis differs from the modern disease anorexia by intention only: with the former one would starve themselves for the purpose of faith and religion while with the latter one refuses to eat for personal body image insecurities. Although I wonder if therapists would agree with this difference, or if those who are severely afflicted with anorexia would disagree — don’t they almost convince themselves that they are doing this for the right and not for selfish reasons?

Anorexia mirabilis is a phenomenon that developed in the early medieval centuries when certain Saint-like Catholics refused to eat anything other than the Eucharist even unto death.⁴ Miraculously many of their lives were prolonged and they were sustained on the body and blood of Jesus alone, and through prayer and religious ecstasies.

It is believed that the “religious anorexic” has similar connections to the modern disease, and I am inclined to think this is true, though perhaps not in the same way that a scientist or therapist might claim..

The above tweet by

Megha Lillywhite

⁵ presents a valid point: when we ignore what’s healthy and put toxic things into our body, we poison ourselves, our body will react. It’s deeper than a physical ailment, though. Yes, anorexia is our body warning us to about the food we’re digesting or the clothing we’re wearing.⁶ It’s also our body telling us we might be under spiritual attack — and western women in the 21st century are suffering spiritually if the rising number with porn and eating disorder stats are to account for anything.

The actual disorder is not anorexia, but what leads us to become anorexic, and the cure is found in removing from our diet whatever it is that we have consumed that is not good for us. Therapists ignore this and are concerned only with calories. Therefore patients are more prone to relapse than they might’ve been had they addressed the root cause of their disorder. You won’t be able to truly regain your appetite until you’ve dealt with whatever it is that your body is fighting against. You must become physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy in order to recover.

Like the Saints of old who subjected themselves to extreme fasting for spiritual benefits, those who suffer with eating disorders must cleanse themselves from all unholy habits and thoughts and allow themselves to become wholly beautiful women in God’s eyes.

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All Women are Trans Women

The first step of escaping the degeneracy of our own era is recognizing its historical roots, how it manifests in ripples across the globe, and how we can best reject this anti-beauty message.

A lot of Christians like to naively think that all sins are the same in God’s eyes, and while that might be mostly true when it comes to the soul, porn is warping and rotting our minds faster than fornication can. Anorexia is only the tip of the iceberg. Cultures that idealize the female body as something prepubescent — “cutsie” and like an anime character as in Japan or perfectly groomed-with-extremely small hips as in the United States — have something in common with Muslim communities: a fetish for child-brides. Western cultures feel justified because they wait to sleep with their prepubescent-looking brides until they are of “the age of consent”. But most women did not knowingly consent to being told that they are inherently gross, and that although they are 18 or 23 or 35 that they must still shape themselves into looking like they are 12 years old.

It’s not just about shaving — or anorexia. The lust for child-bride marriages has led to things like labiaplasty: an aesthetic plastic surgery to remove part of female genitalia, that is under the same medical wheelhouse as the transgender surgery vulvoplasty. Basically it’s a surgery women get so they can wear tight leggings or pants or bathing suits without their female parts showing. It’s also common because many men find it more attractive. There have been over 18,000 of these surgeries in the United States.

There will be no end of calling God’s handiwork “not good enough” and trying to redo it. It’s gone so far that it’s not just about women anymore. Even a lot of men are starting to be told that they are gross if they have too much body hair, or if they look or smell too much like a man, or don’t cut away certain parts of their body to conform to some sort of societal idea of masculinity.

It’s no wonder that after centuries of hacking away and remodeling man and woman, we are now in an era of transgenderism.

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Arguments For Shaving Turn a Blind Eye To What’s Going On

1. “I’d shave no matter what time period or social class I was born into”

I’ve lost count of how many women have told me, “Well, I see how shaving might’ve come out of commercialization and pornography. But it doesn’t mean that to me. I like shaving, and would’ve shaved even if it wasn’t a part of my culture.”

There’s simply no possible way that could be true. First, the dozens of women claiming that they would do the abnormal thing when they all currently do the normal thing is simply ridiculous. Secondly, unless one was a prostitute or an aristocrat, it wouldn’t have entered your head to shave any part of your body. There’s simply no way that any regular person — unless you are truly a contrarian and very odd to boot — would’ve shaved pre-1915 (or really 1950’s).

2. “I understand shaving started from something bad, but it doesn’t mean that to me”

It’s funny how Christians get really mad if a woke person uses similar language to redefine absolute truth, but then will go on to redefine absolute truth when it suits their feelings. Shaving means one thing only: the fantasization of prepubescent girls. This meaning simply can’t be gotten around. Yes, you might find body hair gross for other reasons. Likely you don’t actually have a personal fetish for children, nor does your husband.

Because of this, God handed them over to the vile desires of their heart to disgrace their bodies among themselves. - Romans 1:24

However, when you have improper desires, the thing to do is not to redefine these desires so as to make them right and good in your own eyes, but to transform your heart so that you are attracted to what is beautiful and pure according to God’s standards. Like my friend who believes “it helps our marriage to watch porn together” or “we are honest with each other, so I tell my wife I don’t find her attractive when she is pregnant”, it is important to question what it is you value and if maybe you need to deprogram your lusts and transcend so that your love reflects God’s heart.

3. “I don’t shave because it’s gross, but because body hair annoys me”

Whenever I hear this, I’m reminded of Trichotillomania, a mental health disorder where one has the urge to pull out their hair, usually their eyelashes or eyebrows, and it’s usually a sign of extreme, traumatic stress.

God calls us to be patient and to persevere. We weren’t meant to cater to our copes, but to address them and heal.

If you are mutilating yourself because that part of your body annoys you, you should consider counseling. At the least you should question whether or not it is actually healthy for you to be making decisions based on how things annoy you.

4. “What’s wrong with adapting hygienic practices just because prostitutes did them?”

I’m not opposed to being clean. God didn’t make us dirty, but He did create us with hair. Much of Leviticus is a manifesto on cleanliness. However, in His extensive outline of how to be clean — wash your hands, bathe, remove and burn anything that’s moldy, wear whole fibers, take some R&R when you’re menstruating — there was nothing about hair being gross. Hair is only disgusting if it’s being subjected to too much bacteria and not enough to water i.e. if you’re a prostitute, you’re probably sleeping with more men than you are taking baths, and then you need improvising. Furthermore, what prostitutes did appealed to their demographic of men, who were already prone to pedophilic tendencies.

At the end of the day, one isn’t more hygienic by shaving. In fact, our hair can help regulate our body odors if we have a healthy exposure to bacteria. It’s not that I’m against hygiene. I’m not. It’s good to be clean. But it’s not good to do things that degrade the female form. We aren’t cleaner when we are hairless, we are like child-brides and prostitutes. We become sex-objects instead of mature women.

5. “I just don’t want to look like a hippie or a lesbian”

I often get mislabeled as a feminist or a hippie for not shaving. I am neither: I am not into prohibition ideologies, nor do I believe in drug induced free-love. Ironically, I also get on with many lesbians better than I do with most Christian women because we have a few core, practical values in common. Our reasoning might differ, but we have similar messages.

I agree with what hippies, lesbians, and feminists have to say about beauty expectations oppressing women — from corsets that shove reproductive organs around to reshape the waist, to laser hair removal, to tattooed eye mascara, breast implants, and labiaplasty, and so on. All of these “beauty standards” harm women physically and spiritually and degrade her to the status of a sex object. It’s a shame that only lesbians and hippies have courage to say anything about these matters. Christian communities should be pointing us toward genuine, healthy beauty, too. 

However, I do believe the intention matters almost as much as the action.

For instance, many feminists don’t shave as a rebellious demonstration against the patriarchy. They do all sorts of other vulgar, repulsive things to their bodies, too, to state that men don’t deserve beauty. I feel that’s a bit much. We all want beauty, and there’s nothing wrong with men appreciating true femininity anymore than it’s wrong for a woman to be attracted to masculinity. Furthermore, shaving for the sole reason of enacting vengeance on men doesn’t counter the actual issue. Feminists, too, think that body hair is gross, and that’s why they’re flaunting it in men’s faces. I do not endorse vile protests, and I don’t endorse any ideology that is based on the idea that the natural woman is inferior to the child-bride/ prostitute Frankenstein.

Returning to beauty is not some political demonstration. Do it with a braid and a flattering dress, and you’ll pleasantly flummox everyone, especially if you’re not wearing a vagina hat.

There’s no stopping people from misjudging your message and motives. It will happen. However, if you know something to be true, you do it. You find common ground where it’s possible — even if it’s with hippies, lesbians, and feminists. But make it clear that you also have your own ground that does not resemble that of the hippie, lesbian, or feminist. It’s essential that we don’t allow incorrect Christian dogma to dilute our attempts at doing good, and that we as Christians reclaim truth — or hippies, lesbians, and feminists will keep spreading a watered-down truth in their own, degenerate fashion.

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Stats Aside, I’ve Seen What Happens When Girls Are Raised to Believe it is Gross to be Maturing

I was not able to start eating properly until I turned my back on man-made beauty expectations. The moment I stopped believing lies about female body hair, makeup, and current fashion was the moment I was able to eat a healthy meal and enjoy it. If we are living by the standards of something that is rooted in a hideous ideology, we will have a spiritual reaction that will result in forced fasting or vomiting — and if we are aware, we won’t try to just heal from what’s happening to our bodies, but address the spiritual issues that causes our diseases.

Both Christian communities that I spent time in are rampant with eating disorders and body image insecurities. Naturally, they never considered if maybe the reason so many of them have been diagnosed and hospitalized for anorexia might be because they actually have some spiritual disconnect concerning beauty. When recently another one of the girls was diagnosed with anorexia, there was gnashing of teeth and weeping. They lamented, “I can’t believe this is happening to her. The devil is attacking her, and I don’t know why. I just didn’t see it coming, you know. She’s such a good girl.”

I told one of my friends, “I’ve seen it coming. Everyone is basically raised to become anorexic here, and so many of the volunteer girls leave with an eating disorder.”

I tried to say it delicately, but also anger surged through me knowing of all the overlooked and unnecessary suffering being inflicted upon people in this community. My time here had really done a number on me, and the place was continuing to harm a lot of other young girls. I do not know if there is a porn addiction among them, however I know that there is an unhealthy view toward sex and intimacy, and it is conveyed through their sermons and fashion choices.

They are fostering their own insecurities and diseases by propagating lies about sex.

When my friends at the Hilltop heard I was getting married, the first thing they asked me was, “Are you going to shave? Not even for the wedding night? But Keturah! Why not! Not even the bikini line?”

“Andy has explicitly told me he doesn’t want a child-bride, he is happy he is marrying a woman.”

“You should at least wear make-up, though. It’s your wedding day. Even if Andy doesn’t like it, you should do it for you!”

Ironically, after years of telling me I would have to do it for my husband if I ever married, they were telling me I should do it despite my husband’s wishes. They told me I should do “for me” what I did not want to do.

After it’s all said and done, I do believe it is good for a woman to be beautiful for her husband, and for her to cater to his desires and preferences as long as they are wholesome and actually beautiful. If a woman isn’t brushing her hair or teeth, or if she’s wearing obnoxious colors, or wearing something that’s frumpy and not at all flattering to the feminine form, I think he has every right to ask her to put a little care into her appearance. In the same way I might ask my husband to zip his pants, not wear shorts or t-shirts in public because I don’t want him looking undistinguished. There is nothing wrong with spouses making themselves attractive to one another.

However, If a man wants to sodomize his wife, or make her a porn model, or pimp her out, or ask her to groom herself to look like an eleven year old girl, she shouldn’t comply. In fact, she should go speak to her priest or pastor, because her husband probably needs some spiritual guidance to reset his attractions to something ordered and proper.

I simply cannot in good conscience do anything to my body that fosters eating disorders, sustains and enables pedophilia, and gives space to body insecurities. I don’t shave because I do not approve of encouraging men that sex with children or prostitutes is better than being intimate with their wives.

It is easy for a Christian to see and say that the secular world has disordered attractions, and that the secular world should not be allowed access to the “imaginations of their heart”. The American Christian is so consumed by the sins of the world — of transgenders and abortion — that they are unable to see that it is they who first thought these sins into being.

The “secret sins” of the Christian are enabling the ruin of the entire world. It is nobody’s fault but ours, for we have allowed the prostitutes to become the role model of the perfect woman.

And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me - Jeremiah 16:12

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Thank you for reading — I hope you found something worthwhile to mull over in this essay. If you would like to support my voice in the literary world, you may buy my coffee (I might use it for yarn though!!)

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1.

2. A brief article on the history of women shaving. It’s short and not thorough, but worth a glance.

3. This essay is about why women (and sometimes men) don’t have hair on a majority of Medieval and Renaissance art.

4. Read this essay on “Anorexia is Cute, but Have You Tried Starving Yourself for God?”

5. If you want to read the rest of Megha’s tweet on how she healed herself from anorexia, it’s here.

6. The clothing you wear totally impacts how much you can get away with eating junk food. A friend recently told me that she can handle gluten better when she’s not wearing synthetic fibers, and that she’s Keturah-ing her wardrobe so she can keep eating her bread.